Syrian government forces flushed opposition fighters from their last redoubts in the country’s north-west near the Turkish frontier yesterday, capturing two villages and restoring control over the border crossing.

The military’s advances reversed the gains rebels had made during their three-month campaign in Latakia province.

The counteroffensive’s success is the latest blow to the rebels, who have suffered a string of recent setbacks in Syria’s three-year-old civil war.

Islamist rebel factions launched a surprise assault in Latakia in March, pushing south from the Turkish border to seize a string of villages in the ancestral home of President Bashar al-Assad’s family and a stronghold of his Alawite sect.

But yesterday, after months of bloody clashes, army troops backed by fighters from the Lebanese Hezbollah group seized the seaside hamlet of Samra before also taking the village of Kassab and its adjacent border crossing.