Syria Troops Seize Strategic Qara Village

Syrian troops on Tuesday captured the village of Qara in the mountainous Qalamoun region along a key supply route between Damascus and Homs, a military source told Agence France Presse.

The reported capture came after days of air strikes on the region near the Lebanese border, which is also a key smuggling route for rebels battling to oust Syrian President Bashar Assad.

"After three days of fighting, the Syrian army has taken full control of Qara," some 100 kilometers (60 miles) north of the capital, the Syrian military source said, adding that a "large number of terrorists" had been killed, referring to the rebels.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group that relies on activists and other individuals inside Syria, said Al-Nusra Front, a jihadist rebel group, has announced its withdrawal from Qara and "promised to be back soon."

The fighting in Qara sent at least 1,700 families streaming across the border into Lebanon, which is already hosting more than 800,000 Syrian refugees and has suffered from rising unrest linked to the Syrian conflict next door.

The U.N. refugee agency UNHCR estimates at least 6,000 people have fled to the town of Arsal, near the border, since last Friday.

On Tuesday a double suicide bombing targeted the Iranian embassy in Beirut and was claimed by Sunni Muslim jihadists.

Iran is a key ally of Damascus, and Hizbullah has sent fighters to battle alongside Assad's troops, including in Qalamoun.

The Syrian civil war has claimed an estimated 120,000 lives and generated the biggest refugee crisis in two decades, raising fears that the conflict could spill over into volatile neighboring states like Lebanon and Iraq.

The uprising against Assad began in March 2011 as peaceful pro-democracy protests but escalated into a full-blown insurgency after a brutal government crackdown.

The fighting has taken on an increasingly sectarian character, with fighters from Lebanon and Iraq fighting alongside regime troops and al-Qaida-inspired jihadists flooding into the country to join the Sunni-led rebels.