Syrian and Hizballah fighters capture key mountain in Latakia

Syrian regime troops have captured a strategic mountain in north Latakia in a bid to secure the home province of President Bashar al-Assad.

Soldiers and militia fighters loyal to Damascus managed to wrest control of Noba Mountain early on Wednesday and raised the regime's red-white-black banner on the peak.

Syrian state TV said a joint force of army troops and Hizballah fighters fought their way up the mountain and "destroyed the terrorists' positions and fortifications".

Tehran said that elite Syrian Republican Guard units were involved in the fighting with Free Syrian Army and al-Nusra Front fighters.

The force included a number of Syrian and foreign militia groups including a force from the Syrian Social Nationalist Party, a pro-Damascus pan-Syrian party.

Noba Mountain has seen heavy fighting between Turkish-backed rebels and regime troops and is located half-way between rebel-held Jebel Turkman and Jebel al-Akrad.

Russian war planes have backed the regime's ground offensives with intense bombing of rebel positions in Latakia's north - including the use of cluster bombs.

"The Russian bombers, in several combat sorties, targeted the gathering centers of the militant groups, in the rural area in Jabal al-Akrad and Jabal al-Turkmen regions, which claimed the lives of many militant and wounded some more," sources told Iran's pro-regime FARS news.

The source said that Syrian artillery fired at surrounding rebel groups from their new strategic location on Noba Mountain.

"The militant groups have been pinned down in their positions as a result of coordinated attacks of Russian air fleet and the Syrian artillery and can not regroup or find better shelters.

Regime soldiers appear to be taking advantage of Russian air support to inch closer to then rebel's main strongholds in the northern mountains.

Capturing this area would reduce the threat to the regime's coastal stronghold, which is home to most of Syria's Alawite population, and has witnessed rebel shelling.

Assad's family and many leaders of the regime's security services are Alawite.

Noba Mountain opens the way for government forces to push on to the rebel-stronghold of Salma, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.