#Syria February 12/2013 Lessons in anti-tank fighting

01/05/2013 - #Syria - Damascus, Arbeen - FSA fires RPG rocket at Shabeeha 

31/07/2012

Syria’s 16-month revolt has finally erupted in the country’s commercial hub

In stretches of northern Syria where government control has collapsed and rebel militias call the shots, numerous criminal outfits have come to the fore — and threaten to undermine the rebellion

30/07/2012

The checkpoint wasn’t a permanent or even makeshift structure—just a couple of armed men, some in civilian clothing, others wearing items of military apparel, standing in the middle of a main road just outside the town of Abu Ad-Duhur, some 50 kilometers south of Idlib city. Their faces were uncovered. It was 10am and there was traffic on the road when Abu Ibrahim, a well-to-do, dignified, 60-year-old engineer, duly stopped his Kia hatchback at the human barricade. “All I saw were guns pointing into the car, they told me to get out,” Abu Ibrahim says. “One of the men said ‘take his car, but don’t insult him.”

It wasn’t the first time Abu Ibrahim had been carjacked by people he says were posing as fighters in the Free Syrian Army, the motley rebel force taking on Syrian President Bashar Assad. Two weeks earlier, his family’s sedan was also stolen under similar circumstances. It would be returned to him, he was told, if he forked over 400,000 Syrian pounds ($6,225). He refused, and accepted the loss of his vehicle.

(MORE: As Syria Teeters, So Do Decades-Old Assumptions About the Middle East)

This time, however, he was not going to accept the same outcome. He told a local FSA leader in charge of some 30 men to try and get it back. “We suffer here from the fact that the thuwar [revolutionaries] have fallen between two fires — the regime and criminals who say they are thuwar,” Abu Ibrahim said.

Although there are still loyalist checkpoints along some of the main highways (which are easily avoided using backroads), the rebel flag flies in many of the towns and villages in this flat, fertile agricultural region, creating pockets that function as informal safe zones free of government troops. Still, although vast swathes of northern Syria may have fallen out of government control, they are not necessarily firmly in the FSA’s.

Criminal elements also function within these pockets; groups that kidnap people for ransom (releasing them dead or alive after payment of a ransom or purchase of weapons), and that carjack civilian vehicles. Sometimes, those criminal elements operate under the FSA’s banner, prompting other FSA units to try and neutralize them via one of two ways – firepower, or by leaning on local leaders with influence over certain families, tribes and areas. The FSA are trying to police their own ranks, while fighting the regime and competing for suppliers, supporters and resources with each other and with other armed groups like the Salafist Ahrar al-Sham brigades.

As TIME has previously reported, support to the FSA is, and always has been, parceled out to select units. The sources are many and varied — from recent state-sponsored Qatari and Saudi efforts, to hefty donations by members of the Syrian diaspora as well as sheikhs in the Gulf with massive fund-raising abilities. FSA units, even those fighting in the same area, often have very different sources of funding and weapons. Some of this support comes with strings attached: pledges of allegiance to the hand that doles it out.

(PHOTOS: Inside Syria’s Slow-Motion Civil War)

Some senior members of the FSA are also playing favorites — dishing out money and weapons to certain FSA units, while ignoring others. The group has long been a loose franchise organization, nominally headed by Colonel Riad al-As’aad and other senior defectors sequestered in a refugee camp in the the southern Turkish town of Apaydin in Hatay Province. (There are 10 FSA military bureaus — regional umbrella groups — inside the country.)

As’aad and General Mustafa al-Sheikh, one of the earliest generals to defect, have long been rivals, although they supposedly buried their differences by forming a joint military council in late March. Months of reporting and meeting with numerous FSA groups, mainly operating in northern Syria, has made it clear that the men are backing different groups inside Syria, and in so doing, are undermining ongoing efforts to unite the rebel army.

It’s just another of the many layers of friction between various elements of the FSA. There are real and serious rivalries between exiles and those inside Syria, sub-splits between those groups, deep schisms between the armed and political opposition, and among some armed groups in different areas. At the moment most of their guns are pointed in the same direction, but it’s easy to predict what may happen when their common enemy falls.

