The Suleiman al-Halabi neighborhood of Aleppo, Syria, is now under full army control, according to state media. Heavy damage can be seen on Tuesday, October 30. Click through these photos from October; also see September photos from the conflict.

Nov 1/12

(CNN) — An array of explosives, from shells to barrel bombs, fell on Syrian cities in another day of bloodshed Thursday, according to activists fighting to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

The Local Coordination Committees accused the government of using “vacuum bombs.”

Also known as thermobaric explosives, they are effective at spreading destruction through urban areas, according to military experts. The LCC also repeated claims that the government used cluster bombs.

Damascus has not commented on the accusations. CNN cannot independently confirm the claims because the Syrian government has limited access to international journalists.

At least 37 people died Thursday, according to the LCC, 18 of them in Hama. The early reports follow a week of grim tolls, including 121 reported dead Wednesday and 163 on Tuesday.

More than 32,000 people have died in the 19-month-old Syrian conflict, according to the Center for Documentation of Violations in Syria, an opposition group that tracks fatalities.

International diplomacy appeared to remain stagnant Thursday as Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov repeated Moscow’s complaint that Syria’s oppositional factions offer no centralized leadership to negotiate with.

“There is no person who could speak on behalf of the Syrian opposition, and there will be no progress without negotiation,” Lavrov said, according to the state-run Itar-Tass news agency.

The U.N. and Arab League envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, attempted a cease-fire this week, but it never took hold.

Opposition groups reported the sound of shells and explosive barrels thundering across Damascus on Thursday. In the suburbs, gunfire mixed with shelling as the opposition Free Syrian Army battled government forces, according to the LCC.

The group also reported explosions and shelling in Daraa, Deir Ezzor and Idlib, where it said cluster bombs were used. Helicopters dropped more than eight barrel bombs on villages in Lattakia, the LCC said.

Reports by a second opposition group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, corroborated shelling in and around Damascus and in Idlib. The group said more than 30 members of regime forces had been killed in clashes with rebel fighters.

The LCC said 11 people from the Kazo neighborhood of Hama had been kidnapped and executed by Shabiha — gangs loyal to the regime.

Syria’s state-run news agency, SANA, said a number of “terrorists,” including non-Syrian citizens, had been killed in clashes with government forces in the Damascus suburbs. Others were killed in clashes with government forces in Deir Ezzor, the news agency said.

The Syrian government has consistently referred to anti-government forces as terrorists.

20/10/12

(CNN) — At least 80 people were killed Saturday in Syria’s 19-month civil war, a network of opposition activists said.

Of those killed, 39 people lived in Damascus and its suburbs, according to the Local Coordination Committees for Syria.

On Friday, a United Nations-Arab League envoy working for a cease-fire arrived in Damascus.

The envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, will meet with President Bashar al-Assad during a trip expected to last several days, said Brahimi’s spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi.

Brahimi wants to forge a cease-fire by Eid al-Adha, the Muslim holiday that arrives Thursday.

The United Nations and the League of Arab States, in a joint statement, called for support of Brahimi’s cease-fire plan.

“This step needs to be sustained. It could create the space to allow a peaceful political process that realizes the legitimate aspirations of the Syrian people for democracy, equality and justice,” the statement said.

More than 30,000 people have been killed in the conflict as scores have died daily in fighting.

At least 245 people, including 20 children, were found dead across Syria on Friday, the opposition Local Coordination Committees said. More than 80 of those killed were discovered in a mass grave “after they were field executed” in Deir Ezzor, the LCC said.

Ous al-Arbi, an activist in Deir Ezzor who visited the site, said women and children were among the dead. Some had been slaughtered and burned, while others had their hands and other body parts cut off by axes, he said.

The bodies were located near a street that is used to get out of the city, al-Arbi said. They were taken to an open space for identification.

27/09/12

Syrian soldiers stand at the site of bombings near the headquarters of the armed forces general staff in Damascus on Wednesday, September 26. The government said a fight was under way to “cleanse” rebels from the targeted building — the office of the joint chiefs of staff — but military officials are fine.

(CNN) — The death toll in Syria hit 343 Wednesday, the highest daily toll since unrest broke out in March 2011, an opposition group said.

