I’m not a great fan of Peter Hitchens. After all, a writer who can complete an in-depth analysis of Detroit’s catastrophic decline and not mention the ‘r’ word is either grossly incompetent or deeply dishonest. In Hitchens’ case it’s definitely the latter. He’s been doing a lot of mea culpa stuff lately and here’s more of it. Let’s not forget his bad deeds but welcome his arrival in the world of reality.

The following is good.

It wasn’t because we liked immigrants, but because we didn’t like Britain. We saw immigrants – from anywhere – as allies against the staid, settled, conservative society that our country still was at the end of the Sixties. Also, we liked to feel oh, so superior to the bewildered people – usually in the poorest parts of Britain – who found their neighbourhoods suddenly transformed into supposedly ‘vibrant communities’. If they dared to express the mildest objections, we called them bigots.

Revolutionary students didn’t come from such ‘vibrant’ areas (we came, as far as I could tell, mostly from Surrey and the nicer parts of London). We might live in ‘vibrant’ places for a few (usually squalid) years, amid unmown lawns and overflowing dustbins. But we did so as irresponsible, childless transients – not as homeowners, or as parents of school-age children, or as old people hoping for a bit of serenity at the ends of their lives. When we graduated and began to earn serious money, we generally headed for expensive London enclaves and became extremely choosy about where our children went to school, a choice we happily denied the urban poor, the ones we sneered at as ‘racists’.What did we know, or care, of the great silent revolution which even then was beginning to transform the lives of the British poor?

h ttp://irishsavant.blogspot.com/2013/05/peter-hitchens.html

I’m not a great fan of Peter Hitchens. After all, a writer who can complete an in-depth analysis of Detroit’s catastrophic decline and not mention the ‘r’ word is either grossly incompetent or deeply dishonest. In Hitchens’ case it’s definitely the latter. He’s been doing a lot of mea culpa stuff lately and here’s more of it. Let’s not forget his bad deeds but welcome his arrival in the world of reality.

The following is good.

It wasn’t because we liked immigrants, but because we didn’t like Britain. We saw immigrants – from anywhere – as allies against the staid, settled, conservative society that our country still was at the end of the Sixties. Also, we liked to feel oh, so superior to the bewildered people – usually in the poorest parts of Britain – who found their neighbourhoods suddenly transformed into supposedly ‘vibrant communities’. If they dared to express the mildest objections, we called them bigots.

Revolutionary students didn’t come from such ‘vibrant’ areas (we came, as far as I could tell, mostly from Surrey and the nicer parts of London). We might live in ‘vibrant’ places for a few (usually squalid) years, amid unmown lawns and overflowing dustbins. But we did so as irresponsible, childless transients – not as homeowners, or as parents of school-age children, or as old people hoping for a bit of serenity at the ends of their lives. When we graduated and began to earn serious money, we generally headed for expensive London enclaves and became extremely choosy about where our children went to school, a choice we happily denied the urban poor, the ones we sneered at as ‘racists’.What did we know, or care, of the great silent revolution which even then was beginning to transform the lives of the British poor?

h ttp://irishsavant.blogspot.com/2013/05/peter-hitchens.html

N. Korea fires 3 short-range guided missiles into its eastern waters, South reports

By Chico Harlan, Published: May 18

TOKYO — North Korea on Saturday launched three short-range guided missiles off its eastern coast, South Korea’s National Defense Ministry said, a test of the tentative calm that has emerged on the peninsula after a period of heightened tensions last month.

Ministry officials said the North fired its missiles toward the northeast — away from the South — where they then dropped into the sea. Japan said the missiles did not fall into its waters.

The North commonly fires off short-range missiles — the previous such launch came two months ago — and analysts said this move was unlikely to rekindle tensions that have abated in recent weeks as Washington and Seoul ponder a new round of talks with Pyongyang.

The South’s Defense Ministry said in a statement released on its official Twitter account that it was “maintaining full readiness” in the event that the guided-missile firing “leads to other provocations or additional missile launches.”

The North launched two missiles in the morning and a third in the afternoon, the South said. The staggered launches could be part of a military training exercise or a simple test of the country’s technology. The North could also be sending a message to the United States, which one week before docked a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, the USS Nimitz, in the South Korean port city of Busan. The North on Monday called the Nimitz’s port call a “fresh tinderbox to escalate the tension.”