“Victory is made here, not in Turkey, thank you martyrs,” is sprayed on a wall in Saraqeb, although it could be almost anywhere in Syria. Abu Trad, 27, heads the Martyr Asaad Hilal Brigade in the town, one of four FSA units operating there. The former agricultural trader recoils at the thought of answering to the opposition in exile. “Where are they? In five-star hotels, drinking tea?” he says.

He claims his “differences” with both General Sheikh and Colonel As’aad mean he doesn’t get help from any faction within the FSA. “They are buying loyalties, and mine isn’t for sale” he said, seated behind a scuffed wooden desk in the office of a sweltering school that now serves as his unit’s headquarters. He keeps photos of the seven men his unit has lost under the glass top of the office desk. “We will not join the Muslim Brothers or the Salafis or anyone,” he said.

(MORE: Russia and Syria’s Assad: The End of the Affair?)

He and his 90 or so men rely on private donations from abroad (he wouldn’t say from where) to buy weapons, and have been “cooking up a few explosives,” he says. There’s an RPG missile in the glass cabinet, alongside double binder folders. An empty box of hand grenades is perched on the open window sill. “Some of us sold our wives’ jewelry to fund the fight,” Abu Trad says, as a single ceiling fan whirs overhead, while for some other FSA units, he says, getting weapons and money is “as easy as drinking a sip of water.” Several of his men, seated on chairs arranged in a semicircle around the walls of the room, nod in agreement. “We want arms. we don’t need bread, we will eat dirt, we just want to fight.”

“The Salafis have their own support, and it’s strong,” says Abu Trad, referring to the Ahrar al-Sham brigades comprised of adherents to a more orthodox form of Sunni Islam. “I don’t blame them, but we started before them, we spilled our blood, I think it’s a grave injustice to us that they have stronger support.”

“This is Gulf politics,” replied one of his men, referring to religious donors in the region’s oil-rich countries funding more conservative Sunni fighters in Syria.

Abu Zayd, the nom de guerre of a 25 year old Sharia graduate who heads one of the founding brigades of Ahrar al-Sham, can sympathize with local FSA leaders like Abu Trad, but says it’s not his problem.

“They (the FSA) get more support than we do, but our support is delivered to us, theirs doesn’t make it to them. That’s the truth,” he says.  “Their support stays in Turkey, it doesn’t make it to the revolutionaries here. If our supporters send us 100 lira, we get 100 lira. This is the reality.” He wouldn’t say who his supporters were, if they were state sponsors or individuals. “Whether it is official or unofficial doesn’t matter to me,” he said. “We have enough.”

It’s a statement many of the FSA units operating around these parts can only aspire to utter. Most blame the so-called commanders in exile for their situation, for not providing them with the weapons, ammunition and funds they need, leaving them to scrounge for supplies, and some units to resort to criminal means to secure them.

(MORE: TIME Exclusive: Meet the Islamist Militants Fighting Alongside Syria’s Rebels)

Recently, one unit operating in northern Syria kidnapped three Shi’ite Syrians from the pro-regime Shi’ite village of Fouaa, saying it would release them in exchange for two 14.5mm anti-aircraft guns. The Shi’ite villagers, however, had other ideas and promptly kidnapped 32 Sunnis from a handful of villages surrounding them, including from Taftanaz, Binnish and Saraqeb, threatening to kill the men if the Shi’ites weren’t released. It took two weeks of tense negotiations between several FSA units to defuse the situation, and safely release all of the hostages.

Some FSA units are snatching loyalist soldiers from military buses and demanding a ransom from their families for their return. The amount varies, and can be anywhere between 100,000 Syrian pounds ($1,550) to 200,000 SYP ($3,100) for a regular soldier, although the family of a lieutenant colonel reportedly recently paid one million SYP for his release.

On a recent afternoon in northern Syria, a group of FSA fighters and civilians debated the ethics of the kidnappings. “Some people have reasons for not defecting, they should not be punished for protecting their families,” one man said, referring to the fact that retribution by loyalist troops is sometimes exacted on a defector’s family or property.  “If they are going to their hometown on leave, they can defect,” countered an FSA member, “and we need the money.”  The consensus was that if a loyalist was picked up on leave, on his way home it was wrong, because he may be using his leave to defect. If he was heading back to his barracks, however, it was a different story, the men said. “It means he’s coming back to kill us,” said Abu Amjad, whose son Amjad heads a rebel FSA unit, “so he has to be stopped.”