“The regime is escalating the violence at every possible opportunity and it is proof that it is determined to crush the revolution by any means necessary,” said Rafif Jouejati, a spokeswoman for the Local Coordination Committees of Syria.

“The staggering numbers are horrific but the world also needs to know that there is increasing sexual torture and more children being tortured.”

Jouejati accused the Syrian regime of being willing to commit genocide. “There is (a) systematic increase in the violence and the world powers — so far — have shown that they are not willing to do much beyond the same condemnations we have been hearing for the last 19 months.”

The highest death count on Wednesday occurred in Damascus and its suburbs, where LCC cited 162 deaths, including 107 in a reported massacre in Thiabieh.

The second-deadliest day occurred August 25 of this year, when 330 people were killed, according to the opposition group.

Wednesday’s violence came as Syrian rebels attacked a key government military facility in the capital city of Damascus, the second such strike in two days.

Four guards were killed and 14 people were wounded, including civilians and soldiers, state television reported.

‘The government said a fight was under way to expel “terrorists” from the building — the office of the joint chiefs of staff — but that the country’s military officials were not affected.

Activists, however, said their forces had inflicted dozens of casualties in the attack.

Syrian state television reported that the attackers used two suicide car bombs in their assault on the military facility. The Free Syrian Army, a prominent armed group battling government forces, said it was responsible for the strike.

Damage to Syria’s army headquarters was extensive, charring its interior, reported Bill Neely, a correspondent for UK broadcaster ITN . A crater outside the facility marked the spot where a car bomb had detonated.

Closed-circuit television images showed a white van driving near the headquarters before exploding.

The location of the battle, in the heart of the capital, means that government forces are defending what had been among of its most secure facilities.

Since the unrest started in March of last year, more than 30,000 people have been killed, the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The figure includes 21,534 civilians, 7,322 Syrian army forces and 1,168 defectors who joined the rebels, the group said. Previous estimated death totals from the United Nations and opposition groups ranged from 18,000 to 21,000. CNN cannot independently confirm the figures.

In other reports about the attack on the military facility, Iran’s state-run Press TV said one of its correspondents was shot and killed and another was wounded.

Maya Naser, 33, was killed by a rebel sniper; the station’s Damascus bureau chief, Hossein Morteza, was wounded, Press TV said.

The journalists were covering fighting that followed a pair of blasts in the capital, the station said.

“We hold Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, who provide weapons and militants to kill civilians, military personnel and journalists, responsible for killing Maya,” said Hamid Reza Emadi, Press TV’s newsroom director.

At least 21 other journalists have been killed covering the Syrian civil war since November, making the nation the most dangerous place in the world for journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The brazen assaults on military facilities in the capital city show the resilience of a rebel force that has shown no signs of slowing.

The government blamed the attacks on the military sites on “terrorists,” a term it consistently uses to describe anti-regime fighters. It vowed to continue its “unyielding fight” to confront terrorism.
The Syrian crisis broke out in March 2011 after unarmed protesters, inspired by the success of popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, took to the streets demanding political reform and an end to four decades of rule by the family of President Bashar al-Assad.

The movement devolved into an armed conflict after a brutal and continuing crackdown by al-Assad’s forces.

CNN’s Amir Ahmed, Faith Karimi and Nick Paton Walsh in Lebanon contributed to this report.

23/09/12

(CNN) — The chaos in Syria has once again spilled across borders, with mortars striking villages in southern Turkey.

Clashes between the Syrian regime and rebels have raged for days near the Tal Abyad border gate, which rebels seized last week to the glee of Turkish supporters.

But ongoing battles in the city of Tal Abyad have resulted in mortars hitting villages in the Turkish town of Akcakale, the town’s mayor said, according to Turkey’s Anadolu Agency. It was unclear whether there were any casualties.

“We wish the war will end soon in our neighbor Syria,” Akcakale Mayor Abdulhakim Ayhan told Anadolu.

But inside Syria, the civil war raged on Sunday with no end in sight. Here are other developments in Syria’s 18-month bloody crisis:

On the ground: Signs and fears of new violence nationwide

Large military reinforcements, including 30 armored vehicles, headed to the hotly contested northern city of Tal Abyad, opposition activists said Sunday.

Rebels have been trying to take control of border crossings to secure a haven near Turkey, a country sympathetic to the Syrian opposition movement. But fighting in the border area show no sign of letting up.

