The Syrian army on Monday recaptured the villages of Hambousheyah, al-Ballouta and Sheikh Nabhan.
“The Syrian troops eradicated the militants who infiltrated into these villages and committed crimes of slaughtering, looting and assaulting the local residents,” said a Syrian military source, whose name was not mentioned in the reports.
The source said that dozens of militants were killed during the battle, adding that some of the killed militants were Tunisians.
On August 17, the Syrian army restored security in the villages of Shakouhi and Abu-Makkah in the northern countryside of Latakia.
The Syrian forces also made advances against the militants in battlefields near the capital, Damascus.
Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah warned Friday that his party was ready to step up its military involvement in response to attacks by foreign backed terrorist groups targeting the group, its strongholds in Lebanon and also in Syria.
Nasrallah also accused foreign backed radical extremist groups of responsibility for the bombing that killed at least 24 people, after a previously unknown group, apparently a Syrian terrorist group, said it carried out Thursday’s attack.
“I will go myself to Syria if it is so necessary in the battle against the takfiris (extremist militants), Hezbollah and I will go to Syria” to fight the terrorists trying to oust the Damascus legal government, he said.
In a speech broadcast on television as Lebanon held a day of mourning for the victims of the car bomb, Nasrallah said “all indications concerning yesterday’s attack lead to the takfiri groups”.
Nasrallah said Thursday’s car bomb in Beirut would only reinforce Hezbollah’s determination to fight in Syria and defeat foreign backed extremists who were behind the attack.
He added that Takfiris “are killers who do not belong to any religion or sect.”
He spoke in a speech to supporters Friday marking the end of the 2006 month-long war with Israel.
Nasrallah said there was nothing to prove yet that Israel was involved in the attacks, although he added that extremists could be working for the Zionist regime.
Lebanese President Michel Suleiman concurred and said Thursday’s deadly bombing bears the fingerprints of the Israeli regime.
A militant group operating in neighboring Syria calling itself the Brigades of Aiysha took credit for the deadly bomb attack, which killed at least 24 people and wounded around 300 others.
Thursday’s blast comes six weeks after a car bomb attack in the same area wounded more than 50 people.
Meanwhile, as the foreign-backed insurgency in Syria continues without an end in sight, the US government has boosted its political and military support to Takfiri extremists.
The war in Syria started in March 2011, when pro-reform protests turned into a massive insurgency following the intervention of Western and regional states.
The unrest, which took in terrorist groups from across Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, has transpired as one of the bloodiest conflicts in recent history.