The carjackings of civilian vehicles are another story. The perpetrators are often masked, unlike most FSA fighters who move around freely with their weapons in the towns and villages of northern Syria, even during the day. Yet the carjackers also often fly the rebel Syrian flag. On a recent afternoon, one small group of armed men, with scarves covering their faces, stood in the middle of a major road just outside the town of Taftanaz. One sat on a motorbike that had a small revolutionary flag fluttering from its rear bar.  “Circle back around,” Mohammad, a rebel fighter in the vehicle I was riding in said after we’d cleared the checkpoint.

“We don’t have enough weapons to take them on,” said Basil, another rebel fighter in the car.  “Then call the guys to round those thieves up,” Mohammad said. “We know who is here, who is operating here,” he later explained. “Those men are not realthuwar.”

A similar situation played out earlier this month, albeit on a much larger scale after the Bab al-Hawa border outpost between Turkey and Syria was overrun, and part of it snatched from Syrian government troops by rebel forces. Some of the lorries stationed at the crossing were looted and burned while others were stolen. The actions prompted some furious FSA members to hunt down the rebels responsible and demand they return the stolen vehicles or compensate their owners. Just days later, Celalettin Lekesiz, governor of the southern Turkish province of Hatay, told reporters that 19 of the 30 Turkish trucks stolen from Bab al-Hawa had been returned to their owners.

Abu Ibrahim’s stolen Kia hatchback was also retrieved, 10 days after it was stolen by thugs he says were posing as rebel fighters. It was back in his garage “by force of guns, not kind words,” he said. “There are some people, they are criminals, unemployed, they were before the revolution and they are taking opportunity of the situation,” Abu Ibrahim said. “There are clashes between them and the thuwar, the thuwar are returning cars to the people, helping us, but this is a revolution. They need to be focused on other things.”

29/07/12

A Syrian opposition fighter takes aim during clashes with forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo on Wednesday, July 25. Fierce fighting has been reported in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. Rebel control of this commercial hub would deal a heavy blow to al-Assad’s financial ties.

(CNN) — In just a few months, Syria’s rebels have transformed themselves from ragtag village defense forces into an armed movement capable of attacking the country’s two largest cities, Aleppo and Damascus.

Now they are bracing themselves for what one Syrian newspaper has called “the mother of all battles.”

Both the rebels and the regime arebuilding up their manpowerin and around Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, where the rebels have made inroads this past week. Fighting has already begun.

Several world leaders have expressed deep concern about a “devastating” government counterattack in Aleppo. But the rebels, encouraged by the progress they’ve made, remain undeterred.

“We will fight this dictator and all of his aircraft, tanks and rockets,” said Ahmed Afash, a rebel squad leader based in Anadan, a rebel-controlled town just six miles north of Aleppo. “We started out this struggle with rocks.”

Now they have rocket-propelled grenades, mortars, assault rifles and other powerful weapons. Afash and other rebels in Anadanproudly showed off the artillery they had seizedfrom Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

“I’ve fired this gun about 2,000 times,” said rebel Jamal Awar, referring to a double-barreled, anti-aircraft gun on top of a truck. Awar, a former bus driver, said he shot down a helicopter several weeks ago with the gun

I was ecstatic, I was very happy,” Awar said.

But even with all the new weapons, can the rebels fend off an air assault?

Mustafa Abdullah, a major rebel commander, told CNN there simply isn’t enough ammunition to withstand a government siege. He said it will “be just like Homs” and wept at the thought of a similar massacre. World leaders and outside expertshave also expressed doubtthat the rebels have the weaponry to counter the regime’s aerial threat.

While they might lack firepower, however, the rebels have plenty of commitment and passion for their cause.

“I go to war for my family, for my country,” said Soukrot Amin, a 23-year-old Aleppo native who recently volunteered to be in the Free Syrian Army. “Because (al-Assad) has killed everyone. He killed my cousin. He destroyed my village. He destroyed my home.”

The rebel militias are composed in large part of defector soldiers. But there are also many civilians, including students, shopkeepers, real-estate agents, and even members of al-Assad’s ruling party.

Ahmed Habib spent a decade working as a bureaucrat with the Aleppo branch of the Ba’ath party. But eight months after joining the rebels, he was dressed in improvised military fatigues, carrying a Belgian-made Fabrique Nationale assault rifle slung over his shoulder.

