"Forces comprising 10 mainly Islamist brigades, including two al Qaeda-linked groups, advanced south to the outskirts of the Alawite village of Aramo, 20 km (12 miles) from Qardaha, taking advantage of rugged terrain, the activists said.
On Sunday rebel fighters captured half a dozen villages on the northern tip of the Alawite Mountain, located east of the port city of Latakia. The area is the main recruiting ground for Assad's core praetorian guard units comprising the Republican Guards, Fourth Division and special forces.
Those pro-Assad fighters are mostly centered in Damascus where they are spearheading operations against mainly Sunni rebels battling against four decades of rule by Assad and his late father.
"Dozens of the regime's forces have been killed in the last two days. The objective is to liberate our people in Latakia, and that would entail passing through Qardaha," said Salim Omar, an activist from the Sham News Network opposition monitoring organization.
"This is a war from hilltop to hilltop. The region is rugged and tanks are not much use for the regime," Omar said from an undisclosed location on the coast.
He said the rebel units, which include the Nusra Front and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, two groups linked to al Qaeda, destroyed three tanks positioned at an army mountain position overlooking the town of Salma, a Sunni village on the edge of the Alawite Mountain.
"The rebels are attacking with the anti-tank missiles, which is giving them a devastating edge in this terrain. The shabbiha (pro-Assad militia) have taken a hit to their morale. They thought tanks could protect them," Omar said.
The Syrian Network for Human Rights opposition monitoring group said nine rebel fighters were killed in the mountain battles on Monday. The anti-Assad Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 12 rebels and 19 pro-Assad fighters – including soldiers and members of his militia known as the National Defence Army – were killed in Sunday's fighting.
Video footage taken by activists showed rebels firing Russian-made Konkurs anti-tank missiles from a rocky terrain, and praying next to a tank after taking the army position overlooking Salma. Other footage showed fighters from Ansar al-Sham brigade firing a Grad surface-to-surface missile at a mountaintop…"
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