Forty Syrian soldiers and pro-regime militiamen were killed in fighting with rebels who captured an army camp near the town of Nayrab in the northwestern province of Idlib on Wednesday, a watchdog reported.

Rebels took control of the army camp, which was “one of the most important bastions of the regime in the Idlib region,” and several army checkpoints in the area, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

“The fighting has killed 14 from the rebel side and not less than 40 among the soldiers of the regular army and members of the Popular Committees [pro-regime militia],” said the Observatory which relies on a network of medics and activists on the ground.

The army used the camp to “bombard many localities in the region of Idlib, leaving hundreds dead and thousands wounded,” it said, adding that the facility also served as a detention center where “dozens of detainees have died under torture”.

AFP - 05/22/2013 

#Syria Nov 27/12  Raw footage of a drive by attack on a checkpoint by the FSA - unknown location, and date unverified.

Nov 24/12 Irkada checkpoint south of Aleppo on the Aleppo-Damascus highway is reported liberated by the FSA. The stretch from Maraa to Zorba is reportedly controlled by the FSA.

The significance of this is that Aleppo is slowly being cut off, and the regime will find it harder to support its troops in the north.

#Syria Nov 17/12 Heavy fighting at the Alimon Roundabout/checkpoint, Aleppo

5 Nov 2012 #Syria : Aleppo - Allirmon checkpoint liberalization and the withdrawal of Assad troops 

5 Nov 2012 #Syria: Aleppo, Independence flag flies on army HQ Allirmon checkpoint after liberation.

31 oct 2012 Start of attack by #FSA on the regime checkpoint Khasi - ICARDA through Aleppo Damascus International, which hampers the entry and exit toward Aleppo of displaced families.

24/10/12

#Syria, checkpoint taken incl. trucks and tanks!

10/11/12 By Herve Bar

MAARET AL-NUMAN, Syria — Blown-up buildings, deserted streets and corpses of regime soldiers bear testimony to a fierce 48-hour battle before the town of Maaret al-Numan fell to Syrian rebels.

The capture of Maaret al-Numan on Wednesday was a major breathrough for the rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, especially after they cut off the highway linking Damascus with the northern city of Aleppo.

Rebels say the fight to capture Maaret al-Numan began on Monday afternoon when the local military council attacked eight army checkpoints in the eastern part of this strategic town, which in normal times has a population of around 125,000.

Within 48 hours the rebels captured the checkpoints located at crossroads of the town, including a former prison and cultural centre, said Firaz Abdel Hadi, a rebel media official.

Sixteen rebels were killed by a landmine when they entered the cultural centre after it had been abandoned by members of the regime’s military intelligence when it came under attack.

In the basement lay the bodies of around 65 prisoners who the rebels say were executed by their captors minutes before fleeing.

Most of the victims are suspected to have been supporters of the anti-regime uprising or soldiers suspected of trying to defect, said a survivor who was miraculously saved after two bodies fell on him.

The walls of the building are riddled with bullets and stained with blood — witness to the massacre as soldiers fled. Thirty soldiers managed to escape wearing civilian clothes as the rebels advanced.

“Two RPGs were enough to send 50 soldiers fleeing,” boasted Abdel Hadi, laughing.

By Wednesday all loyalist positions in the town finally fell to rebels as Assad’s troops took refuge in two military camps on the outskirts of Maaret al-Numan, at Wadi Daif and Hamdiyeh.

For the regime, the imperative was not to control the whole town, since its western sector had already been in rebel hands for the past two months, but to defend the highway from Aleppo to Damascus.

Syria’s army uses the highway to send reinforcements to the commercial capital in northern Syria.

On Thursday, rebels had control of nearly five kilometres (three miles) of the four-lane highway.

Fighting continued further east around Wadi Daif and Hamdiyeh which rebels had surrounded, blocking columns of regime tanks sent as reinforcements from Damascus to Idlib and Aleppo provinces.

