Regime forces bombarded a string of towns 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...
province on Saturday, as at least 19 people were killed in violence across Syria, monitors said.
"Regime forces are attempting to regain control over this (Aleppo) region, where they suffered heavy casualties over the past months to rebels," the the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that the bombardment killed a civilian and maimed dozens in the town of Qabtan al-Jabal.
"A large number of families have been displaced from the area for fear of shelling and lack of water, electricity and medical services," the watchdog added of the attacks in the Northern Province.
Two rebels and five soldiers were killed near the town of Andan in festivities and an attack on an army vehicle.
Districts of the central city of Homs, under army bombardment for more than a month, were also being shelled on Saturday.
The Syrian General Revolutionary Authority said the shelling intensified through the night in the Old Homs neighborhood and Hamidiyeh, where "many people were buried under the rubble" of a collapsed building.
Elsewhere in central Syria, three people were killed in a Hama village in indiscriminate shooting by regime forces, the Britannia-based Observatory reported.
In Damascus
...Capital of the last remaining Baathist regime in the world...
, regime forces clashed with rebels and stormed the neighborhood of Barzeh, attempting to break a strike, while a taxi driver was rubbed out in the same area.
The Local Coordination Committees, made up of anti-regime activists on the ground, reported general strikes in areas in and around the capital to honour those killed in the anti-regime uprising.
It said that "strikes in the souks of Medhat Pasha, Hareeqa and Hamidiyeh" were put down by regime troops who "broke the locks of the shops to force the owners to end the strike."
Outside the capital, the Observatory reported one person killed in Tadamun by regime forces, who renewed shelling on the Damascus suburbs of Sayyida Zeinab and Harasta.
One person was killed in the eastern city of Deir al-Zour by gunfire, while two more non-combatants were killed in the southern province of Daraa and in northwest Idlib province by regime forces.
The Observatory said 93 people, mostly civilians, were killed across Syria on Friday as protesters erupted into the streets in several provinces after being urged to call for a "People's liberation war."