Maalula (Syria) (AFP) - Syria's President Bashar al-Assad paid an Easter Sunday visit to a historic Christian town newly recaptured from jihadist-backed rebels as opposition fighters counter-attacked his forces in a key battleground city.

The surprise visit to Maalula, just north of Damascus, came as Pope Francis said in his Easter message that it was time for warring parties to "boldly negotiate" peace in Syria after three years of conflict estimated to have killed 150,000 people.

Assad's regime has sought to portray itself as the protector of religious minorities from foreign-backed extremists, a notion his opponents dismiss as part of a divide-and-rule strategy also aimed at deterring Western support for rebels.

State television showed Assad, who has rarely appeared in public during the conflict, visiting Maalula's Saint Sergius and Bacchus monastery damaged by "terrorists" -- his regime's term for its armed opponents.

"No people anywhere have ever had to face what Syria is facing today. Your unity... is what secured these victories," Assad told regime forces near the rebels' ex-headquarters in Maalula.

"We say congratulations to Syria, and even though the battle is long, we will always be ready to face the terrorists," he added, after shaking their hands.

The television said Assad also visited nearby Ain al-Tineh village, where scores of men and women cheered his name.

"However much they (the rebels) destroy (Syria)... we will build it... Together we build it, together we protect it, together we will make it better and more beautiful," he told the gathering.

Syria's uprising began in March 2011 as a peaceful revolt against the Assad family's four-decade rule but escalated into an insurgency and then a civil war after the regime launched a brutal krackdown.

As the war has intensified, it has also grown more sectarian, with jihadists flocking to the ranks of the Sunni-led rebellion and Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah movement fighting alongside the regime.

Syria's army took control of Maalula on Monday, backed by Hezbollah fighters.

Located about 40 minutes' drive from Damascus, Maalula is one of the world's oldest Christian settlements, and its inhabitants still speak Aramaic, the language of Christ.

Rebel groups including Al-Nusra Front, an Al-Qaeda affiliate, had seized it in early December. They kidnapped 13 nuns and traded them for women prisoners held in regime jails in March.

Syria's large Christian minority has sought neutrality throughout the conflict, and has viewed the rise of powerful jihadist groups among the rebels with growing concern.

- 'Rebels reclaim initiative' -

In Homs, rebels went on the counter-offensive, taking control of buildings in regime-held areas nearly a week after Assad's forces launched a ground attack to reclaim besieged areas that are the opposition's last remaining stronghold in the key battleground city.

Rebels and troops meanwhile battled on the edges of Homs' besieged Old City, as the army pounded opposition areas with tank and rocket fire.

"The rebels have reclaimed the initiative, and have taken control of several buildings in the Jeb al-Jandali area" of Homs, said Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The counter-offensive began after the jihadist Al-Nusra Front, an ally of Syria's rebels, killed five troops in a suicide car bomb attack Saturday in the same area.

The car bombing came after soldiers at a regime checkpoint at the entrance of the neighbourhood defected and abandoned their positions, said Abdel Rahman.

Only a handful of districts in the heart of Homs, referred to by activists as "the capital of the revolution", remain under rebel control.

In the northern city of Aleppo, 10 people were killed in air raids on rebel neighbourhoods, said the Observatory.

Rebel areas of Aleppo have come under a fierce aerial attack since mid-December. Hundreds have been killed, most of them citizens.

French President Francois Hollande said, meanwhile, his government had "information" but no firm proof the Assad regime was still using chemical weapons.

Under the terms of the US-Russia brokered deal reached last year, Syria has until end-June to destroy its chemical stockpile if it wants to ward off the threat of American air strikes.

Hollande's statement came as four French journalists taken hostage in Syria were reunited with loved ones in an emotional homecoming after 10 months in captivity.

The head of Syria’s main opposition group Ahmad Jarba made a rare trip to Latakia province on Tuesday, amid a rebel offensive against the heartland of President Bashar al-Assad.