Syrian troops tried during the night to retake Maaret al-Numan but failed, rebel commander Akram Sale told AFP, adding that four rebels were killed overnight.

On Tuesday, a bomb dropped by a MiG fell just metres away from the famous museum Alma Arra, damaging part of its mosaic collections and pottery, some dating back to 3,000 BC.

The museum which was previously occupied by regime troops is renowned for its mosaic collections, said to be the largest in the Middle East.

The rebels said that almost 300 people were killed in the three days of fighting in Maaret al-Numan, including 55 civilians, 46 rebel fighters and 190 Syrian army soldiers.

11.9.12 #Syria - FSA Occupies Army Check Point

04/09/12

#Syria #Idlib #Ariha the remains of the #Assad army at checkpoint

#Syria, Al Zawiya Celebrates Capture

of Assad Checkpoint by Free Syria

Army, Idlib

16/08/2012 CNN inside #Syria: Nobody imagined it would turn into this

Editor’s note: CNN’s Ben Wedeman and crew are some of the few international reporters in Syria, whose government has been restricting access of foreign journalists and refusing many of them entry. Wedeman, who used to live in Aleppo, has spent time over the past two weeks in the city of more than 2 million people where rebels and government forces are fighting. Below is an edited account of what Wedeman saw in Aleppo. Read more from CNN inside Syria.

What we saw during our trips in Aleppo were not images of the city I knew: The shelling, the snipers, the destruction. I never imagined this city would be standing in the middle of warfare. Nobody imagined it would turn into this.

Some parts of Aleppo are complete battle zones. Shells and rubble litter the streets. Cars are blown to pieces.

This beautiful city is where we raised my daughter for her first years from 1990 to 1993. When I was at work my wife went everywhere shopping with my daughter and going to markets.

As we drove quite close to the neighborhood where I used to live, one in government control, I took a quick look and noticed it looked mostly the same. I quickly refocused, concerned for our safety. A government checkpoint was coming up on the right.

Photos: Showdown in Syria

The shelling here is constant and random and government forces seemingly go from neighborhood to neighborhood each day. On our first night in Aleppo, I didn’t sleep more than 15 minutes because of the constant bombardment. 

It’s almost like it’s a different city that I lived in 20 years ago. Physically it’s the same, but the physical resemblance is it. Otherwise, it is unrecognizable. Many of the main features of Aleppo, including the Old Citadel, still stand strong, even if they’ve been hit or crumbled a bit.

While some parts of town are in ruins, in others, people are still just trying to live and survive.

More: Struggling for survival

In Al-Sha’ar we saw open air markets where people were selling vegetables. You wouldn’t know by being there that there’s a war going on. Then about 500 meters off the street an air force jet begins bombing and strafing.

Some people stopped and stared, others went into doorways and took cover, but for the most part traffic went on and people were buying and selling vegetables.

Aleppo is still a city of many million people and despite everything a lot of them are just trying to feed their families. That’s why they are out selling food, in the midst of bombings, to try to make ends meet. But with food prices quadrupling and barely anyone working, there’s no money to be found here. So even though there is food, many can’t afford it.

More from inside Syria: Snipers, stairwells and graveyards

The shelling and bombardment has become a background track that many residents have grown used to. Growing up in Lebanon during the civil war was the same. As a gunbattle raged on, three blocks away you’d never know it. Eventually, the noise blends in.

But as we drive through the city, the smell is what sticks out. An acrid smell of burning garbage follows you wherever you go. There’s no garbage collection and residents are left to burn it themselves or in some neighborhoods gather it for a collective burn. The streets remain uncleaned, with sidewalks and streets sandy and gritty.

Driving through these streets, the transformation of Aleppo from a beautiful city to a war zone is jarring. Jets strafing and bombing Aleppo was something I never thought I’d see. But for those who are living here, this is the reality. They will try to find money and food however they can, all the while dodging shelling and trying to keep their families safe.

