Hezbollah has suffered its heaviest losses yet in a critical battle in Syria

Ali Hashisho/Reuters

BEIRUT – A Hezbollah official has discussed the recent battles southwest of Aleppo, where the party in recent days reportedly suffered its worst losses since entering the conflict.

“The takfiri groups have been trying every day since three months ago to win the battle in Aleppo with US, Saudi and Turkish support and planning, but they failed to achieve their goals,” Sheikh Nabil Qaouk said Monday at a funeral for a Hezbollah fighter.

He also boasted that Hezbollah managed to “inflict a historic loss” against insurgents active in the flashpoint front, even though rebels seized the villages of Khalsah and Zitan southwest of Aleppo over the weekend amid fierce battles that left a number of Hezbollah fighters dead.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights tracking developments in the war-torn country reported that Hezbollah suffered 25 casualties in the fighting; the latest clashes in the region where the Army of Conquest led by the Al-Nusra Front has pushed back the regime’s front-lines since early May.

“It's the highest toll for Hezbollah fighters in a single battle,” the NGO’s chief told AFP.

For its part, the pro-Hezbollah website SouthLebanon.org, which publicizes funerals of the militia's fighters killed in Syria, has publicized an unusually high number of death notices in recent days.

However, Qaouk did not directly bring up the startling casualty count, and instead said that “the heroes of the resistance” killed 167 rebels, referring to a report circulated in pro-Hezbollah media purporting to cite a death toll provided by the Army of Conquest.

Rebels denied that they suffered such heavy losses in the heavy Aleppo fighting.

Qaouk also said that his party has not yet dispatched its full fighting force to back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

“The participation of Hezbollah in the Syrian battlefield is still a small fraction of its overall forces,” the deputy chief of the party’s executive council claimed.

“If the need arises to increase the scope our engagement there, we will not hesitate do so with full courage and will.”

Hezbollah’s chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah is expected to speak on developments in Syria during a Friday night address.

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