 Again that day, Reuters reported the rebels controlled at least 50% of the city of Deir ez-Zor and that those remaining regime troops were inexperienced and trapped inside security compounds in the city center and on the northern outskirts.A Western diplomat monitoring the Syrian military said that rebel forces in Deir ez-Zor were fragmented but that Syrian Army forces lacked the numbers and supply lines to defeat them.Most government departments have shut and public workers are unpaid in what activists call collective punishment of a tightly knit population siding increasingly with rebels after alliances between the Damascus elite and tribal chiefs unraveled.