Abil Battle Enters Eight Day

April 9, 2013

By Nuha Shaaban

The battle for a small but strategic village of Abil on the Homs-Damascus highway continued Tuesday with government tank movements and airstrikes concentrated on this Free Syrian Army outpost choking the movement of regime forces from the coast to the capital.

A spokesman for the FSA in Homs said his forces liberated the town in early March as part of the “Release Detainees” campaign.

“This village is in the first line of fire of in the southern countryside of Homs province,”said Abu-Rami Al Homsi, a journalist based in the nearby town al-Qusayr, Al-Qusayr, has been under FSA for months.

“The regime army is trying to break into Abil from four sides by using T72 Tanks and BMBs under cover from artillery and warplanes,”said  Al Homsi who added that the village has been hit by multiple airstrikes over the course of the past week.

“The battles are still running on the village borders, the  army is trying hard to break through the village. They are being reinforced from all the checkpoints around the village,”said Babers Al-Talawi, a Homs based citizen journalist.