An unnamed South Korean official told the Yonhap news agency that the North probably used KN-02 missiles, known for their accuracy and relatively short range — roughly 75 miles, according to the Pentagon.

The North, which has been the target of several rounds of increasingly tough U.N. Security Council sanctions, is banned from testing ballistic missiles. But it routinely ignores the ban for the sake of improving its weapons technology and threatening its neighbors and the United States.

Most of the international attention focuses on North Korea’s long- and intermediate-range weapons, which could be used to strike the U.S. mainland or military bases in Japan and Guam. The North’s stated goal is to equip such missiles with miniaturized nuclear weapons, and U.S. officials are divided on whether Pyongyang already has such a capability.

Over the past seven years, North Korea has launched five long-range missiles or satellite-carrying rockets — most recently in December, when for the first time the authoritarian nation placed a satellite into orbit.

Analysts in Seoul said the North’s latest test-firing is a relatively restrained move, given its pledges weeks earlier to launch preemptive nuclear strikes on the United States and its allies. As tensions soared in early April, the North also placed at the ready on its eastern coast two midrange Musudan missiles, a yet-untested model with an estimated range of 2,000 miles. Those Musudans were later withdrawn.

The launch of the short-range missiles Saturday “is not a matter to which South Korea can turn a blind eye, as it’s a kind of provocation,” said Shin Beom-chul, a researcher at the Seoul-based Korea Institute for Defense Analyses. “The fact that these were not midrange missiles like the Musudan reflects North Korea’s intention to maintain the tension on the peninsula but not raise it to the highest level.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/n-korea-fires-3-short-range-guided-missiles-into-its-eastern-waters-south-reports/2013/05/18/94c8a858-bf9e-11e2-9b09-1638acc3942e_print.html

Obama met with the Turkish sultan Erdogan. There seems to be no agreement between them on how to continue their onslaught on Syria. The only point they agree on is a meaningless “Assad has to go” which would then be a starting point for “something”. Zionist lobby “experts” urge the U.S. to further intervene with a no fly zone to save Erdogan’s endangered political position and U.S. “credibility”. In the run up to World War I it was Germany’s “credibility” towards a misbehaving ally that had to be saved. That did not end well.

http://www.moonofalabama.org/2013/05/syria-news-roundup.html

Previously, when looking at the real underlying national interests responsible for the deteriorating situation in Syria, which eventually may and/or will devolve into all out war with hundreds of thousands killed, we made it very clear that it was always and only about the gas, or gas pipelines to be exact, and specifically those involving the tiny but uber-wealthy state of Qatar.

Needless to say, the official spin on events has no mention of this ulterior motive, and the popular, propaganda machine, especially from those powers supporting the Syrian “rebels” which include Israel, the US and the Arabian states tries to generate public and democratic support by portraying Assad as a brutal, chemical weapons-using dictator, in line with the tried and true script used once already in Iraq.

On the other hand, there is Russia (and to a lesser extent China: for China’s strategic interests in mid-east pipelines, read here), which has been portrayed as the main supporter of the “evil” Assad regime, and thus eager to preserve the status quo without a military intervention. Such attempts may be for naught especially with the earlier noted arrival of US marines in Israel, and the imminent arrival of the Russian Pacific fleet in Cyprus (which is a stone throw away from Syria) which may catalyze a military outcome sooner than we had expected.

However, one question that has so far remained unanswered, and a very sensitive one now that the US is on the verge of voting to arm the Syrian rebels, is who was arming said group of Al-Qaeda supported militants up until now. Now, finally, courtesy of the FT we have the (less than surprising) answer, which goes back to our original thesis, and proves that, as so often happens in the middle east, it is once again all about the natural resources.

From the FT:

The tiny gas-rich state of Qatar has spent as much as $ 3bn over the past two years supporting the rebellion in Syria, far exceeding any other government, but is now being nudged aside by Saudi Arabia as the prime source of arms to rebels.

The cost of Qatar’s intervention, its latest push to back an Arab revolt, amounts to a fraction of its international investment portfolio. But its financial support for the revolution that has turned into a vicious civil war dramatically overshadows western backing for the opposition.

In dozens of interviews with the FT conducted in recent weeks, rebel leaders both abroad and within Syria as well as regional and western officials detailed Qatar’s role in the Syrian conflict, a source of mounting controversy.

Just as Egypt and Libya had their CIA Western-funded mercenaries fighting the regime, so Qatar is paying for its own mercenary force.

