21/09/12
A #Syrian man and a child walk past two bodies laying on the street in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Thursday (Sept 20, 2012). Syrians troops backed by helicopter gunships clashed with rebels near an army barracks in Aleppo as pre-dawn battles broke out near a military airport elsewhere in the province, a monitor said.
21/09/12
#Syrian troops clash with rebels in Aleppo
Syrian troops backed by helicopter gunships clashed with rebels near an army barracks in Aleppo, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
Fighting erupted overnight near the Hanano barracks in the Arkoub district of northeast Aleppo on Friday, the UK-based watchdog group said.
Several districts of Aleppo, including Sakhur in the northeast and Bustan al-Qasr in the centre, came under overnight attack, SOHR said.
Elsewhere in Aleppo, fighting broke out between troops and rebels near the Meng military airport, SOHR said.
Military airports have been a key target for the rebels as the army has increasingly deployed fighter jets and helicopter gunships to launch devastating attacks against them.
Massive explosion
SOHR further reported a massive explosion, believed to be a car bomb, northwest of Damascus. Heavy gunfire was heard afterwards but there were no immediate reports of casualties, it said.
In the central province of Homs, a civilian was killed in dawn shelling of Rastan, while the eastern city of Deir Az-Zor and the town of Daal, in the southern province of Deraa, also came under bombardment.
The violence across the country came a day after dozens of people were killed when an air raid hit a fuel station in the northern province of al-Riqqa on Thursday.
Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons, reporting from Antakya in neighbouring Turkey on Friday, said there is “no doubt that it was a targeted attack on an area being used by civilians”.
“The petrol station was crowded with vehicles,” he said. “It was the only petrol station in the entire region that was open to the public, according to activists.”
Simmons added that according to unconfirmed reports, the device used is known as a “barrel bomb.”
“These sorts of things have been described in Aleppo before. It was devastating,” he said.
“The casualties number in the dozens, and now we are getting unconfirmed reports that the death toll has reached 60.”
Possible sanctions
In another development, diplomats from more than 60 nations and the Arab League met in The Hague, Netherlands, on Thursday to toughen and improve co-ordination of sanctions against Assad’s regime.
“We need vigorous implementation,” Uri Rosenthal, Netherlands foreign minister, told the opening of the Friends of Syria working group.
“Sanctions will only have an impact if they are carried out effectively. That is how we can make a difference.”
The Friends of Syria group has already held three meetings at ministerial level in Tunis, Istanbul and Paris. Another is planned in Morocco in October and another later in Italy.
20/09/12
Rebel fighters shot down a helicopter in a battleground town near Damascus on Thursday, a watchdog said, as Syria’s opposition declared parts of the capital a “disaster area.”
A series of explosions rocked the town of Douma, just northeast of Damascus, shortly before the rebels downed the helicopter, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
“A helicopter went down in the Tall al-Kurdi area near Douma,” said the Britain-based Observatory, citing activists in the area. It “was shot down by rebels” following the blasts.
Syrian state television said the helicopter “crashed,” while the official news agency SANA only reported that the aircraft had gone down.
The reports came as the Syrian National Council said that south Damascus was a “disaster area,” while the army shelled al-Hajar al-Aswad and the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmuk.
“Helicopter gunships are pounding civilian homes in al-Hajar al-Aswad in south Damascus, using explosive-laden rockets,” said the SNC, Syria’s main opposition coalition.
“Many people have been killed or injured, but the violence of the shelling is making it difficult for activists in the area to document all their names,” it added.
On Wednesday, the Observatory reported 12 people killed in the two southern districts.
The Syrian Revolution General Commission, a grassroots network of anti-regime activists, had also declared south Damascus a “disaster area” on Wednesday.
“We call on the heroes of the (rebel) Free Syrian Army to intervene and to target the army of (President Bashar) Assad,” said the SNC. “We also call on them to open routes for the civilians to flee the catastrophic conditions they are living in,” it added.
The SNC meanwhile renewed its call on the international community to intervene on behalf of the Syrian people.