Meanwhile, barrels of TNT fell in the western province of Latakia, the Local Coordination Committees of Syria said.

Dissidents have reported an increased use of “barrel bombs” by the Syrian regime in recent weeks. Barrel bombs, often dropped by regime aircraft, are filled with TNT, nails and fuel to try to maximize damage, opposition activists say.

Across the country, at least 25 people were killed on Sunday, the LCC said, including nine in Daraa province and six in Aleppo province

The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency, meanwhile, said the army killed a “large number of terrorists” in Aleppo — the country’s largest city and a key battleground between regime and rebel fighters.

Armed forces “cleared” the area of a restaurant that “terrorists” had been using the as a center of operation, SANA said.

Throughout the Syrian conflict, the government has blamed “armed terrorist groups” for fueling violence in the country.

22/09/12

Phil Sands

Damascus // Three leading politicians opposed to the regime of Bashar Al Assad have been abducted by Syria’s feared air-force security agents at a checkpoint on the Damascus airport road.
Abdul Aziz Al Kheir, Iyas Ayash and Maher Tahan, all members of the moderate National Coordination Committee (NCC), have not been heard from since Thursday, when they flew back from meetings with the Chinese government in Beijing.
“The car they were in was stopped by the air-force intelligence checkpoint, which detained them and escorted them to one of its branches,” the NCC said yesterday.
There has been no formal confirmation of the detention by Syrian authorities, a silence that is standard practice. The dozen or more powerful security organisations rarely contact the families of detainees, or announce who has been arrested.
Dr Al Kheir, a medical doctor with a reputation for astute political thinking, is a longstanding critic of the Assad family’s authoritarian rule, and was jailed for 13 years by the former president Hafez Al Assad.
With the regime now facing the greatest challenge to its rule, and demanding absolute loyalty, Dr Al Kheir’s dissent arguably takes on a renewed significance. He is not only an Alawite, but comes from the same village as the Assad family: Qardaha, a tightly knit community integral to the regime.
Syria’s Alawite minority has largely – although far from entirely – sided with the authorities since the start of the uprising last March. Disintegration of that backing would pose a major threat to its hold on power.
Dr Al Kheir and his colleagues have made repeated efforts to persuade China and Russia to end their support for Mr Al Assad and, instead, put real pressure on him to end a deadly military crackdown and effectively stand aside.
Any hint that those efforts were showing signs of success might prove enough to see them detained.
But Damascus is a complex, conspiratorial place and some say the arrests were, in fact, a ploy by the authorities to boost the NCC’s flagging credibility.
A widely held theory is that the NCC is a regime-backed puppet – tame opposition designed to deceive the world into believing Damascus does tolerate reasonable political dialogue.
The NCC has refused to support the armed revolt, calling instead for peaceful demonstrations, and is resolute in opposing any form of foreign military intervention or support for the rebels.
As the uprising has grown, the NCC appears to have haemorrhaged support. A number of its younger, more active members have recently left or are planning to leave, amid criticism that the old-fashioned socialists and Arab nationalists of the NCC – many of them elderly men – are at best out of touch, and have done nothing to help those suffering on the ground or further the cause of unifying the opposition. 
“All opposition groups know the NCC is orchestrated by the Assad security bodies,” said a leading activist in Damascus.
“The regime wants to say this group is genuine by arresting three of its leaders. But they were returning from China on an official visit, they had visas and they openly left and returned from Damascus airport,” something only possible with a green light from the authorities.
While other opposition groups such as the Local Coordination Committees have been forced underground, their members arrested or killed, those in the NCC have had their names taken off international travel blacklists and have been able to work in the open.
There remain unanswered questions surrounding the disappearance of the men. If air-force security had simply wanted to detain them, it could have done so as they passed through immigration, without even allowing them to leave the airport.
Also, through unofficial back channels, commonly used by opposition groups to find out where detained activists are being held, there has been no indication they are under formal detention.
Experienced political dissidents depend on personal contacts inside the security apparatus – or bribes – to obtain information on “disappeared” colleagues. This time, however, those channels turned nothing up, activists say. Instead, Syrian officials were saying yesterday that the men had been kidnapped by an armed gang.
While that may be unlikely, it cannot yet be ruled out. As violence has spread in Damascus and law and order continues to break down, armed groups, associated either with the regime or rebels, have proliferated. Increasingly there are reports of their being involved in criminal acts including kidnapping for ransom and motorway robbery.
The airport road has been closed by fighting on more than one occasion, and daylight abductions are far from rare. In July, Italian workers were kidnapped en route to the airport, and Syrian state media said at the time they had been abducted by “terrorists” and freed during military operations.
The prisoners said later they did not know who had abducted them.