The small state with a gargantuan appetite is the biggest donor to the political opposition, providing generous refugee packages to defectors (one estimate puts it at $ 50,000 a year for a defector and his family) and has provided vast amounts of humanitarian support.

In September, many rebels in Syria’s Aleppo province received a one off monthly salary of $ 150 courtesy of Qatar. Sources close to the Qatari government say total spending has reached as much as $ 3bn, while rebel and diplomatic sources put the figure at $ 1bn at most.

For Qatar, owner of the world’s third-largest gas reserves, its intervention in Syria is part of an aggressive quest for global recognition and is merely the latest chapter in its attempt to establish itself as a major player in the region, following its backing of Libya’s rebels who overthrew Muammer Gaddafi in 2011.

That, sadly, is not even close to half the story. Recall from Qatar: Oil Rich and Dangerous, posted nearly a year ago, which predicted all of this:

Why would Qatar want to become involved in Syria where they have little invested? A map reveals that the kingdom is a geographic prisoner in a small enclave on the Persian Gulf coast.

It relies upon the export of LNG, because it is restricted by Saudi Arabia from building pipelines to distant markets. In 2009, the proposal of a pipeline to Europe through Saudi Arabia and Turkey to the Nabucco pipeline was considered, but Saudi Arabia that is angered by its smaller and much louder brother has blocked any overland expansion.

Already the largest LNG producer, Qatar will not increase the production of LNG. The market is becoming glutted with eight new facilities in Australia coming online between 2014 and 2020.

A saturated North American gas market and a far more competitive Asian market leaves only Europe. The discovery in 2009 of a new gas field near Israel, Lebanon, Cyprus, and Syria opened new possibilities to bypass the Saudi Barrier and to secure a new source of income. Pipelines are in place already in Turkey to receive the gas. Only Al-Assad is in the way.

Qatar along with the Turks would like to remove Al-Assad and install the Syrian chapter of the Moslem Brotherhood. It is the best organized political movement in the chaotic society and can block Saudi Arabia’s efforts to install a more fanatical Wahhabi based regime. Once the Brotherhood is in power, the Emir’s broad connections with Brotherhood groups throughout the region should make it easy for him to find a friendly ear and an open hand in Damascus.

A control centre has been established in the Turkish city of Adana near the Syrian border to direct the rebels against Al-Assad. Saudi Deputy Foreign Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah al-Saud asked to have the Turks establish a joint Turkish, Saudi, Qatari operations center. “The Turks liked the idea of having the base in Adana so that they could supervise its operations” a source in the Gulf told Reuters.

The fighting is likely to continue for many more months, but Qatar is in for the long term. At the end, there will be contracts for the massive reconstruction and there will be the development of the gas fields. In any case, Al-Assad must go. There is nothing personal; it is strictly business to preserve the future tranquility and well-being of Qatar.

Some more on the strategic importance of this key feeder component to the Nabucco pipeline, and why Syria is so problematic to so many powers. From 2009:

Qatar has proposed a gas pipeline from the Gulf to Turkey in a sign the emirate is considering a further expansion of exports from the world’s biggest gasfield after it finishes an ambitious programme to more than double its capacity to produce liquefied natural gas (LNG).

“We are eager to have a gas pipeline from Qatar to Turkey,” Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, the ruler of Qatar, said last week, following talks with the Turkish president Abdullah Gul and the prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the western Turkish resort town of Bodrum. “We discussed this matter in the framework of co-operation in the field of energy. In this regard, a working group will be set up that will come up with concrete results in the shortest possible time,” he said, according to Turkey’s Anatolia news agency.

Other reports in the Turkish press said the two states were exploring the possibility of Qatar supplying gas to the strategic Nabucco pipeline project, which would transport Central Asian and Middle Eastern gas to Europe, bypassing Russia. A Qatar-to-Turkey pipeline might hook up with Nabucco at its proposed starting point in eastern Turkey. Last month, Mr Erdogan and the prime ministers of four European countries signed a transit agreement for Nabucco, clearing the way for a final investment decision next year on the EU-backed project to reduce European dependence on Russian gas.

“For this aim, I think a gas pipeline between Turkey and Qatar would solve the issue once and for all,” Mr Erdogan added, according to reports in several newspapers. The reports said two different routes for such a pipeline were possible. One would lead from Qatar through Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Iraq to Turkey. The other would go through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey. It was not clear whether the second option would be connected to the Pan-Arab pipeline, carrying Egyptian gas through Jordan to Syria. That pipeline, which is due to be extended to Turkey, has also been proposed as a source of gas for Nabucco.

