BEIRUT – Syrian rebels are waging a strategic battle for the southern part of the country and seeking to secure a corridor from the Jordanian border to Damascus in preparation for an eventual assault on the capital.

A recent influx of weapons appears to have made the goal seem more within reach than ever.

Additional Photos

Image taken from video shows Syrian Free Army fighters in Dael, less than 10 miles from the Jordanian border. The Associated Press

On Friday, the rebels seized full control of Dael, a key town along a main highway, after forces of President Bashar Assad’s regime all but withdrew from the area.

“God is great! We are coming, Bashar!” armed fighters cried overnight Thursday after they captured the last of the military checkpoints in the town where Assad’s forces had been holed up, according to amateur video posted online.

Dael is one of the biggest towns in the southern Daraa province, where the uprising against Assad began in March 2011 when security forces arrested high school students who scrawled anti-regime graffiti on a wall.

Activists say it was in Dael that the first statue of Assad’s father and predecessor, the late President Hafez Assad, was first toppled shortly after the protests broke out.

The regime responded with a ferocious military crackdown in the area.

For a long time, it succeeded in muting the revolt there while government troops turned their attention to defending Syria’s northern and eastern regions against rebel advances as the uprising turned into a civil war in which an estimated 70,000 people have been killed.

But in dusty agricultural towns and villages across the province, the rebels have recently gone on the offensive, expanding their presence with a renewed sense of purpose. The rebel fighters include Islamic militants.

The strategic region — known as the Houran plains, which stretch from the outskirts of the capital south into Jordan — is seen as a crucial gateway to the ultimate prize of Damascus.

Although rebels control wide areas in northern Syria that border Turkey, the Jordanian frontier is only about 60 miles from Damascus, or a third of the distance to Turkey in the north, where fighters control large swaths of territory.

Rebels have established footholds in a number of Damascus suburbs but have only been able to push into limited areas in the southern and northeastern parts of the capital. Fighters say they are trying to carve out a route from Jordan to Damascus.

In recent weeks, they have made significant advances in the southern provinces of Daraa and Quneitra bordering Jordan and Israel, seizing towns and villages near the cease-fire line between Syria and Israel in the Golan Heights and along the international highway linking Damascus with Jordan.

They also seized several army checkpoints, clearing a 15-mile stretch along the Syrian-Jordanian border. Last week, rebels seized a major air defense base near the village of Saida.

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