19/09/12

Editor’s note: Read a version of this story in Arabic

(CNN) — Violence raged in Syria on Wednesday, and a key Iranian diplomat huddled with the country’s besieged president to discuss the conflict — now a year and a half old. One opposition group, the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, said the number of documented deaths exceeds 26,000 since March 2011.

Rebels celebrate taking Turkish border crossing post

Syrian rebels seized a crossing at the Turkish border Wednesday, tearing down the Syrian flag and ripping posters of President Bashar al-Assad, Turkish media reported.

Rebels fired into the air in celebration after taking control of a customs building at the Tal Abyad border gate, the Anadolu Agency reported. “Their kinsmen in Turkey joined them in their celebration from across the Turkish side of the border,” Anadolu said.

Rebel fighters have been trying to take control of border crossings to secure a haven near Turkey, a country sympathetic to the Syrian opposition movement.

Opposition: Capital, suburbs engulfed in fighting

At least 103 people were killed in fresh violence Wednesday, including 67 in Damascus and its suburbs, opposition activists said.

Among the dead, 20 people were executed in the capital’s Jobar neighborhood,the LCC said.

Warplanes shelled civilians gathered at a bakery in Deir Ezzor province, the LCC said, killing three people and wounding more than 15.

Regime reports strides in Aleppo, other cities

Government forces inflicted “heavy losses” against “terrorists” in Aleppo, the nation’s most populous city, and its countryside, the state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said Wednesday.

They destroyed an ammunition warehouse and seized weaponry in the Aleppo operations, the agency said.

Soldiers also said they cleared a Damascus countryside neighborhood of militants, destroyed an ammunition warehouse in Homs and seized a truck in Hama loaded with weapons and ammunition.

Iranian foreign minister visits

Al-Assad met with Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi on Wednesday, the latest meeting with a country that has defended the Syrian regime.

Salehi told reporters that Iran was set to “exchange views with different Syrian groups to find a way out of the crisis which would be acceptable for all parties,” Iranian media said.

Before the meeting, Salehi met with Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem. Salehi this week also met in Cairo, Egypt, with his Turkish and Egyptian counterparts on Syria.

05/09/12

#Syria, The LCC reports that warplanes are bombing the Arqoub district of Aleppo (map). The video below shows what appears to be an L-39 making a bombing strike (also note the FSA fighters running after what may have been a sniper shot).-0

Every corner of the city is being shelled by artillery and mortars, and/or bombed from the Sky today, and the civilian casualties are extremely high.

03/09/12

Car bombing hits Damascus suburb as new UN envoy says resolving the war is a “nearly impossible” task.

Fighter jets have bombed a town in northern Syria, killing at least 18 people, activists say, while the new UN envoy to the country has acknowledged that brokering an end to the nation’s civil war will be a “nearly impossible” task.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) and the Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC), two anti-government activist groups, said the air strikes targeted a residential area in the northern town of Al Bab, about 30km from the Turkish border.

Some activists said the death toll was higher than 18.

An amateur video showed men frantically searching for bodies in the rubble of a white building turned into a pile of debris.

In Damascus, a car bomb exploded in a religiously mixed district on the edge of the city, causing casualties including women and children, state media and opposition activists said.

State news agency SANA said the wounded included women and children, while the SOHR said five people had been killed and 27 injured.

The LCC, which is a network of activists inside the country, said ambulances were ferrying wounded people from the scene in the Jaramanah neighbourhood.

Last week, at least 12 people were killed by another car bomb in the same area that targeted a funeral for two men who had earlier been killed by rebels. Opposition activists said the two men were members of a newly formed state-backed militia.

State media called that bombing a terrorist act, while opposition activists said President Bashar al-Assad’s security agents had done it to sow sectarian strife in the district, which is inhabited by Sunni Muslims, Christians and Druze.