“The international and Arab response to what is happening in the world’s oldest capital city (Damascus) has been completely insufficient,” said the opposition bloc.
Violence also raged in Aleppo, Syria’s commercial hub in the north where dozens were killed or injured in fierce shelling by the army, said the Observatory.
The watchdog had no immediate details on the exact number killed in the Aleppo district.
The violence came a day after 125 people were killed across Syria, including 80 civilians, 17 rebels and 28 soldiers, according to the Observatory.
More than 27,000 people have been killed in violence across Syria since March last year, the Observatory says. The UN puts the figure at more than 20,000.
21/08/12
The ground-to-air weapons have been delivered across the Turkish border and were partly paid for by Saudi Arabia
What a Stinger missile looks likeCIA spies have smuggled up to 14 Stinger missiles into Syria so rebels can defend themselves from air strikes.
The ground-to-air weapons have been delivered across the Turkish border to the Free Syrian Army and were partly paid for by Saudi Arabia, a security source claimed.
President Bashar al-Assad’s MIG-23 warplanes and helicopter gunships have killed more than 1,000 people.
The source said: “The West and the rest of the Middle East is not going to be able to secure a no-fly zone above Syria any time soon so the only way to stop the carnage is to take on Assad’s air force from the ground.
“Knowing that Stingers are in the hands of the opposition forces will hopefully mean Assad’s air power will be much diminished but this will be a slow process.”
Activists say more than 20,000 people have died in the 17 month civil war and the daily death toll has risen past 500 this week.
05/08/12
5 August 2012 Last updated at 05:19 ET
Military sources in Syria say 20,000 troops are now massed in and around the city of Aleppo, where the army is fighting to drive out rebel forces.
Fighter jets, helicopter gunships, and artillery are already bombarding rebel positions, but the rebels are said to be well dug in.
In Damascus, the army says it has retaken the last rebel stronghold.
The BBC’s Jim Muir reports from Beirut. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-19134736
31/07/2012
Syria’s 16-month revolt has finally erupted in the country’s commercial hub
Aleppo: The route to Aleppo from the Turkish border is a long web of dirt back roads with miles of exposed ground. But undaunted and in total darkness, dozens of young men jump onto white trucks with their AK-47 rifles, keen to join the fight there.
Syria’s 16-month revolt has finally erupted in the country’s commercial hub, but the momentum was not generated inside the city — it was brought into the historic city’s ancient stone alleyways from the scorched fields of the surrounding countryside.
But now the things are heating up.
Troops and rebels fought pitched battles near an intelligence headquarters in Aleppo yesterday, a watchdog said, as a military offensive in Syria’s commercial capital raged into a fourth day.
The fighting erupted when rebels launched an assault before dawn on the powerful air force intelligence branch in Aleppo’s Zahraa district, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Fighting was continuing into the day.
Rebels armed with rocket propelled grenades attacked Aleppo’s main military court as well as a police station and a branch of the ruling Baath Party in the city’s Salhin district, the Britain-based Observatory said.
Meanwhile, the neighbourhoods of Firdoss, Al Mashhad and Ansari were bombarded through the night by government troops, the watchdog said.
Fighting also flared in Salaheddin, the rebels’ main bastion in Aleppo, which was strafed by government helicopter gunships, according to the Syrian Revolution General Committee, a network of activists on the ground.
A security official in Damascus had said that the army had regained some of Salaheddin but it was facing “a very strong resistance.” The rebels, however, denied that the army had advanced even “one metre”.
The Observatory said violence across the country as of on Monday saw 93 people killed - 41 civilians, 19 rebels and 33 soldiers.
30/07/12
#Syria Freedom Fighters In Mazda Pickup Defend Aleppo from Dictator Assad Helicopter Gunships
30/07/2012
BEIRUT — Syrian guns pounded rebel positions in Aleppo on Sunday, as panicked residents streamed from the besieged city and the opposition denied the military was driving out insurgents.
The United Nations said more than 200,000 people had fled the city in the last two days. The flight coincides with a military bombardment with artillery and helicopter gunships, the opposition says.