“We wished to have a new democracy when Bashar al-Assad became president,” he said. “We wished to have freedom for the people. But that never happened. We just got new cars and computers. It’s … nothing.

“We tell Bashar al-Assad, very soon we will be in Damascus, in the president’s palace, we promise that.”

Last week, a bombing in Damascuskilled several of the regime’s top defense officials, including al-Assad’s brother-in-law. But the rebels’ progress into the Syrian capital seems to have faded as a result of a strong government counterattack.

The rebels now see Aleppo, the country’s economic hub and its most populous city, as crucial to their cause. And they’re throwing much of their manpower in the north of the country to fight for it.

Some other nearby cities have been abandoned.

In Atareb, Bashar al-Assad’s troops left behind a bullet-riddled ghost town patrolled by rebels and a handful of shell-shocked residents.

The Bab el Hawa highway, which ran through the center of the town, was renamed the”Street of Death”by rebels. Until recently, they said, anyone who dared set foot on the highway became a target.

Now it’s a mini-graveyard of burned-out armored personnel carriers.

“This used to be a very classy area. … The Turks would come here to see our village,” said a fighter named Abdullah Behri, who lost his left eye to shrapnel during a battle there in May.

“Now it has all turned to hell,” he said, pointing at the town’s deserted streets.

Is a similar fate in store for Aleppo?

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters that U.S. officials are concerned “that we will see a massacre in Aleppo — and that’s what the regime appears to be lining up for.”

British Foreign Secretary William Hague said the escalation could lead to a “devastating loss of civilian life and a humanitarian disaster.”

But the rebels know the risks and they are ready to fight.

One veteran fighter named Khorshid had no illusions that the battle for Aleppo would be easy.

He choked back tears Tuesday after burying his slain friend Housam Abdul Rashid. Then he swore to return to the front lines.

“Tonight,” Khorshid said. “We must fight Bashar al-Assad, because if not, he will kill us.”

A masked opposition fighter poses inside the Shaar district police station in Aleppo yesterday.

Pierre Torres / AFP Photo

ALEPPO // Battles raged through the night and into roday in Syria’s second city Aleppo, a monitoring group said, as activists reported clashes in the Palestinian Yarmouk camp in Damascus.

The battles in Aleppo followed a day of heavy fighting there and came after Syria’s regime rushed reinforcements to the city, where rebels on July 20 launched an all-out assault for control of the country’s commercial hub.

“There are clashes in the Muhafaza district and shelling on the Mushhad and Sheikh Badr neighbourhoods, which killed a child and injured seven people,” the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Aleppo’s Salaheddin neighbourhood, scene of fierce fighting for days, was also bombarded by regime troops during the night, the group said.

The Observatory also reported 19 civilians and three rebels killed in Aleppo fighting yesterday but did not give a separate toll of soldiers killed in the city.

Despite the fighting, there were “mass demonstrations in the Furqan, Ashrafiyeh and New Aleppo districts calling for the fall of the regime and the departure of President Bashar al-Assad,” it said.

Several rural villages and towns in the Aleppo province were being shelled by the Syrian army.

In Damascus, street battles were being fought on Thursday in the Palestinian Yarmouk camp in the south of the capital, the Observatory said.

“There are clashes on Street 30 in the Yarmouk camp between Syrian regime forces and fighters from rebel units. Explosions can be heard,” it said.

A resident of the camp reached by phone confirmed the fighting.

“It started at 7am. The night was quiet. They are using RPGs and heavy machineguns,” he said.

After a week of heavy clashes in Damascus, activists say regime forces have largely regained control of the city, with only a few pockets of rebel resistance remaining.

An activist in the southern neighbourhood of Tadamun, who gave his name as Abu Qais Al Shami, said several districts in the southern part of the city were under assault on Thursday by regime forces.

“Last night was quiet but people woke up to the sound of explosions and shelling from seven o’clock in the morning,” he said.

Aside from Yarmouk, the neighbourhoods of Tadamun and Al Hajar Al Aswad were also being shelled, he said.

“Tanks have been deployed on Street 30 [in Yarmouk], where there are also a large number of snipers. Some people have been killed and dozens of wounded have been taken to the Basil Hospital,” he said.

