Assad troops kill 15; Rowhani mediation offer rejected

BEIRUT: Government troops backed by allied militiamen have stormed a predominantly Sunni village in central Syria killing at least 15 people, while opposition forces began an offensive near Aleppo to try to cut the army’s supply route to the northern city, activists said Saturday.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the attack on the village of Sheikh Hadid occurred late Friday and that the dead included two women and a child. It said the rest were men but did not know if they included rebel fighters.
The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said 26 people were killed in Sheikh Hadid, including some who were killed with knives. Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory, said at least two of the dead were stabbed to death.
The assault came shortly after rebels captured Jalma, another village close to Sheikh Hadid in Hama province, killing five soldiers. The Observatory said fighting raged Saturday in Sheikh Hadid and nearby areas.
The Observatory also reported clashes between fighters of two hard-line rebel organizations, Al-Qaeda’s Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant and the Nusra Front, against Kurdish gunmen in the northern province of Raqqa. The Observatory said rebels captured six villages south of Aleppo amid heavy fighting. It had on word on casualties. Rebels control large parts of northern Syria and some neighborhoods of Aleppo, once Syria’s commercial capital.
Meanwhile, Syria’s main opposition group rejected an offer by Iran’s new President, Hasan Rowhani, to help in holding a national dialogue to end the Arab country’s crisis.
The Syrian National Coalition’s statement came two days after Rowhani wrote in the Washington Post that Tehran was ready to facilitate talks between Assad’s government and the opposition.
“The Iranian statement is ridiculous after all the blood that Iran participated in shedding ... through its political, economic and military support to Assad,” said the SNC statement.
“It is better if the Iranian leadership withdraws its military experts and fanatic fighters from Syria before coming with initiatives for the concerned parties. It (Iran) is part of the problem,” the statement said.