DAMASCUS – Syria’s army is preparing to assault a key rebel bastion near Damascus, a pro-regime newspaper said Thursday, Feb. 27, as activists reported heavy shelling and fighting the area.

“The Syrian army is preparing to launch a new phase” on the town of Yabroud near the border with Lebanon in its offensive in the Qalamoun mountains, Al-Watan reported.

It said government troops have seized control of two strategic hills near Yabroud, which has been the target of heavy air raids and tank fire since early February.

A handout picture released by the official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) allegedly shows the corpses of dozens of rebel fighters whom state media and a monitoring group said were killed on February 26, 2014 in an army ambush at the entrance to an opposition stronghold in the Eastern Ghouta area, east of the Syrian capital.

“Every day there is progress” by the army, said the newspaper, adding that rebels had been using the two hills as supply routes.

Regime forces backed by Hizbullah fighters launched an offensive in the Qalamoun area in November.

They have expelled rebels from several strategic towns, but Yabroud – the largest in the region – has so far remained an opposition stronghold.

Thursday’s developments come a day after the heaviest death toll in nearly three years among fighters on both sides of the conflict, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

It reported fighting between rebels and Hizbullah fighters on the outskirts of Yabroud on Thursday.

“Last night the shelling was very fierce,” Amer, an activist in the Qalamoun area, told AFP via Skype.

Amer said he was confident rebels could defend the town against a ground offensive, but that most residents have fled.

Yabroud was once home to some 50,000 people. Last week, the UNHCR said some 13,000 had crossed from Qalamoun into Lebanon’s border town of Ersal.

Elsewhere in Syria, five people were killed and 13 wounded in a mortar attack “by terrorists” on the regime-held Akrameh district of Homs city, state television said, using the regime’s term for rebels.

Akrameh borders a handful of rebel-held districts in the heart of Homs that have been under choking army siege for more than a year and a half.

The Observatory said Wednesday saw the highest death toll among armed rebels, which relies on activists and doctors on the ground for its information, said 326 fighters were killed nationwide on Wednesday.