Whether they support the rebel efforts or are just trying to remain unbiased, one thing is clear: This is no longer the Aleppo that they or I had come to know and love. The question now is what will it look like when this all ends?

More from Ben Wedeman inside Syria:

- Life and death in Aleppo: He wasn’t a fighter or a revolutionary. But 45-year-old Hassan, a shopkeeper, died from a sniper’s bullet.

- Snipers, stairwells and graveyards: Two days inside Aleppo

- How to sneak into a war zone: To get in and out of Aleppo, it helps to have a Plan B. And maybe a Plan C and D.

REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

An empty street is pictured in Salah al- Din neighborhood following clashes between the Free Syrian Army fighters and Syrian Army soldiers in central Aleppo, August 8, 2012.

08/08/2012

A Russian general met reporters at the Defence Ministry in Moscow on Wednesday to deny reports that he had been killed by rebel forces in Syria and was shown on television looking well.

“I want to confirm that I am alive and well. I am in good health and I’m living in Moscow,” Vladimir Petrovich Kuzheyev, a reserve general, was quoted as saying by Itar-Tass news agency.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

Russian television briefly showed footage of Kuzheyev, in a blue shirt and no tie, at the Defence Ministry.

A Syrian rebel group said it had killed a Russian general working as an adviser to Syria’s defence ministry in an operation in the western Ghouta region on the outskirts of the capital Damascus.

The video, sent to Reuters, showed what the rebels said was a copy of the general’s ID, as issued by the Syrian military, and named him as Vladimir Petrovich Kochyev.

The difference between that spelling and the name of the general who appeared in Moscow may be due to the way the Cyrillic letters were transcribed.

Kuzheyev did not make clear whether he had been in Syria. But Interfax news agency quoted a security source as saying he had been there advising the Syrian Defence Ministry before being transferred to the reserves in 2010. It said he now lived in Moscow.

Russian news agencies quoted the Russian Defence Ministry as saying the report of his death was a “bald-faced lie.”

Russia is one of the few countries that has backed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad diplomatically ever since the popular uprising against his rule began 17 months ago. It is believed to have several hundred military personnel in Syria.

The general’s statement that rumours of his death have been exaggerated came as Syrian troops loyal to Assad thrust into a battered rebel stronghold in the northern city of Aleppo on Wednesday, forcing defenders to fall back in fierce fighting.

The intensity of the conflict in Syria’s biggest city and elsewhere suggests that Assad remains determined to cling to power, with support from Iran and Russia, despite setbacks such as this week’s defection of his newly installed prime minister.

“We have retreated, get out of here,” a lone rebel fighter yelled at Reuters journalists as they arrived in Aleppo’s Salaheddine district. Nearby checkpoints that had been manned by rebel fighters for the last week had disappeared.

Syrian state television said government forces had pushed into Salaheddine, killing most of the rebels there, and had entered other parts of the city in a fresh offensive.

It said dozens of “terrorists” were killed in the central district of Bab al-Hadeed, close to Aleppo’s ancient citadel, and Bab al-Nayrab in the southeast.

The military offensive appeared to be the most significant ground attack in Aleppo since rebels seized an arc of the city stretching from the southeast to the northwest three weeks ago.

Joma Abu Ahmed, an activist with the rebel Free Syrian Army, told Reuters that insurgents had fallen back to the nearby neighbourhood of Saif al-Dawla, which was now under fire from army tanks inside Salaheddine and from combat jets.

Some rebels denied retreating and an opposition watchdog, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said fighting in the area was the most violent since insurgents first moved in.

REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

Men search for bodies under rubble of a house, destroyed by a Syrian Air force air strike, in a village of Tel Rafat, about 37 km north of Aleppo, August 8, 2012.

ALEPPO POUNDED

“Fierce clashes are continuing inside Salaheddine district between rebel brigade fighters and the regime forces, which have stormed the district,” the British-based Observatory said.

