Rebels Defend Syria's Famous Crusader Fort to the Death
Under cover of darkness, five Syrian rebels make their way by motorbike to the Crac des Chevaliers crusader fortress, where fighters are holding out against President Bashar Assad's forces.
The road to the nearly 1,000-year-old castle is pockmarked with craters, and frequent blasts rip through the air as regime forces pound the area with tank and artillery fire.
It is the first time a journalist has reached this part of the central province of Homs since the revolt erupted in mid-March last year.
To get there three army checkpoints and several nearby Alawite villages, whose residents support Assad's regime, had to be circumvented.
"We only have light weapons, but we're doing our best to protect the citadel," says Khodr, a 22-year-old student, cradling his Kalashnikov assault rifle. "This heritage is the property of all Syrians."
Another fighter in civilian clothing high on the citadel wall picks up the tail fin of a used mortar round. "The regime doesn't care about protecting this historical area," he says.
Perched atop a steep hill, the fort was built in the year 1031 during the Abbasid period. Tancred, regent of Antioch, took it over in 1110, setting up a Frankish garrison there in the First Crusade.
In 1142, the fort was handed to the Knights Hospitaller, who raised several defensive structures, and it later came to be known as the Crac des Chevaliers, or "fortress of the Knights."
The legendary Saladin, who led the Muslim opposition to the Crusaders, defeated his rivals several times but was unable to win the fort back. It was only in 1271 that the Mamluks seized the citadel from the crusaders.
A year ago, Sunni Muslim residents of the area around the castle rose up against the regime, which has been in power in Syria for almost 50 years. They seized Qalaat al-Hosn, Arabic for "the impregnable fort."
To prevent infiltrators from entering, Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels have stationed up to 10 snipers or "ghosts" -- as they call the marksmen -- inside the castle. Their comrades bring them everything they need to keep the vigil going.
The fortress does not appear to have suffered any major damage, as the fighting is concentrated below in the foothills.
5:30 am (0230 GMT): using morning fog as cover, forces loyal to the regime stage an incursion. An army sniper shoots dead Ahmed, a member of the rebel Free Syrian Army, with two bullets to the head. His body lies by the roadside.
A 13-year-old child fighter in jeans and a black T-shirt, Kalashnikov in hand, approaches the body of his dead friend and cries: "Ahmed, Ahmed... O God." He bursts into tears before leaving the scene to continue the fight.
Under heavy fire, the body of the father of three is carried away by five fellow fighters, among them his brother. A pick-up truck arrives, and amid machinegun fire Ahmed's corpse is driven away.
Minutes later, Ahmed's brother Ayham is himself shot in the head and dies too. The dawn battle has claimed the lives of six rebels who sought to defend "their" castle.
In Azzara, a Sunni Turkmen village, a procession of mourners takes the two bodies to the cemetery as crowds chant: "The people want the fall of the regime."
The fighters' black-clad wives and sisters caress the men's bloodied faces for one last time before they are buried.
"We will continue to fight to the last man," says Nader Asaad, local head of the FSA's elite Farouk Battalion. "Bashar tries every day to terrorize the people so that they turn against us. But the regime has now played its last card."
Residents of the area are fighting tooth and nail, because if the strategic region falls to regime control they will find themselves at the mercy of the military.
"If we lose our castle we will suffer the fate of Baba Amr," says military engineer and defector Mohammed al-Masri, 34, of the once rebel-held district retaken by the army in March, after a month-long campaign of relentless shelling.
The loss of six men in the dawn clashes makes rebel leaders all the more conscious of the fact that they need to hone their tactics. The battle over, the rebel fighters engage in intensive training exercises.
Source: Agence France Presse
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