Al-Qaida’s Nusra Front captures Syrian base

ISTANBUL — Islamist rebels led by al-Qaida’s affiliate, the Nusra Front, widened their hold Monday on Syria’s Idlib province, capturing another government base and pressing an offensive near Ariha, a town of 70,000 that has been primarily in government hands since the uprising against President Bashar Assad began in 2011.

The latest rebel advance came 48 hours after insurgents seized the strategic town of Jisr al Shughour, which controls the main overland supply route to the government’s military bases in Idlib province. A month ago, rebels captured the provincial capital, Idlib city.

The opposition Masar Press agency reported that the rebels had killed 135 government soldiers at the Qarmeed military base, a former brickworks, and captured seven government tanks, a large number of artillery pieces and a sizable quantity of weapons and ammunition.

Unlike the capture of Jisr al Shughour, where U.S.-equipped moderate fighters affiliated with the Free Syrian Army played a major role in the fighting, the force at Qarmeed was led by Nusra and included Ajnad al Sham, an Islamist group based in Hama province, the Rahman Brigade, affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, and the Haqq Brigade, local Islamist group from Idlib province.

Photographs taken for McClatchy by a Syrian freelance photographer showed the Nusra forces driving captured armored personnel carriers around the base and loading captured ammunition onto trucks to be used in other offensives.

SANA, the official Syrian news agency, made no mention of the loss of Qarmeed but reported that government forces had attacked Islamic State extremists in Idlib province, killing “scores of terrorists” in different areas.

Nusra, which broke from the Islamic State group in spring 2014 but remains on the U.S. list of foreign terrorist organizations, said its suicide bombers played a major role in capturing the base.

“We bombarded the base with 70 artillery shells since last night, then one fighter drove a car bomb and exploded it at the main gate,” Abu El Khir El Edilbi, a Nusra commander, told a Masar reporter. He said that 40 fighters equipped to commit suicide then entered the base and seized the main gate as well as two checkpoints.

When government troops regrouped at a former storehouse, Nusra sent in a car bomb that killed a large number of troops there. Government soldiers who survived the attack escaped in the direction of the next base to the west, Msaibin.