The Syrian rebels led by Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (Syria) suicide bombers seized Minakh airbase in the province of Aleppo. This win allows the rebels to deploy more forces against besieged Hezbollah fighters in 2 Shiite towns in Aleppo. The rebel forces led by ISIS continue their surprise offensive into the Alawite heartland and are pushing towards the home city of the Assad clan.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Rebel fighters on Monday swept into a sprawling government air base in northern Syria where isolated government troops had fought off their attacks for nearly a year, and by early Tuesday controlled almost all the base, seizing several tanks and other munitions and taking soldiers prisoner, rebel and opposition groups said.

The victory, said by the groups to have been led by two foreign men in an armored vehicle who carried out a suicide attack to breach the defenses of the Minakh air base, was bound to boost the morale of an insurgency that has faltered in recent months with rebels fighting among themselves and losing long-held ground to the army.

Such gains have sometimes been reversed within days, as the government strikes back from the air. But if it holds, the rebels’ seizure of the Minakh base in Aleppo Province will challenge the government’s assertion that it is rolling to victory and demonstrate the complexity of the Syrian battlefield, which neither side has been able to control and where momentum shifts from place to place and week to week.

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In Latakia, the rebel offensive, involving more than 1,500 fighters led by the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, accelerated what had been a gradual rebel push into a province whose government-held central city has been a relatively secure haven for displaced Syrians from war-torn areas.

Government forces withdrew Monday from a number of villages in the coastal mountains, said Ammar Hassan, an opposition activist in close touch with rebels.

He said rebels had seized four mountaintop military posts that had been shelling villages below, and were trying to advance farther toward the coast and toward Qardaha, the ancestral mountain village of President Bashar al-Assad’s family.

Assad’s victory in Homs is being offset by rebel victories in the North and now their push into the Alawite heartland. The scum of the Earth continue their turf war in Syria and humanity is a winner!