Hezbollah sent ‘supervising’ forces to Syria’s Homs, sources say

Lebanese armed group Hezbollah sent a small number of “supervising forces” from Lebanon to Syria overnight to help prevent anti-government fighters from seizing the strategic city of Homs, two senior Lebanese security sources said on Friday.

With anti-regime offensives gathering pace both to the north and south of the capital Damascus, Kurdish-led fighters say they have moved into eastern parts of Syria.

Kurdish forces occupy the northeast of the country, having achieved hard-won autonomy during a decade of civil war. They fear that autonomy could now be under threat by Syrian opposition insurgents who launched their offensive last week.

Although the target of that offensive is the Assad regime, a statement by Kurdish fighters shows they fear the violence could spill over into their territory.

Syrian rebels were falsely accused of defacing Palestinian flags following their capture of swathes of territory in northern and central Syria over the past week, part of a disinformation campaign by supporters of Bashar Al-Assad who claimed that the opposition are backed by Israel.

The civil war erupted in 2011 after the totalitarian Syrian regime violently crushed peaceful nation-wide protests demanding long overdue democratic reforms. The bitter conflict, having defied a diplomatic solution, has led to the deaths of about 300,000 Syrians and the internal and external displacement of approximately five million Syrian citizens.