Syrian troops move on rebel-held town The Syrian military has launched an offensive to retake a strategic rebel-held town near the Lebanese border, a government official says. Activists said that regime airstrikes and shelling of the town had killed at least 16 people, including opposition fighters. The western Syrian town of Qusayr, home to about 20,000 residents, has been besieged for weeks by government troops. According to opposition activists, members of the Lebanese militant Hezbollah group were fighting alongside President Bashar al-Assad's forces in the area. The opposition Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 16 people, including rebel fighters, were killed before noon in Qusayr but that the death toll was expected to rise as fierce fighting is underway and the military's operation intensifies. Speaking over the telephone, a government official in Qusayr said government forces had encircled the town, beefing up three offensive positions around it while leaving one "safe passage for fleeing civilians and the armed terrorists who want to surrender." "The offensive to liberate Qusayr has begun," the official said. He would not elaborate further, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to the media. Officials in Damascus were not immediately reachable for comment on the offensive. A military source on Sunday said Syrian troops entered the centre of Qusayr, seizing the town's main square and its municipality building. "The Syrian army controls Qusayr's main square in the centre of the city, and the surrounding buildings, including the municipality building," the source said. Assad's government and loyalists deny there is a civil war in the country but blame the conflict on "terrorists" - a term they use for rebel fighters - backed by a foreign conspiracy. Qusayr, close to the border with Lebanon and 164 kilometres northwest of the Syrian capital, is strategically important because it also links Damascus with Syria's western coast, where regime loyalists are concentrated. This includes Alawites, followers of a Shi'ite offshoot to which the Assad family belongs.