Uprising labelled ‘conspiracy’ 

Diplomatic efforts to resolve the war have continued despite the violence. Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi, who recently succeeded Kofi Annan as the joint United Nations-Arab League envoy to Syria, told the BBC that the task is “nearly impossible”.

Brahimi, speaking earlier to Al Jazeera, said change in Syria was “unavoidable,” but he stopped short of calling for Assad to step down - the most important demand of rebels and the opposition.

Omran al-Zoabi, the recently appointed information minister, announced in Damascus on Monday that Brahimi’s success “depends on certain states such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey respecting his mission, by closing their borders to armed men, and by ceasing to provice weapons”.

Zoabi said the 17-month-long uprising, sparked by the government’s violent response to protests in the city of Daraa, was “a conspiracy, an aggression by proxy, and its tools are hidden”.

A loose alliance of the US and European and Gulf states has been pushing for Assad to give up power, though there has been no agreement on how to aid the rebels, with some countries favouring arms and no-fly zones and others diplomacy and sanctions.

In France, Laurent Fabius, foreign minister, said Western powers would deliver a “massive and blistering” response to Assad if he deployed chemical or biological weapons, which the government is widely believed to possess.

US President Barack Obama previously called the deployment of such weapons a “red line”, and the government in Damascus has said it would only use them in the case of external aggression.

ICRC access sought

The new head of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was set to begin a three-day visit on Monday for talks with Assad and other officials meant to increase the organisation’s access in the country.

Peter Maurer will meet Assad on Tuesday, as well as Walid Muallem, foreign minister, and several other ministers. The ICRC president is also set to meet the head of his organisation’s main partner in Syria, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.

“At a time when more and more civilians are being exposed to extreme violence, it is of the utmost importance that we and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent succeed in significantly scaling up our humanitarian response,” Maurer said in a statement.

“It is vital that we build on what has already been achieved on the ground.”

The Syrian authorities have imposed severe restrictions on the operations of aid agencies despite the escalating crisis, and have rejected calls for the establishment of a humanitarian corridor.

“An adequate humanitarian response is required to keep pace with needs, which have been growing exponentially,” Maurer said.

Despite the difficult working conditions, the ICRC said it and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent had provided nearly 180,000 people with food in the hardest-hit parts of the country since mid-July.

Since the beginning of the year, the two organisations have provided relief items to more than 800,000 people and have helped more than one million people access clean water, it said.

03/09/12

(Reuters) - A car bomb exploded on Monday in a religiously mixed district on the edge of the Syrian capital Damascus, causing casualties including women and children, state media and opposition campaigners said.

The Local Coordination Committees said ambulances were ferrying wounded people from the Wihdeh roundabout in Jaramanah after the blast. State news agency SANA said the wounded included women and children.

At least 12 people were killed last week by a car bomb in Jaramanah that targeted a funeral for two men killed by rebels in the area. Opposition activists said the two men were members of a newly formed state-backed militia.

State media said that attack was a terrorist act while opposition activists said President Bashar al-Assad’s security agents were behind the bombing to sow sectarian strife in the district, inhabited by Sunni Muslims, Christians and Druze.

Mainly Sunni insurgents are waging a 17-month-old uprising against Assad.

(Reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis, Amman newsroom; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

02/09/12

A boy looks back while he and another boy play on a Syrian military tank, destroyed during fighting with the Rebels, in the Syrian town of Azaz, on the outskirts of Aleppo, Sunday, Sept. 2, 2012. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)

BEIRUT — Two Syrian activist groups say about 5,000 people were killed in Syria in August, making it the deadliest month since the uprising began more than 17 months ago.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Sunday that 5,440 people, including 4,114 civilians were killed.

The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said 4,933 civilians were killed in August.

The civil war witnessed a major turning point in August when President Bashar Assad’s forces began widely using air power for the first time to crush the revolt.

The fighting also reached Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, which had been relatively quiet for most of the revolt.

02/09/12

#Syria, Twin blasts near Damascus military compound

Syrian state television said six people were wounded in twin explosions in Damascus that appeared to target the country’s military leadership.

Damascus residents said on Sunday that the explosions occurred at a security building in the Abu Rummana district, not far from the compound housing the army and air force headquarters near central Umayyad Square. All of those injured were male conscripts, Syrian television. Two of them were reported to be in a critical condition.

