“It’s a battle that we lost,” the Local Coordination Committees, an opposition activist network, said in a statement. Rebels had put up a fight in the face of “missile launchers, mortar shells, airstrikes and shelling, hundreds of martyrs and thousands of injured, a strangling siege and a lack of all of the life basic needs,” it added.

The momentum on the battlefield has swung in the favor of the Syrian government in recent months as it is buoyed by advanced battlefield technology supplied by Iran and Russia and paramilitary forces including Hezbollah.

Once an opposition bastion and home to 30,000 people, streets now lie deserted, with buildings reduced to rubble, activists say. For the government, retaking Qusair gives it a crucial territorial link between the capital Damascus and port cities of Tartous and Latakia, its heartland of support.