Abu Firas, a member of the Free Syrian Army, said rebels had left only one building in Salaheddine. “We did not withdraw, our guys are still there and the situation is in our favour.”

The rebel Tawheed Brigade said its fighters had repelled Assad’s forces trying to storm the shattered neighbourhood.

“Yesterday they were able to destroy five tanks and a MiG plane near Aleppo International Airport,” the brigade’s field commander Abdulkader Saleh said in an emailed statement.

As Assad’s forces battle for Aleppo, there has been no let-up in fighting elsewhere in Syria. More than 240 people were killed across the country on Tuesday, 40 of them in the central city of Homs, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Aleppo, at the heart of Syria’s failing economy, has taken a fearful pounding since the 17-month-old uprising finally took hold in a city that had stayed mostly aloof from the revolt.

Satellite images released by Amnesty International, obtained from July 23 to Aug 1, showed more than 600 craters, probably from artillery shelling, dotting Aleppo and its environs.

“Amnesty is concerned that the deployment of heavy weaponry in residential areas in and around Aleppo will lead to further human rights abuses and grave breaches of international law,” the human rights group said, adding that both sides might be held criminally accountable for failing to protect civilians.

The military’s assaults in Aleppo follow its successful drive to retake neighbourhoods seized by rebels in Damascus after a July 18 bomb attack that killed four of Assad’s closest aides, including his feared brother-in-law Assef Shawkat.

AP Photo/Shaam News Network, SNN

In this citizen journalism image provided by Shaam News Network SNN, taken on Tuesday, Aug. 7, 2012, Syrians attend the funeral procession of a man killed in Idlib province, Syria. Arabic on the flag, left, reads, “no God but Allah,” and on the banner, background right, “Marytr Ahmed Aasaf the hero,” on the banner background second right, reads, “Martyrdom is our way.”

STRUGGLE FOR SURVIVAL

On Monday Assad suffered the embarrassment of seeing his prime minister, Riyad Hijab, defect after only two months in office. Hijab apparently fled to Jordan with his family.

Yet such defections and outside diplomatic pressure seem unlikely to deflect Assad from what has become a bitter struggle for survival between mostly Sunni Muslim rebels and a ruling system dominated by the president’s minority Alawite sect, which is an esoteric offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

Assad has firm support from old ally Iran, which sees Syria, along with Lebanon’s Shi’ite Hezbollah movement, as a pillar of an “axis of resistance” against the United States and Israel.

Syrian rebels, who have accused Iran of sending fighters to help Assad’s forces, seized 48 Iranians in Syria on Aug. 4, saying they were members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said some of the captives were retired soldiers or Revolutionary Guards who were on pilgrimage to a Shi’ite shrine in Damascus, but he denied any of them were on active service.

A Syrian rebel spokesman said on Monday that three of the kidnapped Iranians had been killed in a government air strike and the rest would be executed if the attacks did not stop.

Damascus and Tehran have accused Sunni Muslim Gulf Arab states and Turkey, all allies of Western powers, of stoking violence in Syria by supporting the overwhelmingly Sunni rebels.

The violence in Syria has forced tens of thousands of people to flee into neighbouring countries, and about 2,400 refugees, including two generals, arrived in Turkey overnight.

Turkey’s state-run Anatolian news agency said most of them were women and children from areas near Aleppo and the northwestern city of Idlib, but also included 37 defecting military personnel. Nine were receiving hospital treatment.

Before the latest influx, Turkey said it was sheltering 47,500 Syrians fleeing a conflict which opposition sources say has cost at least 18,000 people since it began in March 2011.

REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

Men search for bodies under rubble of a house, destroyed by a Syrian Air force air strike, in a village of Tel Rafat, about 37 km north of Aleppo, August 8, 2012.

With files from Hadeel al Shalchi, Reuters