The opposition Syrian Local Co-ordination Committee reported scores of deaths in fighting in Damascus, its subrubs, and Hama on Sunday.

Video footage from activists showed plumes of white smoke rising from the district, an upscale neighbourhood in the heart of Damascus that is home to several embassies.

“A terrorist attack with two bombs occurred in Al-Mehdi Street in the Abu Rummana district,” state television said.

The area contains several security service buildings, as well as the office of Vice President Faruq al-Shara. The explosion occurred near a security services building which is tasked with protecting the army’s general staff.

In July, a bombing killed four members of President Bashar al-Assad’s top circle of security advisers, including his brother-in-law.

The Ahfad al-Rasul [Grandchildren of the Prophet] brigade of the rebel Free Syrian Army claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on Facebook, in which it also threatened to attack Assad’s palace.

“This operation was carried out in response to the massacres in Daraya,” said the statement, referring to the killing last week of at least 330 people in a town near Damascus. Regime and rebel forces blamed each other for the massacre.

Al Jazeera’s Sue Turton reported from Antakya, Turkey, that the attack on the heart of the military complex was a symbolically important one.

“If this has an impact on moral, a psychological impact on the Syrian forces, we may see a lot more people defecting,” she said.

“This group [the Grandchildren of the Prophet Brigade] isn’t that new, they are one of the many brigades trying to cause mayhem and havoc inside of Damascus,” she said. 

Also on Sunday, state media reported that a car bomb explosion near a mosque at Sbeneh in the southern outskirts of the capital on Saturday killed 15 people. Sbeneh is a poor neighbourhood where anti-government sentiment is strong.

The latest explosions come after a car blast in the southeastern suburb of Jaramana on August 28 which killed at least 27 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Change ‘unavoidable’

Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN-Arab League Special Representative for Syria, told Al Jazeera on Saturday that “change [in Syria] is necessary, indispensable, unavoidable”.He backed away from calling for President Bashar al-Assad to leave office, and indicated that he would seek a negotiated outcome.

“It is too early to speak about who should go and who should stay. This is not a step backwards. Mr Assad is there and is the president of the present government,” he told Al Jazeera. “Kofi talked to him, and I will talk to him.”

Brahimi has previously come out unequivocally against foreign intervention, arguing that this would escalate the conflict.

31/08/12

Syrian men rest on the rubble of a shop destroyed form Syrian government forces shelling, while waiting their turn to buy bread from a bakery shop, in the Syrian town of Azaz, on the outskirts of Aleppo, Thursday, Aug. 30, 2012. (AP Photo/Muhammed Muheisen)

BEIRUT — Syrian rebels have begun a major operation in the Aleppo region, aiming to strike at security compounds and bases around Syria’s largest city, activists said Friday.

It would be evidence that weeks of intense bombardments by the Syrian military, including airstrikes, have failed to dislodge the rebels. Instead, fighting rages across the country in a 17-month civil war that shows no sign of ending soon.

The rebel offensives in Aleppo are led by a brigade made up mostly of army defectors who specialize in operating artillery and tanks, said Mohammed Saeed, an activist based in the city.

He said the first attacks began shortly before midnight Thursday and lasted until Friday, when the “Brigade of Free Syrians” launched coordinated strikes on several security compounds in Aleppo.

“The new operations aim to strike at regime forces’ centers and air bases throughout Aleppo (province),” Saeed said via Skype.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said one of Friday’s targets was a compound in the Aleppo neighborhood of Zahraa, killing and wounding a number of troops. It gave no figures.

Saeed said rebels attacked four security buildings around Aleppo, using tanks, rocket launchers and machine guns.

The state-run news agency, SANA, said troops killed and wounded several gunmen in the clashes.

Rebels took parts of Aleppo, Syria’s commercial capital, last month. Since then, government forces have been trying to recapture them. Rebels also control much of the wider Aleppo province, including areas on the border with Turkey.

Activists estimate more than 20,000 people have been killed in the uprising against President Bashar Assad’s regime.

There has been fighting all over Syria, including the capital, Damascus, showing that the rebels have a presence in main population centers, not just the outlying districts where they started.

The Observatory and the Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, reported clashes and shelling between troops and rebels in other areas, including the southern province of Daraa, around Damascus and in the central region of Homs.