Based on production from the massive North Field in the Gulf, Qatar has established a commanding position as the world’s leading LNG exporter. It is consolidating that through a construction programme aimed at increasing its annual LNG production capacity to 77 million tonnes by the end of next year, from 31 million tonnes last year. However, in 2005, the emirate placed a moratorium on plans for further development of the North Field in order to conduct a reservoir study. It recently extended the ban for two years to 2013.

Specifically, the issue at hand is the green part of the proposed pipeline: as explained above, it simply can’t happen as long as Russia is alligned with Assad.

So there you have it: Qatar doing everything it can to promote bloodshed, death and destruction by using not Syrian rebels, but mercenaries: professional citizens who are paid handsomely to fight and kill members of the elected regime (unpopular as it may be), for what? So that the unimaginably rich emirs of Qatar can get even richer. Although it is not as if Russia is blameless: all it wants is to preserve its own strategic leverage over Europe by being the biggest external provider of natgas to the continent through its own pipelines. Should Nabucco come into existence, Gazpromia would be very, very angry and make far less money!

As for the Syrian “rebels”, who else is helping them? Why the US and Israel of course. And with the Muslim Brotherhood “takeover” paradigm already tested out in Egypt, it is only a matter of time.

According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, which tracks arms transfers, Qatar has sent the most weapons deliveries to Syria, with more than 70 military cargo flights into neighbouring Turkey between April 2012 and March this year.

Perhaps it is Putin’s turn to tell John Kerry he prefer if Qatar was not “supplying assistance to Syrian mercenaries”?

What is worse, and what is already known is that implicitly the US – that ever-vigilant crusader against Al Qaeda – is effectively also supporting the terrorist organization:

The relegation of Qatar to second place in providing weapons follows increasing concern in the West and among other Arab states that weapons it supplies could fall into the hands of an al-Qaeda-linked group, Jabhat al-Nusrah.

Yet Qatar may have bitten off more than it can chew, even with the explicit military Israeli support, and implicit from the US. Because the closer Qatar gets to establishing its own puppet state in Syria, the closer Saudi Arabia is to getting marginalized:

But though its approach is driven more by pragmatism and opportunism, than ideology, Qatar has become entangled in the polarised politics of the region, setting off a wave of scathing criticism. “You can’t buy a revolution,” says an opposition businessman.

Qatar’s support for Islamist groups in the Arab world, which puts it at odds with its peers in the Gulf states, has fuelled rivalry with Saudi Arabia. Qatar’s ruling emir, Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, “wants to be the Arab world’s Islamist (Gamal) Abdelnasser,” said an Arab politician, referring to Egypt’s fiery late president and devoted pan-Arab leader.

Qatar’s intervention is coming under mounting scrutiny. Regional rivals contend it is using its financial firepower simply to buy future influence and that it has ended up splintering Syria’s opposition. Against this backdrop Saudi Arabia, which until now has been a more deliberate backer of Syria’s rebels, has stepped up its involvement.

Recent tensions over the opposition’s election of an interim prime minister who won the support of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood has also driven Saudi Arabia to tighten its relationship to the political opposition, a job it had largely left in the hands of Qatar.

What Saudi Arabia wants is not to leave the Syrian people alone, but to install its own puppet regime so it has full liberty to dictate LNG terms to Qatar, and subsequenttions that Qatar’s support for the rebels has splintered Syria’s opposition and weakened nascent institutions.

In an interview with the Financial Times, he said every move Qatar has made, has been in conjunction with the Friends of Syria group of Arab and western nations, not alone. “Our problem in Qatar is that we don’t have a hidden agenda so people start fixing you one,” he says.

Sadly, when it comes to the US (and of course Israel), it does have a very hidden agenda: one that involves lying to its people about what any future intervention is all about, and the fabrication of narrative about chemical weapons and a bloody regime hell bent on massacring every man, woman and child from the “brave resistance.” What they all fail to mention is that all such “rebels” are merely paid for mercenaries of the Qatari emir, whose sole interest is to accrue even more wealth even if it means the deaths of thousands of Syrians in the process.

