DPA/Beirut

The Syrian government and its allies are preparing for a ground offensive on rebel-held territory targeted in recent Russian air strikes, a source close to a coalition led by the Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah said yesterday.
Thousands of fighters from Hezbollah and the Iranian Revolutionary Guards as well as the Syrian army and allied militias have been mobilised for the assault on the rebel-held pocket north of the central city of Homs, said the source who declined to be quoted by name.
Any ground offensive in the area is likely to further anger Western and Arab backers of the Syrian rebels, who have already denounced what they said were Russian air strikes against non-Islamic State targets in the area.
Russia has said its air campaign, which began on Wednesday, is targeting IS positions and is being carried out at the invitation of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
But the extremist group, which controls much of eastern Syria and parts of the north, is not thought to be present in the north Homs pocket.
The area, one of the earliest opposition strongholds in Syria’s four-year civil war, is controlled by a range of rebel groups, including Al Qaeda affiliate Al Nusra Front.
A military adviser to the opposition Free Syrian Army, a loose coalition of moderate rebel groups, said on Friday that Hezbollah and Iranian forces were massing in the area in preparation for a ground assault.  “The Russian strikes are focusing ... in the northern Homs region in a prelude for the ground attack, which is due to take place when the zero hour is announced,” the source close to Hezbollah’s coalition said.
Analyst Emile Hokayem of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies said last week that the Russian campaign was primarily targeting “mainstream rebels” who threatened the Assad regime.
Forces loyal to the Syrian government, Russia’s closest ally in the region, have been worn down by the conflict and this year lost significant territory in Idlib province, north and north-west of Homs, to the resurgent rebels.
Also yesterday, a pro-opposition monitoring group said planes believed to be Russian hit IS depots in the group’s north-eastern stronghold, Raqa.
Warplanes believed to be Russian also struck the town of Al Bab in northern Aleppo province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Activists based close to the area said the strike killed at least 10 people and wounded several others.
Syrian television, quoting a military source, said Russian planes hit several targets outside Homs and “terrorist” positions in Idlib.