The Observatory reported heavy clashes inside the sprawling Abu Zuhour air base in the northwestern province of Idlib, saying that anti-government gunmen were advancing, storming officers’ housing units. The clashes in and around Abu Zuhour air base have been going on for the past two days. The reports could not be confirmed independently.

Syrian rebels said they shot down a Russian-made MiG fighter jet over Idlib on Thursday.

Over the past month, the Syrian regime has been relying much more heavily on air power, escalating the fight with rebels as its ground forces have been stretched thin fighting on many fronts. The military has conducted air raids on the northern regions of Idlib and Aleppo near Turkey as well as the eastern province of Deir el-Zour.

The increased use of air power is likely a factor in the high daily death tolls, which activists say have been averaging 100-250 lately.

In Geneva, the U.N. refugee agency reported a growing number of Syrians fleeing to Lebanon’s eastern Bekaa Valley, near the Syrian border.

Agency spokesman Adrian Edwards said local authorities report about 2,200 people arrived there over the past week, almost double the weekly average. He told reporters Friday in Geneva that another 400 Syrians are reaching northern Lebanon each week.

Edwards said Turkey has opened two more refugee camps for Syrians in the past week and is now hosting 80,410 people in 11 camps and schools in its border provinces.

In France, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius warned that France would use military force if President Bashar Assad ever uses his chemical weapons. “Our response would be immediate and sharp as lightning,” Fabius said Friday on Europe-1 radio.

He suggested that France would not wait for U.N. permission for such a response. “Bacteriological and chemical weapons are of a different nature from ordinary arms,” he said. “We cannot tolerate that these weapons, whose fallout could spread, would be used.”

Last month, Syria threatened that if it has chemical and biological weapons, it would use them to face a foreign attack.

28/08/12

Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad is part of the solution to the country’s crisis and his resignation will never be discussed with the opposition, said Fayssal Mekdad, Syria’s deputy foreign minister.

The desire to keep Assad as head of state was “the sovereign will of the Syrian people,” Mekdad said in an interview during a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Tehran today. A week ago, Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil said Assad’s departure might be discussed if negotiations with rebels got underway. Syria’s opposition and the U.S. say the president should leave office.

(Syria’s opposition and the U.S. say President Bashar al-Assad should leave office. Photographer: Pankaj Nangia/Bloomberg)

United Nations efforts to end the 17-month conflict have faltered as military monitors left the country last week and the organization’s envoy, Kofi Annan, resigned this month accusing world powers of “finger-pointing and name-calling.” The pullback has been accompanied by an upsurge of fighting, with battles engulfing areas of the country’s two biggest cities, Damascus and Aleppo.

The United Nations refugee agency warned today that the tide of refugees leaving the country was accelerating. The number reaching northern Jordan doubled to 10,000 in the week ending on Aug. 27, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said on its website.

“Refugees say many thousands more are waiting to cross amid violence around Daraa and we believe this could be the start of a much larger influx,” Melissa Fleming, the agency’s chief spokeswoman, said. Some of the refugees “report being bombed by aircraft. There are also reports of shelling, mortars and other weapons fire.”

Cost Sharing

Turkey now hosts more than 80,000 refugees, and has asked the United Nations Security Council to discuss how the costs can be shared more widely, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters in Ankara yesterday.

“We’ll emphasize that from now on it shouldn’t just be Syria’s neighbors — Turkey, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq — that must shoulder the burden, but the entire international community,” he said.

At least 41 people were killed across Syria today, 18 of them in Idlib, and seven in the suburbs of Damascus, the Local Coordination Committees in Syria said in an e-mail. The day after the UN monitors left, Aug. 25, was the bloodiest since the uprising began, with 440 people reported dead by the LCC. The death tolls cannot be verified.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi meanwhile called on the Non-Aligned Movement summit to consider the “restoration of peace and tranquility in Syria as a main agenda” item, FARS news agency reported.

Mekdad praised Iran’s stance as “positive and excellent.” He said the opposition has given a “negative response” to negotiations and seeks to implement a “Zionist, U.S. and Western solution.”

