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Syria Rebels Take over Aleppo Kurdish Area, Seize Army Post
 Syrian rebel forces took over a strategically important Kurdish neighborhood in Aleppo...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins... and seized a military post in the country's northeast on Thursday, residents and a watchdog said. As observers waited to see if  Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor... 's regime will accept the proposal for a ceasefire during the Moslem feast of Eid al-Adha, residents in Aleppo's northern Ashrafiyeh district told AFP about 200 rebels had moved in to the area for the first time. "I saw gunnies enter my street with Dushka (heavy machineguns) mounted on their vehicles, where it was written 'Liwa al-Tawhid,'" a 28-year-old resident told AFP, referring to the Free Syrian Army's (FSA) main unit in the embattled city. "Snipers have set up in the buildings and 50 gunnies, dressed in black and wearing headbands with Islamic slogans, entered a school near me. I heard them tell the residents: 'We are here to spend Eid with you'," he said. "I am waiting for things to calm down before leaving," he said. Eid al-Adha begins on Friday and U.N.-Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi has said the regime in Damascus ...Home to a staggering array of terrorist organizations... is ready to follow his call for a ceasefire during the four-day holiday. The regime has said it will confirm Thursday whether it accepts the truce, while the main rebel forces say they will cease fire only if regime troops do so first. Northern Aleppo's neighboring Kurdish districts of Ashrafiyeh and Sheikh Maqsud have been controlled by local militia and the move marked the first time either rebel or government forces had moved into the area. Ashrafiyeh is strategically important as it sits on city heights and is a route between the central and northern parts of the country's commercial capital, which has been the theater of intense fighting between rebels and government troops since mid-July. In the northeastern province of Raqa, rebels also took control of a military post in a dawn raid, killing three soldiers and seizing arms including a tank, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. The post had been besieged for several days. The Britannia-based watchdog also said Syrian forces had bombed the Damascus suburb of Harasta and that fighting was taking place in the capital's southern areas of Tadamun and Qadam. On Wednesday, fighting in the country killed 199 people, including at least 89 civilians, the Observatory said. Posted by: Fred 2012-10-26 |
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