Clashes spread near Syria's border with Turkey

BEIRUT (AP) — Clashes between Syrian rebels and forces loyal to President Bashar Assad spread to a coastal area near the Turkish border on Tuesday as opposition fighters pressed on with a campaign to gain access to the sea, activists said.

Capturing the seaside tourist village of Samra, which straddles the Syria-Turkey border, would give rebels an outlet to the Mediterranean for the first time since the Syrian conflict began over three years ago.

It would also give them another boost following the rebels' capture of the area's predominantly Armenian Christian town of Kassab on Sunday and the nearby border crossing with the same name.

The seizure of the crossing severed one of the Assad government's last links to the Turkish border and came after Syrian troops captured several towns near the border with Lebanon — advances that were part of a government drive to sever rebel supply lines across the porous Lebanese frontier.

"It will be a sea route for the opposition, God willing," said an activist who uses the name Abu Salah al-Hafawi, who said he left Samra overnight. "It will be the end of the regime in this area."

Fighting was still raging through the area on Tuesday.

Syrian military aircraft flew four sorties and bombed Kassab, with the rising smoke from the bombs visible from the Turkish border crossing of Yayladagi, according to private Turkish news agency Dogan.

Since Monday, more than 80 wounded Syrians had been brought across the border into Turkey for treatment and nine of them died, the news agency said.

Meanwhile, pro-Assad forces seized control over the nearby Niser hills, the Syrian-state run news agency SANA said.

Rebels launched their offensive on Friday in Latakia province, the ancestral home of the Assad family and a stronghold of his minority Alawite sect, a Shiite offshoot that is one of the main pillars of support for his rule.

Rebels in Latakia are mostly from hard-line Sunni groups, including the al-Qaida-linked Nusra Front, and many see the Alawites as heretics.

In a video uploaded from social networking sites, a rebel leader identified as Abdullah al-Muheisini warned Alawites that his fighters would capture Alawite "land, homes and possessions, with the will of God." The video corresponded to the Associated Press reporting of the event.

But in an effort to show the rebels had no intention of hurting Christians, Al-Hafawi, the activist, posted a video from inside a church in Kassab to show that it was left untouched.

Last August, rebel brigades captured around a dozen villages in the Latakia mountains, before a government counteroffensive expelled them.

Afterward, Human Rights Watch said nearly 200 civilians, including children, the elderly and the handicapped, were killed. It said rebel abuses during the operation amounted to war crimes.

Syria's conflict has killed more than 140,000 people, displaced at least a quarter of its pre-war population of 23 million and triggered a humanitarian crisis across the region.

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Associated Press writer Suzan Fraser contributed to this report from Ankara, Turkey.