...
Party of God, a Leb militia inspired, founded, funded and directed by Iran. Hizbullah refers to itself as
The Resistanceand purports to defend Leb against Israel, with whom it has started and lost one disastrous war to date, though it did claim victory...
fighters on Sunday pressed a counteroffensive against rebels near
Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad
Terror of Aleppo ...
's coastal heartland, a monitoring group said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that more than 100 fighters have been killed in three days of intense festivities in the Sahl al-Ghab region of central Hama province.
The area borders the Latakia province, a bastion of support for Assad and home to his ancestral village.
A rebel alliance including al-Qaeda's Syria affiliate, al-Nusra
...formally Jabhat an-Nusrah li-Ahli sh-Sham (Support Front for the People of the Levant), also known as al-Qaeda in the Levant. They aim to establish a pan-Arab caliphate. Not the same one as the Islamic State, though .. ...
Front, launched an offensive late Monday against Sahl al-Ghab, in a push threatening a string of pro-regime Alawite villages.
The rebel alliance, Army of Conquest, seized more than a dozen strategic hilltops and other positions, including a power plant, before being pushed out by pro-government forces, said the Observatory.
"In the past three days, the army has been able to take back nearly 50 percent of the areas it had lost," said Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britannia-based monitor.
The 72 hours of festivities killed at least 73 rebels and 42 regime forces, including Hizbullah fighters and members of the National Defense Forces militia allied with the government, he told AFP.
On Sunday, regime aircraft conducted air raids on rebel positions while on the ground the two sides traded heavy rocker fire and mortar rounds, Abdel Rahman said.
Sahl al-Ghab also borders the province of Idlib to the northwest, a vast majority of which is under the control of the Army of Conquest.
The Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, is the faith to which Assad adheres.