by Our Foreign Desk

SYRIA’S elite fourth army division, backed by Lebanese Hezbollah fighters, entered the rebel-held mountain resort of Zabadani yesterday after launching a major offensive, including air strikes, to capture the town on Saturday.

Hezbollah’s al-Manar TV ran footage showing its fighters in the town and scenes of heavy fighting including explosions.

Zabadani’s capture would tighten Hezbollah’s grip on Syrian territories bordering Lebanon and strengthen the Syrian government’s control over of the Beirut-Damascus main road.

Zabadani has been held by rebels since shortly after Syria’s civil war began in March 2011.

Al-Manar said that Hezbollah fighters and Syrian troops had attacked from several directions and, by afternoon, had captured Tal castle, which overlooks wide parts of the town. The rebels were retreating, it said.

Syrian state TV quoted a military official as saying that “terrorists suffered large losses.”

However, government forces and their Hezbollah allies failed yesterday to retake the Scientific Research Centre in the northern city of Aleppo, which was used as an army base before being captured by insurgents on Friday night.

Terrorist groups launched fresh attacks on government-held neighbourhoods of Aleppo on Saturday after a mosque bombing killed at least 14 members of the Nusra Front, the al-Qaida affiliate in Syria.

US-led coalition aircraft unleashed a series of air strikes yesterday, targeting the Isis stronghold of Raqqa in eastern Syria.

The attack killed at least 10 militants and wounded many others in one of the largest coalition operations to date.

Isis released a video at the weekend, displaying the execution-style murder of 25 Syrian soldiers in the historic town of Palmyra.