Source: NOW. (Anger grows in Syria regime’s coastal heartland)
Relatives of servicemen captured in the Abu Dhuhur airbase are “deeply angered their sons were left to their fate,” according to a report.
Anger has mounted in the Alawite-populated regions of Syria’s coast that provide the backbone of support for the Bashar al-Assad regime following the fall of the Abu Dhuhur airbase in Idlib.
“Anger prevails in the areas of the Syrian coastal region and western Hama province that regime servicemen imprisoned and killed at the Abu Dhuhur airbase come from,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Thursday.
The Islamist Army of Conquest coalition seized Abu Dhuhur—the regime’s last base in the rebel controlled Idlib province—on Wednesday amid a strong sandstorm that struck Syria, limiting the government’s aerial military support capabilities.
Following the base’s capture, an Army of Conquest commander told Turkey’s Anadolu News Agency that his forces had captured 190 regime servicemen.
The Observatory quoted local sources as saying that residents in the coastal region were “deeply angered that their sons were left to their fate rather than being evacuated, even though the siege went on for over two years.”
“They also expressed fear that the fate of their sons surrounded in the Kuweires airbase to the east of Aleppo will be the same as the fate of the servicemen and officers of Abu Dhuhur,” the monitoring NGO added.
Last month, dozens of residents in the regime-controlled coastal city of Tartous held a protest calling on the government to rescue relatives serving in the Kuweires airbase, which has been put under siege by ISIS.
Both pro-regime and pro-rebel outlets covered the unprecedented demonstration, which was staged August 10 outside a local government building after a fierce assault launched by ISIS on the Kuweires airbase left at least 18 regime troops dead, 12 of them officers.
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