The Observatory also reported fighting in Deir Ezzor in the east of Syria, where it said two people were killed overnight, including one shot by a sniper.

In an updated toll today, the Observatory said 143 people were killed throughout Syria yesterday, including 75 civilians, 41 soldiers and 27 rebel fighters.

07/01/12 #Syria FSA attack a BMP with RPG at close range in Deir Ezzor

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian rebels aired footage on Tuesday of burnt-out tanks as well as a helicopter engulfed in smoke and flames which they said they had destroyed after it landed in a field in northern Idlib province carrying Syrian special forces.

An amateur video posted on the Internet showed a military helicopter with its blades spinning as if it had just landed. “Special forces are being deployed from a helicopter to kill civilians in (the town) of Mar Dibsi,” a voice off screen says breathlessly to the sound of gunfire.

A second video, which appears to be from the same town, shows the helicopter in flames, with a white rotor blade poking out of the plumes of smoke.

Other videos posted on Tuesday by rebels who are fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad showed the burnt-out shells of four tanks and two BMPs - Russian-made tracked infantry fighting vehicles. One video showed a man firing rocket-propelled grenades at a passing tank.

Access to Syria is restricted by the government and Reuters is unable to verify such reports.

The lightly armed rebel Free Syrian Army is dwarfed by Assad’s forces, which the United Nations accuses of killing more than 10,000 people during the 16-month revolt.

Nevertheless, the past few weeks have seen a sharp rise in the number of attacks by the rebel force, and residents say the government has lost control of a number of towns and villages.

A British-based monitoring group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said 32 members of Assad’s forces had been killed on Tuesday around the country.

A destroyed tank overlooks the main highway on June 17, 2012, running through Rastan, Syria from Damascus to Aleppo. | Austin Tice/MCT

By Austin Tice | McClatchy Newspapers

Tice, a McClatchy special correspondent, served seven years in the U.S. Marine Corps as an infantry officer. During his deployment in Afghanistan, he served for seven months as an air attack controller, guiding combat aircraft from forward positions.

#Syria eyewitness dispatch: ‘I watched as Assad’s tanks rolled in to destroy a rebel town’

6:00PM BST 31 Mar 2012

As President Bashar al-Assad discussed a ceasefire for Syria last week, his tanks continued to crush northern rebel strongholds. In this dispatch from the town of Saraqeb, John Cantlie describes an assault at first hand.

Image 1 of 2

T72 main battle tanks advance into the market square district in Saraquib town centre  Photo: JOHN CANTLIE

I had been smuggled into Saraqeb last weekend by a local guerrilla unit, keen to show the world that despite playing along with international efforts to broker a ceasefire, President Bashar al-Assad was continuing to use all-out force to crush his opponents. While he agreed last week to a six-point peace plan brokered by the veteran diplomat, Kofi Annan, what I saw for myself suggests the Syrian leader intends anything but.Still the tanks came, driving into town one after another. The troop carriers stopped to take up holding positions, while the T72s turned in pairs to face towards the centre.

As Syrian army snipers deployed to Saraqeb’s high buildings to provide covering fire, the rebel fighters around me took up positions on street corners and pavements.

Their pick-up trucks screeched to a halt, bringing reinforcements, rocket-propelled grenades and improvised bombs built from gas bottles and steel pipes which are placed against kerbs and disguised with cardboard. Then came the click-clack of 200 Kalashnikovs being loaded, a few unaimed rounds loosed off in anger.

For five tense minutes, nothing happened.

Then the T72s began to advance toward the market square, the shriek of their tracks reverberating up the street as white smoke belched from their engines. Together with several dozen rebels, I watched from 100 yards away as the gun turrets swept first left, then right, scanning the side alleys for threats. For now, their 125mm cannon remained silent.

“Allahu Akbar!”

Chanting the rebel cry of “God is great”, one fighter shouldered his RPG launcher, aimed down the tube and fired. The rocket flew straight and true, catching the lead T72 just to the left of the driver’s porthole. A cheer went up, the rebels punching the air in celebration. Yet no-one had noticed the rocket had not exploded, but merely shattered into a hundred useless pieces of metal.

And that was when the tanks opened fire.

The first shells punched into nearby buildings, producing a shockwave of sound and a sea of grey dirt and dust that rolled up the road like a tsunami. Fist-size pieces of hot shrapnel sliced through the air, decapitating one fighter instantly.