The Syrian uprising, which began as a peaceful protest movement in March 2011, has defied regional and international efforts to resolve it. More than 23,000 lives have been lost during the unrest, the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates

27/08/12

The Syrian opposition is disseminating video footage from the town of Daraya this weekend that tells of a government massacre that may have left more than 600  people dead.

This citizen journalism image provided by Shaam News Network, taken on Sunday, Aug. 26, purports to show people killed by shabiha, pro-government militiamen, being buried in a mass grave in Daraya, Syria. According to activists’ accounts, government forces retook the Damascus suburb of Daraya from rebel control three days ago and have since gone on a killing spree. Shaam News Network/AP

New video footage shown in many utubes, has provided graphic evidence of a massacre reportedly committed by forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the Damascus suburb of Daraya.  If reports from the London-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights of more than 300 dead are confirmed, “it would be an atrocity of a new scale” in the Syrian conflict, a British diplomat warned.

Over the weekend, activists posted multiple bloody videos of the victims of what they say was a coordinated massacre of citizens of Daraya – mostly young men of fighting age, although women and children were killed as well – that began on Friday. 

“The Assad forces killed them in cold blood,” Abu Ahmad, a resident of Daraya, told The New York Times.  “I saw dozens of dead people, killed by the knives at the end of Kalashnikovs, or by gunfire. The regime finished off whole families, a father, mother and their children. They just killed them without any pretext.”

The Local Coordination Committees activist group said that some 150 bodies were found Saturday night in the basement of a mosque in what seems to be the largest single killing site, though additional sites continue to be found – another 15 bodies were found in the basement of a home on Sunday.  The LCC puts the death toll for the week in Daraya at more than 630.

“Daraya, a city of dignity, has paid a heavy price for demanding freedom,” the group said in a statement, adding: “The death toll has doubled in the past few days due to field executions and revenge killings.”

Foreign journalists remain largely unable to confirm reports on the ground in Syria, due to violence and government restrictions.  But British Foreign Office Minister for the Middle East Alistair Burt said that “If confirmed, it would be an atrocity of a new scale, requiring unequivocal condemnation from the entire international community,” reports the Telegraph. 

“It is clear that was collective punishment,” Khaled Al-Shami, an activist from Damascus, told the Associated Press. “I am certain that the coming days will reveal more massacres, but by then others will have taken place and people will forget about Daraya.”  Mr. Shami also said that Daraya was under a de facto curfew Sunday, as Syrian government forces carried out house-to-house searches.

The AP adds that the regime’s campaign in Dayara is being carried out by an elite division of the military led by President Assad’s brother, Maher.  Although it is unclear what prompted the campaign, the AP notes that Daraya abuts the capital’s military airport, which activists say Assad intends to use as a gateway out of Damascus should the situation turn fully against the regime.

The Independent of London writes that the attack on Daraya began last week with five days of bombardment by tanks and helicopters. Late Friday, regime troops began systematically moving through the suburb, advancing 200 yards at a time.  “They would then shell the streets in front of them and raid the area,” activists told The Independent.

Syrian state media blamed rebels for the violence, reports Agence France-Presse, and claimed that regime forces had “purified [Daraya] of terrorist remnants.”

Pro-government television Al-Dunia said “terrorists” carried out the attacks, as it interviewed residents including traumatised children and showed a number of bloodied bodies lying in the streets.

“Our valiant armed forces cleared Daraya of the remnants of armed terrorist groups which committed crimes that traumatised the citizens of the town and destroyed public and private property,” government newspaper Ath-Thawra said.

Assad, at a meeting with a top official from regional ally Iran, accused Western and neighboring powers of being behind a “conspiracy” against the Syrian regime, and promised he would not yield to pressure.  “The Syrian people will not allow this conspiracy to achieve its objectives” and will defeat it “at any price,” he said.

26/08/12

(AGI) Damascus - At least 440 people have been killed in Syria today, 310 of whom, including women and children, in Daraya.
Most of today’s casualties were reported in Daraya, a suburb south-west of Damascus, where the Syrian army carried out door-to-door raids after bombing the area from above. It was denounced by the anti-Assad activists of the Local Coordination Committees (www.lcssyria.org), according to which 40 people were killed in Aleppo, 28 in Deir Ezzor, 24 in Idlib, 15 in Daraa, 8 in Hama and 5 in Homs. The activists said today’s death toll was the highest since the uprising started 17 months ago. .