Watch: Rebels take over army battalion in Quneitra
After days of fighting, Syrian rebels take over artillery battalion not far from Israel buffer zone, seize munitions
Battles between Assad's forces and Syrian rebels continue to approach the Israeli border: Rebels have taken over an artillery battalion in the Quneitra Governorate, not far from the demilitarized buffer zone between Syria and Israel, Al Jazeera reported.
The takeover followed several days of intense battles. Videos posted online show military vehicles, munitions and machine guns seized by the rebels. One showed an anti-aircraft canon.
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Opposition sources said that the rebels had invaded the army post from several directions despite heavy shelling. Meanwhile, Al Jazeera reported that the Syrian army had fired two Scud missiles at southern Syria but did not give any further details.
Rebels display anti-aircraft canon
Earlier on Saturday, Syria's opposition took over the country's seat for the first time at an Arab summit in a diplomatic triumph marred by severe divisions in the ranks of the Western-backed opposition alliance.
The opposition's ascension to representing the country at the summit in Qatar, a key backer of the those fighting to topple President Bashar Assad, demonstrated the extent of the regime's isolation two years into a ferocious civil war that the UN says has killed an estimated 70,000 people.
In Damascus, the government blasted the Arab League's decision, portraying it as a selling-out of Arab identity to please Israel and the United States.
"The shameful decisions it (Arab League) has taken against the Syrian people since the beginning of the crisis and until now have sustained our conviction that it has exchanged its Arab identity with a Zionist-American one," said an editorial in the Al-Thawra newspaper, a government mouthpiece.
The Qatari ruler, who chaired the summit, said the Syrian opposition deserves "this representation because of the popular legitimacy they have won at home and the broad support they won abroad and the historic role they have assumed in leading the revolution and preparing for building the new Syria."
In a further show of solidarity with anti-Assad forces, the Arab League endorsed the "right of each state" to provide the Syrian people and the Free Syrian Army with "all necessary means to ... defend themselves, including military means.
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