Russian ships transferring Hezbollah fighters to Syria: Idris

General Salim Idris, the head of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) accused Russia of using its ships in the Mediterranean to transfer Hezbollah fighters from Beirut , Lebanon directly to the mostly Alawite province of Tartus in western Syria.

In an interview with the Turkish Anadolu News Agency he also accused Russia and Iran of supplying the Syrian army with 400 tons of ammunition every ten days.

General Idris said that he had completely lost hope in the arrival of Western military aid for the Syrian revolution.

“We cannot understand the attitude of the West. They first promised to lift the ban on arms sales to Syria, and then they gave up,” Idris said referring to the recent statements by the United States, the EU and France concerning supplying arms to the Syrian opposition.

While acknowledging that the regime had made some gains in some fronts, Idris stressed that the situation in Syria is still in favor of the rebels.

Idriss stressed that gains by the Syrian regime were due to foreign help , a possible reference to Hezbollah’s direct involvement in the Syrian civil war

The well informed Kuwaiti Newspaper Al Seyasseh reported yesterday that the Hezbollah militant group has opened training camps in the barren mountains of the ancient city of Baalbek to receive hundreds of young Shiite volunteers from Iraq, Yemen, Syria and Lebanon for training them to fight alongside the Syrian regime forces against the mostly Sunni rebels.

The Kuwaiti newspaper’s sources quoted Western intelligence as saying that “these camps currently contain about a thousand trainees who are being provided intensive training courses by Hezbollah experts, Iranian Revolutionary Guards officers and officers of the Syrian army .

The daily added that this is all part of a program aimed at training 20 thousand fighters over the next few months who will be transferred to the fronts in Syria.

While Hezbollah and the Iranians are focusing on training the volunteers on using Iranian made weapons the Syrian army officers are focusing on explaining the geographic areas where the fighters will be sent in addition to some of the tactics of the Syrian military , according to the report

The EU foreign ministers agreed on Monday to list the military wing of Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation. Hezbollah’s involvement in the war across the border in Syria, in support of President Bashar al-Assad reportedly hardened European opinion with regards to the Shiite militant group.