A bigger read through of the events in Syria reveals an even more complicated web: one that has Qatar facing off against Syria, with both using Syria as a pawn in a great natural resource chess game, and with Israel and the US both on the side of the petrodollars, while Russia and to a lesser extent China, form the counterbalancing axis and refuse to permit a wholesale overthrow of the local government which would unlock even more geopolitical leverage for the gulf states.

Up until today, we would have thought that when push comes to shove, Russia would relent. However, with the arrival of a whole lot of submarines in Cyprus, the games just got very serious. After all the vital interests of Gazprom – perhaps the most important “company” in the world – are suddenly at stake.

Finally, one wonders just what President Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan were really talking about behind the scenes.

..

Syrian troops flush out rebels from prison
Associated PressBy ZEINA KARAM | Associated Press – 2 hrs 0 mins ago..

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This Tuesday, May 14, 2013 citizen journalism image provided by Aleppo Media Center AMC which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, shows the mother of a Syrian rebel cleaning a rifle, in Aleppo, Syria. Activists say Syrian rebels have detonated two car bombs outside the main prison in the northern city of Aleppo and are trying to storm the facility, where hundreds of regime opponents are believed to be held. (AP Photo/Aleppo Media Center AMC)
View Photo.
Associated Press/Aleppo Media Center AMC – This Tuesday, May 14, 2013 citizen journalism image provided by Aleppo Media Center AMC which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, …more
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BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian government troops on Thursday flushed out rebels who had stormed a prison compound in the northern city of Aleppo in a bid to free hundreds of political prisoners inside.

The forced retreat was the latest setback for fighters seeking to topple President Bashar Assad, whose forces have been gaining ground in the country’s civil war.

In Washington, President Barack Obama and the Turkish prime minister projected a united front on Syria, despite sharp differences about how much the U.S. should intervene.

“There’s no magic formula for dealing with an extraordinarily violent and difficult situation like Syria,” Obama said at a joint news conference with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in which he pledged that the U.S. and Turkey would ramp up pressure to oust Assad from power.

Forces loyal to Assad have recently made advances in strategically important locations across the country, including in areas around the capital, Damascus, and in the country’s south, near the border with Jordan.

The troops have been bolstered by the world’s reluctance to take forceful action to intervene in the fighting, as well as the continued support from key allies, including Russia, Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

Assad has also benefited from the rapid rise of al-Qaida-linked extremists among the rebels, which has raised alarm in the West. Militant groups, including Jabhat al-Nusra, which is designated a terrorist group by the United States, have emerged as one of the most potent fighting forces in the uprising against Assad.

A video emerged Thursday showing a Nusra Front commander killing 11 regime soldiers execution-style for alleged crimes they committed against the Syrian people.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, whose group distributed the video, confirmed the killings took place late last year in eastern Deir el-Zour province and identified the Nusra commander as a Saudi known by the name Qusoura al-Jazrawi. He said the man was killed in March in battles with local gunmen in the tribal area.

The video shows the soldiers, blindfolded and kneeling in a row, as the masked commander shoots each one in the back of the head with what appears to be a pistol as other fighters shout “Allahu Akbar,” or “”God is great.”

“The Shariah court of Jabhat al-Nusra … has sentenced to death these apostate soldiers that committed massacres against our brothers and families in Syria,” the executioner says before firing at the men.

The video appeared authentic and consistent with AP reporting on the incident.

Thaer al-Deiri, an activist working with the Sham News Network in Deir el-Zour, said the execution-style killings occurred five months ago in a remote area in the western part of the province. It was not clear why the video only appeared Thursday, but al-Deiri said the Nusra Front apparently had released it.

Videos of executions and torture have become increasingly common in Syria’s conflict, in which more than 70,000 people have been killed. Thursday’s video follows a number of others purporting to show execution-style killings by rebels that have emerged in recent days in a war that largely plays out online due to the restrictions placed on journalists in Syria.

International rights groups have accused the rebels of routinely capturing and sometimes killing soldiers and suspected regime informers

Rebel abuses have increased in frequency and scale in recent months, according to a report by Amnesty International in March, which said the most common abuses on the rebel side are summary executions of those rebels suspected of being government soldiers.

The abuses by the Assad regime remain far more deadly, systematic and widespread, particularly attacks on civilians with imprecise battlefield weapons, including widely banned cluster bombs, rights group say.

On Thursday, the Obama administration added Jabhat al-Nusra leader Muhammad al-Jawlani to the U.S. terrorist backlist, along with four Syrian government ministers. Assets they have in the U.S. are blocked and Americans are prohibited from doing business with them.