“The president of the Syrian National Coalition Ahmad Jarba visited the Jabal Turkman... and Jabal Akrad” areas of Latakia, the opposition chief's office said in an email.

Both Jabal Akrad and Jabal Turkman have been under opposition control for many months, but all the rest of coastal Latakia province has until recently been squarely under regime control.

Jarba was seen in video footage distributed by the Syrian Revolution General Commission, a network of activists on the ground, sitting with rebels fighting Assad troops at the coastal town.

But rebel commander Malek al-Kurdi spoke on behalf of the operations room for Latakia: "We have hope in this meeting that we are in a historic moment... of the beginning of the final phase of our liberation in the coast and in the whole of Syria from Bashar al-Assad's regime."

According to Jarba's office, his visit was "to the people and the fighters... and to all the fronts in Jabal Turkman, from Kasab and Al-Sawda, to all the areas surrounding Observatory 45".

The office also said Jarba stressed during his meeting with the rebels "the need for real support" for the opposition fighters in Latakia.

He also said "the Coalition has provided assistance to (fighters on) the front", the office said.

Opposition fighters from several conservative and hardline Islamic groups, including the al-Qaeda-affiliated Nusra Front, launched their assault on the northern stretches of Latakia province along the Turkish frontier on March 21.

So far, they have seized a border crossing, several villages and the predominantly Armenian-Christian town of Kasab, also gaining control of an outlet to the sea for the first time since Syria’s uprising began three years ago.

Their push for the area from which Assad’s family hails from appeared to have caught Damascus off guard.

EMBER

Congress secretly approves U.S. weapons flow to 'moderate' Syrian rebels

(Reuters) - Light arms supplied by the United States are flowing to "moderate" Syrian rebel factions in the south of the country and U.S. funding for months of further deliveries has been approved by Congress, according U.S. and European security officials.

The weapons, most of which are moving to non-Islamist Syrian rebels via Jordan, include a variety of small arms, as well as some more powerful weapons, such as anti-tank rockets.

The deliveries do not include weapons such as shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles, known as MANPADs, which could shoot down military or civilian aircraft, the officials said.

The weapons deliveries have been funded by the U.S. Congress, in votes behind closed doors, through the end of government fiscal year 2014, which ends on September 30, two officials said.

The apparently steady weapons flow contrasts with the situation last summer, when lethal U.S. aid to the Syrian rebels dried up for a time due to congressional reservations.

Congressional committees held up weapons deliveries for months over fears that U.S. arms would not prove decisive in the rebels' efforts to oust President Bashar Assad and his government and could well end up in the hands of Islamist militants.

A U.S. official familiar with recent developments said national security officials and members of Congress are more confident that weapons delivered to southern Syria are going to, and remaining in, the hands of moderate rebels rather than militant jihadist factions.

Congress approved funding for weapons deliveries to the Syrian rebels in classified sections of defense appropriations legislation, two sources familiar with the matter said. It was not clear when the funding was approved, but unclassified defense funding passed Congress in late December.

Some additional budget tweaks may be necessary to ensure that all the approved funding is fully available for disbursement during the current fiscal year.

Yet, officials who support providing U.S. arms to the rebels acknowledge that this has not greatly increased U.S. expectations of victory by anti-Assad forces, whether moderate or militant.

"The Syrian war is a stalemate. The rebels lack the organization and weapons to defeat Assad; the regime lacks the loyal manpower to suppress the rebellion. Both sides' external allies... are ready to supply enough money and arms to fuel the stalemate for the foreseeable future," said Bruce Riedel, a former senior CIA analyst and sometime foreign policy adviser to President Barack Obama.

Both U.S. and European officials said that "moderate" rebels had recently consolidated their positions in the Syrian south, where they are pushing out elements linked to al-Qaeda. More militant factions remain dominant in the north and east.

