Assad troops die in attack on key rebel town

At least 23 soldiers have been killed as they carried out a major assault on a hotbed of the Syrian uprising, activists claimed today.

Three troop carriers were reported destroyed as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad attacked the town of Rastan. The toll would be one of the deadliest suffered by the regime in the 14-month uprising.

Government troops have begun a fresh assault to retake the area from the Free Syrian Army, despite a UN-backed ceasefire supposed to come into effect just over a month ago.

At least nine people were reported killed and 40 injured as the city came under heavy bombardment. “Shells and rockets have been hitting the town since 3am at a rate of one a minute.

Rastan has been destroyed,” a member of the Free Syrian Army told Reuters by satellite phone. He said rebels were fighting elite units and members of military intelligence.

The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported dozens of casualties. An amateur video showed a girl with apparent shrapnel wounds screaming in a makeshift hospital Asked where her mother was, the girl cried: “She died.”

Rastan, about 110 miles north of Damascus, provides many Sunni conscripts for Syria’s military, which is dominated by officers from Mr Assad’s Alawite sect. But local Sunni troops began defecting when security forces shot dead protesters after the revolt began.

The government has regained control of the city several times but it keeps slipping back into rebel hands.

Meanwhile violence spread to Lebanon, with two men reported killed and at least 20 wounded in clashes between Alawites and Sunnis in the port city of Tripoli.

Rival militias fired machineguns and rocket propelled grenades after a Sunni cleric who reportedly helped Syrian refugees was arrested.