His rifle clattered against a wall as his friends dragged his headless torso from the line of fire. The body was bloodless, cauterized. Another rebel caught a piece of shell in his leg, a deep femoral bleed that left a crimson trail across the road.

“RPGs! Get more RPGs up here!” shouted one game fighter, to little avail. With no real chain of command, the rebels use as much energy arguing amongst themselves as they do fighting the enemy. As panicky bickering ensued, a woman ushered her terrified children out of the door.

“Please don’t shoot from here,” she begged the rebels. “My mother is very old and cannot move - if you shoot at them here they will destroy our house.”

“We will use our bombs to stop them, I promise,” replied a fighter. But home-made bombs do little against a battle tank. As the T72s began shooting at the base of buildings to make them collapse Muktar Nassar, a young man in white robes, ran up with another RPG, one of the few with a functioning warhead.

Clearly terrified at being just 50 yards from a T72, he briefly got the perfect firing angle to hit the tank’s more vulnerable side armour, only to be forced to run for cover again as the tank behind his target fired again.

“No good, it’s no good” Muktar muttered as we retreated, showered again in dust. Up above, sniper rounds peppered the mosque minarets. The fighting was brutally one-sided. As a show of force it was absolute.

By 3pm the rebels knew it was over, retreating to cover to smoke cigarettes, leaving the tanks to roam and shell as they pleased. In the space of just a few hours, Saraqeb had been broken. Then it was everyone for themselves. Some families remained in their homes, hoping for the best, others threw belongings into cars and headed out of town.

The guerrillas, meanwhile, staged their own chaotic withdrawal, driving cars at 100mph down small country roads to villages beyond range of the shells, while an army helicopter circled overhead. If the tanks hadn’t killed the rebels, their driving may have finished the job.

“What could we do against that?” lamented Abdul Karali, a student whose family live in Saraqeb. “We’re not soldiers, we have no training and few weapons.”

Seven were killed in the fighting that day and 28 wounded. Next morning, Sunday, an attempted rebel counter-attack ended in retreat, the fighters stranding themselves between two tank positions, 500 metres of open ground and a footbridge in full view of government machine guns.

The uprising in Syria is turning into a hit-and-run guerilla war, with the rebels disrupting government forces any way they can. But without money, training or anti-tank weapons, they have little bite. Until the big city businessmen from Damascus and Aleppo commit to the fight, Syria’s revolution is a working man’s uprising of limited means.

Farmers and students in the countryside sell their belongings to raise the $2,000 required for an AK-47 smuggled from Iraq and to pay $4 for each round of ammunition. But bullets are as much use as a catapult against a T72.

“Until the big cities help us we will scrape along for ways to fight this revolution,” said Hussein al-Brahim, an activist from Saraqeb. “But Aleppo businessmen don’t want to get involved. They cannot be anti-Assad because he gave them everything.”

For those on the receiving end, the smoke and chaos that engulfed Saraqeb last weekend disguised the well-drilled military procedure that was under way. It has been honed during sieges of other rebel hotspots, from Homs and Deraa to Idlib city and other towns across the province. The tanks go in first, shelling rebel positions and driving them out. The next day, there is random shellfire to soften the target. Then, once every rebel - and foreign journalist - has left, the ground forces go in. This way, there are few witnesses to what happens next.

The accounts of atrocities committed when Syrian ground forces move are impossible to verify, but the numbers hurt and arrested are unquestionably high.

Using information stored on laptops, army intelligence officers detain all manner of people. Bad-mouthing the regime? Arrested. Seen at a protest? Arrested. Got an internet connection? Arrested. The list goes on.

“The shabiha (pro-government militia) came to my house and took my children,” said Fatoum Haj Housin, a resident of the town Sarmin, five miles north-west of Saraqeb, which had been attacked a few days earlier.

“They took all three of them. They were young men in the army but they defected in January. The militia shot them in the head and burned their bodies in front of me in our courtyard. In the name of God, bring me a Kalashnikov and I will kill Assad myself!”

There was still scorching and ash in front of her house - and much evidence elsewhere in Sarmin of destruction by ground forces. The field hospital had been torched, walls and houses sprayed with AK47 fire and the mosque smashed by three shells.

When the tanks leave the city centres and the ground forces come in, this is what happens - with nobody from the outside to see.

