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| Syrian rebels say fight for Aleppo has begun | ||
| 2012-07-23 | ||
BEIRUT: A new rebel alliance said Sunday it had launched an offensive to “liberate” Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, while government troops backed by helicopter gunships wrested back control of rebel-held neighborhoods in the capital Damascus.
“Right now, Assad’s inner circle has been dismantled and Assad has lost his balance,” Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem Al-Ahmad of the rebel Free Syrian Army said at a meeting in Turkey. “This war is now being waged in the heart of Syria in Damascus.” The battles in Damascus and Aleppo signal a new and bloody phase of Syria’s civil war, with combat in heavily populated cities. The escalating bloodshed and increasing chaos is threatening to spill across borders into a larger regional conflagration. It has put Syria’s neighbors, particularly Israel, on edge. With the conflict moving from the countryside and smaller cities into the two main urban centers, an activist group said the death toll had risen to more than 19,000 since the uprising began in March 2011. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said July is shaping up to be the deadliest month of the conflict so far, with 2,752 people killed in the first three weeks — already nearly as many as the previous month. Damascus and Aleppo, the country’s largest cities with populations of 2.5 million and 3 million respectively, are both home to elites who have benefited from close ties to Assad’s regime, as well as merchant classes and minority groups who worry their status will suffer if Assad falls. Col. Abdul-Jabbar Mohammed Aqidi, the commander of what appeared to be a new confederation of rebel groups called the Unity Brigade, said in the video posted on Youtube: “We gave the orders for the march into Aleppo with the aim of liberating it.” He called on government troops to defect and join the opposition, and said rebels will protect members of Assad’s Alawite minority sect, an off-shoot of Shiite Islam, saying “our war is not with you but with the Assad family.”
“Aleppo is witnessing serious street battles,” Saeed said, with fierce clashes on the road leading to the city’s international airport, known as Nairab, as rebels tried to surround the airfield to prevent the regime from sending reinforcements. Syrian state TV, however, played down the scale of the violence, saying government troops were hunting down “terrorists” and killing large numbers of them. The government refers to those trying to overthrow Assad’s regime as “terrorists.” In Damascus, the Observatory also reported attacks by government forces in the neighborhoods of Mazzeh and Barzeh that had once been held by rebels. It said that troops used helicopters gunships in the attack, causing heavy casualties. Maj. Gen. Nabil Zughaib, described as a missile expert, was also shot dead along with his wife and a son in the Damascus neighborhood of Bab Touma, according to the Observatory. Syrian state TV denied government forces were using helicopters in Damascus, and said the capital was calm and troops were just mopping up the remnants of the “terrorists” in cooperation with residents. Television also showed images of calm streets in Damascus and workmen cleaning up rubble in the once-rebel held Midan neighborhood, in effort to portray a capital where everything has returned to normal. | ||
| Posted by:Steve White |