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Qalamoun Offensive: Hezbollah In Heavy Fighting With Syrian Rebels In The Battle For Qalamoun. Heavy fighting broke out in Qalamoun, Syria as the Syrian army and the Shiite Lebanese Hezbollah launched a new offensive against Syrian rebels in the area. This is not the first offensive of this kind in Qalamoun after the first SAA/Hezbollah offensive was launched on mid-November 2013 with the aim to cut rebel supply lines to Damascus from Lebanon. By late April 2014, the last major rebel stronghold in the region fell to the Syrian Army, as it secured all of the towns in the region. However, 3,000 rebels retreated into the mountains to conduct guerrilla hit-and-run attacks. From June through August 2014 a second offensive by Syrian government loyalists was then held out against this remaining rebels wich wasnt sucsesfull as more and more new rebel brigades where formed in the area. Now on May the third offensive was launched by Hezbollah and the Syrian army. According to Hezbollah about 40 rebel bases and four operation rooms where captured and most of Qalamoun's strategic hills and peaks such as Qornit Nahle, Qornit Abdul Haq, Jabal al-Barouh and Tallit Moussa. have been seized. All in all the operation seems to have been a sucsess but fighting seems still be ongoing.