Another recent development favorable to more moderate factions is that Kurdish groups that had been providing weapons and other aid financed by donors in the Gulf state of Qatar indiscriminately to both moderate and religious extremist rebel factions had greatly reduced their involvement in the arms traffic, one of the officials said.

A White House spokeswoman had no comment. Other U.S. agencies did not respond to requests for comment.

As for "non-lethal" aid like communications and transportation equipment, the United States hopes to resume deliveries to moderate groups in Syria soon, a U.S. official said on Monday.

The United States and Britain suspended non-lethal aid to northern Syria in December after reports that Islamist fighters seized Western-backed rebel weapons warehouses, highlighting fears that supplies could end up in hostile hands.

"We hope to be able to resume assistance to the SMC shortly, pending security and logistics considerations," said the official, referring to the Supreme Military Council moderate rebel group. "But we have no announcements at this time," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Non-lethal aid was resumed to civilian groups in that region in late December.

EMBER

American Anti-Tank Weapons Appear in Syrian Rebel Hands (Updated)




In three videos (one, two, three) published on YouTube on 1 and 5 April, members of moderate Syrian rebel group Harakat Hazm were shown operating American-manufactured BGM-71 TOW anti-tank guided missiles (ATGMs). All three videos -- two show missiles being fired and the third shows several missiles on the back of a pick-up truck -- were filmed in and around the town of Heesh in the northern governorate of Idlib. This marked the first time such weapons have been seen in Syria since the eruption of conflict in the country three years ago.

At first glance, this appears to be an extremely significant development. However, some level of care must be taken at this stage in terms of drawing conclusions as to what this means. More videos showing BGM-71 TOWs being used in Syria -- and preferably in the hands of additional rebel groups or in other areas of the country -- will be necessary for this to represent a potential state-based program of providing valuable weaponry to moderate rebels. However, for now, this possibility appears more likely than not and the arrival in some form or another of such new weapons seems worthy of some investigation.

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Initially developed in 1963 by the Hughes Aircraft Company and then adopted by Raytheon in 1997, the BGM-71 TOW has been widely exported to more than 40 current and previous US allies. Within the Middle East and North Africa region, TOWs are currently thought to be stocked or to have been stocked by Israel, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Morocco, Lebanon, Kuwait, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, and Turkey.

Intriguingly, Iran was also sent several thousand BGM-71 TOWs during the Iran-Contra Affair in the mid-1980s, some of which may have been shared with Hezbollah - as purportedly evidenced by the group's apparent use of TOW missiles in the 2006 conflict with Israel. However, the missiles seen being used by Harakat Hazm rebels in Syria are very unlikely to have been acquired/captured from Hezbollah or other pro-Assad forces for three reasons. Firstly, there has been no evidence of pro-government forces using TOW missiles throughout the conflict in Syria. Secondly, Iran is currently more reliant on its domestically produced copy of the BGM-71 TOW, known as the Toophan - specific characteristics of which are distinctly different to the systems just seen in Syria. And thirdly, the good condition of the missiles and launchers seen in the Syria videos would suggest they do not date back to the 1980s.

In the videos, the visible presence of a guidance wire between the missile and the launcher is evidence that the systems being used in Syria are not the more modern wireless ones developed and sold by Raytheon since the early 2000s. Importantly, under the common terms of US military sales to foreign states, governments are contractually obliged to seek US approval before transferring US-made weapons to a third party. So technically, if these BGM-71 TOWs were provided to Harakat Hazm by an opposition supporting state, the US and the Obama administration should have known about it and would have to have given the transfer their blessing. Considering that White House and State Department officials have in recent weeks been suggesting the possibility of imminently expanding US military assistance to the Syrian opposition, could these BGM-71 TOWs be related?

This raises the as yet unanswerable question of where these missiles have come from? In this context, it is worth looking at exactly what Harakat Hazm represents within the wider Syrian opposition dynamic.

EMBER