JNN 28 July 2013 Damascus : The Syrian army has gained ground in the key Khalidiya district in Homs after ousting foreign-backed militants in fierce clashes in the flashpoint city, a watchdog says. Hundreds of disillusioned militants who took up arms against the Syrian administration are defecting back to the government side, a report says.

Army forces now control “60 percent of Khalidiya,” the so-called Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday, and also captured the Khaled bin Walid mosque.

State television quoted a military source as saying that army forces were in control of all the area around the mosque.

Syria’s official press said the army was now back in control of most of Khalidiya.

The latest army offensive on besieged militant-held neighborhoods of Homs is now in its fourth week.

Government forces are seeking to secure another victory like the one in Qusayr near the border with Lebanon in June, when Hezbollah was key in retaking the strategic town.

The 28-month-old civil war in Syria has killed a total of more than 100,000 people and left more than a million refugees, without any peace settlement in sight.

In New York, a UN spokeswoman said the world body’s chief Ban Ki-moon is to review an accord struck with Syria on investigating the use of chemical weapons before any details are announced.

Ban will meet in New York on Monday with the two envoys who struck the accord, spokeswoman Morana Song told AFP.

The United Nations and Syrian government announced in a joint statement issued late Friday that an accord had been reached “on the way forward” in the investigation, following a Damascus visit this week by two UN envoys.

The conflict 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.

 

Hundreds of disillusioned militants who took up arms against the Syrian administration are defecting back to the government side, a report says.

Exhausted after more than two years of conflict and feeling that they are losing, growing numbers of insurgents are signing up to a negotiated amnesty offered by President Bashar al-Assad, The Daily Telegraph  newspaper  reported on Tuesday.

At the same time, the families of retreating militants have begun quietly moving back to government-controlled territory, seen as a safer place to live as the government continues its intense military push against terrorist-held areas.

The move is a sign of the growing confidence of the government, which has established the Ministry of Reconciliation with the task of easing the way for former opponents to return to the government side.

Ali Haider, the minister in charge, said: “Our message is, ‘if you really want to defend the Syrian people, put down your weapons and come and defend Syria in the right way, through dialogue’.”

Haider, who has a reputation as a moderate within the government, has established a system in which opposition fighters give up their weapons in exchange for safe passage to government-held areas.

Militants have privately said that they are aware of the amnesty offer, and that some men had chosen to accept it.

“I used to fight for revolution, but now I think we have lost what we were fighting for,” said Mohammed, an insurgent from the northern town of Raqqa who declined to give his last name. “Now extremists control my town. My family has moved back to government side because our town is too unsafe.”

The prevalence of terrorist groups in militant-held areas, particularly in the north, has caused some opposition militants to “give up” on their cause.

Ziad Abu Jabal comes from one of the villages in Homs Province whose residents recently agreed to stop fighting the government. “When we joined the demonstrations we wanted better rights,” he said. “After seeing the destruction and the power of jihadists, we came to an agreement with the government.”

Haider said that he had attended a ceremony on Monday at which 180 opposition militants rejoined the government’s police force, from which they had previously defected.

The Daily Telegraph reporter previously visited the Reconciliation Ministry’s headquarters in the capital, Damascus. The office was crowded with the family members of militants fighting in the city’s suburbs who said their men wanted to return.

A ministry negotiator, who gave his name only as Ahmed, was in the process of arranging the defection of a rebel commander and 10 of his men from the Ghouta District.

“It took us three months of negotiation and this is a test,” he said. “If this goes well, the commander says that 50 others will follow.”

He described the steps taken to allow the return of fighters willing to lay down their arms. First, he said, a negotiator must cross the front line for a meeting on rebel-held territory. “We have to hope the rebel commander orders his snipers not to shoot us.”

Would-be defectors were given papers allowing them to pass through Syrian army checkpoints, and then waited in a safe house until the officials could get their names removed from wanted lists held by the Defense Ministry and intelligence agencies.

The rebels “did not sign up to be part of extremist groups that have now gained influence”, he said. “Now they want to come back to a normal life.”

In the days before the government took the town of Qusayr last month, The Telegraph saw mediators on the Lebanese border work with the Syrian army to secure an amnesty for fighters wanting to surrender.

The phone rang with desperate calls from the parents of the militants. “These mothers know that this is the last chance for their sons. If they don’t give up their weapons now they will die because they are losing the battle,” said Ali Fayez Uwad, the mediator.

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