Yet for every person killed the rebels’ resolve seems to grow day by day.

“We can never go back now,” said Feras Mulheen, a student from Saraqeb who had just seen his house destroyed by the tanks. “There’s nothing to go back to. We either win or we die trying. There’s nothing in between.”

* John Cantlie is an independent photojournalist

Erbeen, East Ghouta, #Syria: The video shows the start of an FSA operation against Air Security branch on the outskirts of Erbeen. Abu Dhar al-Ghafari battalion targetted the building with two rocket-propelled grenades, destroying a Shilka Anti Aircraft gun, and targeted troops stationed in Erbeen destroying a T 72 Tank. 30/3/2012

AP’s Ahmed Bahaddou, left, and Rodrigo Abd, right, climb the back of a tractor in the Turkish town of Hacipasa close to the border with Syria Thursday, Feb. 23, 2012. (AP)

(AP) ANTAKYA, Turkey - Explosions illuminated the night as we ran, hoping to escape Syria after nearly three weeks of covering a conflict that the government seems determined to keep the world from seeing. Tank shells slammed into the city streets behind us, snipers’ bullets whizzed by our heads and the rebels escorting us were nearly out of ammunition.

It seemed like a good time to get out of Syria.

—-

EDITOR’S NOTE: Award-winning journalists Rodrigo Abd and Ahmed Bahaddou sneaked into Syria and spent nearly three weeks reporting from opposition-held territory. Abd, an Associated Press photographer, is based in Guatemala. Bahaddou is a video journalist on assignment for the AP, based in Turkey.

—-

With regime forces closing in on the rebel-held northern city of Idlib, Associated Press cameraman Ahmed Bahaddou and I set out Sunday for neighboring Turkey on a journey that would take us through a pitch-black passage and miles of muddy olive groves in the freezing cold.

We ran into delays and dangers with every step — from fighting between rebel and government forces to a missed connection with our guide.

We coordinated our escape with the Free Syrian Army, the rebel force fighting to hold onto Idlib, but the situation was deteriorating quickly. The snipers, shelling and explosions were growing ever closer.

“We are all going to be killed!” a terrified Syrian activist told me, collapsing into tears. An FSA fighter said the government troops were sure to take the city back, because the rebels were running out of ammunition.

A rebel commander said he understood if his fighters wanted to run away and save themselves.

“Whoever wants to leave and not fight, lay your Kalashnikovs here,” he said.

Nobody did.

Last week, troops had encircled Idlib, and tank shells starting pounding the city from dawn until evening. Rebels dashed through the streets, taking cover behind the corners of buildings as they clashed with the troops. Wounded fighters were piled into trucks bound for places where they could be treated. I saw a man carrying a young boy, the child’s jacket soaked in blood. I later learned the boy was dead.

On Tuesday, just one day after we made it out, government forces recaptured Idlib, although activists reported some pockets of resistance remained. Still, it was a blow to the rebels.

The regime says it is fighting foreign terrorists and armed gangs, denying that the yearlong uprising is a popular revolt. But what we saw in Idlib was nothing like what the government is describing. The townspeople support the uprising; every family seemed to have a fighter in the streets, or knew somebody who was fighting.

The FSA rebels were Syrians, from Idlib. We did not see any foreigners doing battle.

The biggest challenge for the rebels was not their fervor to fight; they all seemed willing to die to oust the regime of President Bashar Assad. They were armed with little more than rocket-propelled grenades, Kalashnikov machine guns and grenades.

The opposition’s rallying cry in recent days has been an appeal for weapons. An influx of anti-tank missiles and other heavy arms could be a turning point in the conflict.

But as government forces moved in last week, all we could think of was Baba Amr — the neighborhood in the Syrian city of Homs that endured nearly four weeks of government shelling. Hundreds of people were killed in the siege, and the humanitarian situation was catastrophic. Among the dead were two journalists, Marie Colvin, a veteran American-born war correspondent for Britain’s Sunday Times, and Remi Ochlik, 28, a French photojournalist. Both were cut down when a shell struck nearby.

Assad’s Shabiha shoots an RPG at cameraman in Bab Dreib, Homs #Syria 10/3/2012

After years of Syrian insurgents and weaponry infiltrating Iraq, now the traffic goes the other way