Meanwhile, activists said the rebels were forced to retreat from the prison in Aleppo a day after they broke into the sprawling facility by setting off two simultaneous car bombs before dawn. By nightfall, the rebels had not dislodged regime forces or freed some 4,000 prisoners held inside.

The Observatory said Syrian warplanes bombarded areas around the prison causing casualties among rebels. State news agency SANA denied opposition fighters entered the prison compound, saying regime troops had repelled the attack.

But activists said fighting near the prison continued with rebels firing locally-made rockets at regime forces inside the facility late Thursday.

Also Thursday, four people were killed and 25 others wounded by mortar shells that struck residential areas in the town of Jaramana near Damascus, the state-run news agency said.

In Washington, Erdogan was looking for stepped-up action on Syria as he met with Obama just days after a twin car bombing killed 51 people on the Turkish side of the two countries’ common border. Turkey blamed Syrian intelligence for the attacks.

The bombings Sunday in the border town of Reyhanli were the biggest incident of cross-border violence since the start of Syria’s bloody civil war, raising fears of Turkey being pulled deeper into a conflict that threatens to destabilize the region.

But the Obama administration remains reluctant to take the kind of action Turkey would like to see, including establishing a no-fly zone in Syria.

The only way to resolve the crisis is for Assad to hand over power to a transitional government, Obama said.

“We both agree that Assad needs to go,” the U.S. president said.

Associated Press writer Desmond Butler in Washington contributed to this report.

source: ht tp://news.yahoo.com/syrian-troops-flush-rebels-prison-222354801.html

Syria opposition says rebels vying to retake key cities and supply routes east, south of Damascus

In an image taken from video posted on YouTube by a Syrian opposition group on May 14, 2013, rebels clash with government troops near a checkpoint in the al-Matahen suburb of Damascus.

In an image taken from video posted on YouTube by a Syrian opposition group on May 14, 2013, rebels clash with government troops near a checkpoint in the al-Matahen suburb of Damascus. / YouTube

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BEIRUT Activists say Syrian rebels and Islamic fighters have joined forces in a push to reopen an arms supply route and retake a key town near Damascus that fell back to President Bashar Assad’s troops last month.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says Islamic units, including the al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra, and Syrian opposition fighters are battling around the town of Otaybah, east of the capital.

The army regained control of Otaybah in late April, cutting an arms route for rebels trying to topple Assad’s regime.

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The Observatory said Wednesday that at least 23 rebel groups and Islamic fighter units that operated individually have joined the push to take back Otaybah and reverse government gains there.

Little evidence of the renewed fighting around Otaybah was available on the usual opposition Youtube channels Wednesday, so it was impossible to independently confirm the extent of the fighting.

Opposition forces have lost significant ground to Assad’s troops in recent weeks — being forced also from a key town in the southern Daraa province which sits on the primary highway between the Jordanian border and Damascus, Assad’s seat of power.

Regime forces retook Khirbet Ghazaleh on Sunday and rebels withdrew from the area, said Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory. Troops reopened the highway, restoring the supply line between Damascus and the contested provincial capital of Daraa, he said.

/ CBS

Free Syrian Army rebels have said they’re preparing a counteroffensive to reclaim Khirbet Ghazaleh. A local opposition source in the area told CBS News’ Khaled Wassef on Wednesday, however, that fighters in the area are short on weapons and ammunition — the flow of which has decreased significantly from Jordan this year — and he wasn’t optimistic about their chances.

Damascus, still overwhelmingly under regime control, is the ultimate prize in a largely deadlocked civil war.

More than 70,000 people have been killed since the revolt began in March 2011, according to a conservative estimate by the United Nations.

Also on Wednesday, the Syrian Observatory said Syrian rebels had detonated two car bombs outside the main prison in the northern city of Aleppo and were trying to storm the facility, where hundreds of regime opponents are believed to be held.

The Observatory said the car bombs exploded simultaneously outside the walls of the central prison Wednesday morning.

Abdul-Rahman said the blasts were part of a coordinated rebel assault on the prison, and clashes were ongoing between Assad’s troops and opposition fighters around the detention center.

Abdul-Rahman says Aleppo’s central prison is believed to be holding about 4,000 prisoners, around 250 are jailed for reasons related to the 26-month-old uprising against Assad’s regime.

There were no immediate reports of casualties.

© 2013 CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.