Many districts in the city of more than 2 million have been largely abandoned, witnesses said. Residents left the city or relocated to areas of town away from the fighting.
An unknown number of civilians remained trapped in Aleppo, said the U.N., which appealed to both sides to grant safe access to aid groups.
The battle for the northern city — Syria’s commercial hub — could be a decisive moment in the Syrian conflict, which began more than 16 months ago with street protests but soon evolved into an armed rebellion against the government of President Bashar Assad. The United States and other nations have warned of a possible bloodbath in Aleppo, about 200 miles north of Damascus, the Syrian capital.
Syrian authorities vowed Sunday that that the “terrorists” — the official term used by the government for armed rebels — would be vanquished. The official news agency said troops had inflicted “very heavy losses on the terrorists” in Aleppo, while “fleeing terrorists are being pursued and … their hide-outs are being raided.”
The opposition offered a conflicting narrative, asserting that rebels had held off the military assault while inflicting heavy losses on government troops.
Unverified video said to be from Aleppo and uploaded onto the Internet showed refugees fleeing, smoke rising from residential buildings, soldiers firing into city streets and rebels setting up checkpoints, among other images.
Reports Sunday indicated that government forces held back scores of tanks that are said to be massed outside the city, many near a stadium complex in the southwestern district of Hamdania.
Instead of a direct assault with tanks and troops, which are vulnerable on narrow streets, the government may rely on shelling and fire by helicopter gunships. That was the strategy employed this year in the central city of Homs, where weeks of shelling finally forced rebels out of the Baba Amr district and left much of the area in ruins.
“They want to do what they did in Homs,” Col. Abduljabbar Aqidi, a rebel commander, told Agence France-Presse in an interview. “The army can only use its aircraft or heavy artillery at a distance, shelling cities, destroying houses. It cannot enter the city.”
The opposition appears to have calculated that a counterattack that leaves much of the city in rubble will serve to erode whatever public support remains for the government. Destroying Syria’s most populous city looms as a high price for victory in Aleppo, once counted as a bastion of support for Assad.
“Most of the people, and even the middle class, are now with the revolution as they are watching Aleppo being destroyed by the regular army,” said one opposition activist speaking from the Firdous district, close to the historic old city.
But press accounts from the city also indicate that some residents are angry at the opposition for having provoked a military onslaught likely to cause widespread devastation.
Unlike the recent fighting in Damascus, where uprisings in scattered districts appeared spontaneous in nature, the rebel assault on Aleppo seems to be based on a plan. It began with a months-long campaign to seize many of the city’s suburbs and outskirts, easing the path for infiltration and opening supply routes from the Turkish border.
On July 20, rebels began occupying some of Aleppo’s outlying areas, from the southwest to the northeast. The districts appear to have been chosen because their residents, mostly members of Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority, were hostile to Assad’s government. Members of Assad’s minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, dominate his administration.
Some of Aleppo’s rebel-occupied districts, like Salahuddin and nearby Sikari, both in the city’s southeast, are home to people whose family roots are in nearby Idlib province, a hotbed of the insurgency.
Until recent days, Aleppo had largely been insulated from the violence raging in Syria’s provinces.
For much of the rebellion, Aleppo’s Sunni Muslim merchant class, as well as minority Christian and Kurdish populations, among others, were thought to have remained generally loyal to Assad. Many were wary of the opposition and the possibility of Iraq-style chaos. Some Christians see the rebellion, with its Islamist overtones, as a threat to religious tolerance.
In comments to reporters Sunday, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said the Syrian government’s use of helicopter gunships will prove to be “a nail in Assad’s coffin.” He spoke at the beginning of a five-day Mideast tour.
patrick.mcdonnell@latimes.com
Marrouch is a special correspondent. Times staff in Reyhanli, Turkey, contributed to this report.
Syrian rebels are readying themselves to battle government forces for control of Aleppo
27/07/2012
Syrian forces have renewed their assault on the northern city of Aleppo, firing from helicopter gunships on rebel-held areas.
The US state department has said it fears Syrian government forces are preparing to carry out a massacre.
The pro-government al-Watan newspaper has warned that the mother of all battles is about to start.
Rebels in Aleppo, Syria’s most populous city, have been stockpiling ammunition and medical supplies in preparation.
Syrian troops fired from helicopter gunships on south-western neighbourhoods of Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told the AFP news agency.
At the scene
It is almost inconceivable that President Assad could allow his government to lose control of Aleppo, so it is reasonable to expect they are going to throw everything they possibly can at the city.
And that is what they are preparing for here. One of the neighbourhoods is appealing for more blood supplies. We are hearing reports of hundreds, possibly thousands of families leaving some districts. Everybody is bracing themselves for an intensive campaign.
The way it has worked in other cities is that there is an intensive bombardment by artillery and mortars, and then when it starts to go calm, tanks begin to roll in. This is a very congested heavily populated area, so it will be bloody.
A convoy of tanks from Idlib province, near the border with Turkey, arrived in Aleppo overnight and was attacked by rebels, the Observatory said.
At least 34 people were killed in the city on Thursday, activists said, as artillery and helicopter gunships attacked rebel targets.
Residents flee
The US state department said the deployment of tanks, helicopter gunships and fixed-winged aircraft around Aleppo suggested an attack was imminent.
But the US would not intervene, said state department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, except by continuing to channel non-lethal assistance such as communications equipment and medical supplies to the rebels.
The BBC’s Ian Pannell, near Aleppo, says thousands of people have already left as fears grow that an intense battle looms.
Talal al-Mayhani, an activist with connections to the rebel movement in Aleppo, said the battle for the city was likely to play out in a similar way to an earlier battle in the capital Damascus.
There, rebels took control of large parts of the city before being forced to withdraw in the face of a government offensive.
Foreign journalists operate under heavy restrictions in Syria so claims made by either side are difficult to verify.
Continue reading the main story‘Lessons from Balkans conflict’
A Syrian MP from Aleppo has fled to Turkey, Turkey’s state-run Anatolia news agency says.
Ikhlas Badawi, a mother of six, said she was defecting in protest at the “violence against the people”.
Meanwhile, another defector, Gen Manaf Tlas, has put himself forward as a possible figure to unite the fractious opposition.
In an interview with a Saudi newspaper, Asharq al-Awsat, he said: “I am discussing with… people outside Syria to reach a consensus with those inside.”
However, some in the opposition regard Gen Tlas - who fled earlier this month - as a compromised figure too close to the government of President Bashar al-Assad.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon said the world must apply the lessons learned from the Bosnian conflict in the 1990s.
He was speaking in Srebrenica, where a UN peacekeeping force failed to stop the killing of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in 1995.
“I do not want to see any of my successors, after 20 years, visiting Syria, apologising for what we could have done now to protect the civilians in Syria - which we are not doing now,” Mr Ban said.
The head of UN peacekeeping operations, Herve Ladsous, defended the decision to reduce the number of observers in Syria.
“We found ourselves with too many people and not enough to do,” he said.
Speaking in Damascus, he said there was “no plan B” beyond Joint Special Envoy Kofi Annan’s peace plan.
Repeated diplomatic attempts to stop the violence have foundered, with the UN Security Council bitterly divided.
The Syrian government has said its forces are trying to dislodge the “remnants of mercenary terrorist groups”.
More than 16,000 people have been killed in Syria since the start of anti-regime protests in March 2011, activists say.
By Michael Weiss
What’s the point of diplomacy no one believes in? The Emir of Qatar has given Kofi Annan’s six-point plan for bringing peace to Syria and opening political “dialogue” a three per cent chance of success, which is several points higher than I’d give it. Susan Rice, the US ambassador to the UN, sounds fed up with the regime of Bashar al-Assad: “They have lied to the international community, lied to their own people. And the biggest fabricator of the facts is Assad himself.” The Kremlin counters that this pessimism is the real catalyst for ongoing violence; this as opposed to, say, the regular consignments of Russian armaments dispatched to Assad for killing people. “There are countries – there are outside forces – that are not interested in the success of current UN Security Council efforts,” complained Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, subtly echoing the regime’s propaganda narrative of a “conspiracy” against Syria. Many have been begging the United States and Britain and France to make this conspiracy real for some time now, lest the slow-motion creation of a failed state bordering Iraq, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan succeeds. Instead, six unarmed UN observers have just arrived in the country, and stand a fair chance of being shot themselves if they venture into Homs or Idleb, where helicopter gunships and artillery shells are still being used against civilian populations.
I spoke this morning to Saif al-Arabe, an activist based in Homs affiliated with the Syrian Revolution General Commission (SRGC). He told me that he woke up to spy planes flying overhead and a barrage of shelling, particularly of the Khalidiya and Bayada neighbourhoods. “There are three sources of the mortar fire,” Saif said. “The military factor in Al-Wah-ir, the ancient castle near the Old City and Wadi al-Dahab, a pro-regime neighbourhood.” Saif sent along a few videos, too. This one shows 14 mortars falling on Homs within the span of four minutes:
I asked Saif which party started the violence after the brief lull last Thursday when the ceasefire euphemistically described as ‘fragile’ or ‘tenuous’ was said to have taken effect. Were Free Syrian Army units attacking regime forces or did the regime fire first? He replied that the FSA had abided by the ceasefire: “I can emphasize to you that they did not start any attack on Assad’s forces, which are shelling all the neighbourhoods randomly. But FSA elements are now trying to stop any storming of the city by Assad’s gangs.” The notorious shabbiha, which the regime has employed as death-and-rape squads since the start of the uprising, are manning military checkpoints alongside army personnel, as displayed in this video:
So why is the regime bombarding Homs again? Saif said the reason was simple: residents who fled Baba Amr after the month-long siege there last February mainly wound up in other Homs neighbourhoods such as al-Qarabees and al-Kusr. And so these, too, must be now pummelled. “There are no cool districts in Homs,” Saif said. “All areas are hot.”
And as in Baba Amr months ago, food and water is scarce and electricity is cut for most of the day. Field hospitals are suffering severe shortages of medicine and equipment. They’re staffed by civilian volunteers, not doctors.
Only a sadist or a fool would call this a truce.
By Michael Weiss Last updated: February 29th, 2012
A wounded Syrian boy lies half-buried in a shelled house in Baba Amr (Photo: AFP/Getty)
I’ve just had a chilling Skype conversation with a resident in Homs who wishes to be identified as “Sammy”. He’s in an area of the city close to Baba Amr, though for his safety I won’t disclose it.
Sammy told me that the shelling started in the late afternoon there and it “was one of the most terrible days we have ever seen. Everything was shaking”.
So is Sammy. It’s snowing in Homs right now and I could hear his voice quaver from the cold. He’s using a satellite phone to connect to the internet and his laptop runs on a battery that also, inconveniently, has to heat his home. Our conversation was brief.
Sammy confirmed that intense gun battles have raged throughout the city, presumably between the Free Syrian Army and the regime’s forces. “We have seen Assad’s forces trying to enter the area. They came back in a very fast way, so we know that someone is banning them from entering.” (Another eyewitness interviewed early by the Today Programme estimated that 400 FSA fighters were stationed in Baba Amr and that they’d fight to the death to defend the besieged district.)
I asked about activists’ accounts of helicopter gunships and even military fighter jets overhead. Sammy said he saw helicopters flying but didn’t witness any firing from the air.
He’s effectively trapped where he is. Escape isn’t possible now because there are snipers stationed everywhere and “they shoot at everything that moves”.
“I saw a lot of tanks, they are directly under my home. They move in and out of my street where I am now. When they go out, they become more violent.”
I asked what message he had to relay to the world.
“I want them to stop this nightmare. I want them to rescue civilians. There are children here who haven’t done anything, they have no fault and they need to be rescued immediately. The world should act seriously. It’s not a good situation to say that we’re in the 21st century and we can see such horrible things here.”
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