AZAZ, Syria, July 25, (Agencies): The Syrian army turned its forces on Aleppo on Wednesday, ordering an armoured column to advance on the country’s second biggest city and pounding rebels there with artillery and attack helicopters, opposition activists said.

As hostilities intensified near the Turkish border, Ankara said it was closing its crossing posts, although the United Nations said refugees fleeing Syria would be allowed through.

At the Syrian town of Azaz, a few miles south of the Turkish border, rebels appeared in control after heavy clashes over the past month in which they succeeded in driving out government forces, leaving the place a rubble-strewn ghost-town.

Syria’s ambassadors to the United Arab Emirates and Cyprus — a married couple — have deserted their posts, becoming the latest officials to abandon the Damascus government, rebels said.

The 16-month revolt against President Bashar al-Assad has been transformed from an insurgency in remote provinces into a battle for control of the two main cities, Aleppo and the capital, Damascus, where fighting exploded last week.

Assad’s forces have launched massive counter assaults in both cities. They appear to have beaten rebels back from neighbourhoods in the capital and are turning towards Aleppo, a commercial hub in the north.

North of Aleppo, the town of Azaz has been almost completely destroyed by heavy fighting. Burnt-out armoured personnel carriers sat on the roads where rebels hit them with rocket-propelled grenades. Bullet casings were scattered everywhere.

Most residents fled during the latest fighting, which drove Assad’s forces out over the past month and ended in the rebels taking the Bab al-Salam border crossing with Turkey on Sunday.

Fighting in and around Aleppo is expected to prompt an exodus across the Turkish border, where some Syrian refugees are already complaining about poor conditions and have clashed with riot police in disputes over food.

“There is not enough food. They have broken our hearts, the Turks. Why are they doing this to us?” said a sobbing woman called Umm Omar, with her four children huddled next to her in a camp near the border.
Further south, Syrian forces used artillery and fired rockets on Wednesday on the northern Damascus suburb of al-Tel in an attempt to seize it from rebels, forcing hundreds of families to flee, residents and opposition activists said.

“Military helicopters are flying now over the town. People were awakened by the sound of explosions and are running away,” Rafe Alam, one of the activists, said by phone from a hill overlooking Tel. “Electricity and telephones have been cut off.”

Opposition sources also reported helicopters and machineguns were firing on the neighbourhood of Hajar al-Aswad. The slum lies on the southern outskirts of the capital and has been a haven for rebels sneaking into Damascus from the suburbs.

Chemical
Syria has assured Russia that its chemical weapons are secure, a Russian deputy foreign minister said Wednesday, repeating Moscow’s calls for Damascus not to use its stockpile.

“We have received firm assurances from Damascus that the security of these arsenals is fully ensured,” Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said in an interview with the ITAR-TASS news agency.

Gatilov stressed that Syria as a signatory of the Geneva protocol banning the use of chemical weapons “had taken on itself concrete obligations to renounce such methods of warfare.”

“We consider that Syria must fulfil its obligations,” he said.

He cautioned however that whatever the assurances of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, the chemical weapons could fall into the hands of the opposition.

“We must not forget about the other side of this question, namely that the armed opposition is acting there and here it cannot be ruled out that the arsenals of chemical weapons could somehow fall into their hands,” he said.

Syria admitted Monday that it possesses chemical weapons and warned that it would use them if it was attacked by an external aggressor, while saying it would not use them against its own civilians.

Russia responded Tuesday by urging its Soviet-era ally to comply with international treaties and refrain from using its chemical weapons, while not directly blaming Syria for making the threat.
Border

Turkey indefinitely closed three border crossings Wednesday to Turkish nationals trying to get into Syria, citing security concerns in the strife-torn neighbour, officials said.

“The crossings of Turkish citizens at Cilvegozu, Oncupinar et Karkamis have been... suspended because their security cannot be guaranteed on the other side,” Turkish customs minister Hayati Yazici said at a news conference.

Syrian rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s regime seized control last week of three border posts opposite the Turkish crossings after clashes with Syrian forces.

Turkish trucks were burned and looted during the fighting at Bab al-Hawa, the Syrian post opposite Turkey’s Cilvegozu crossing.

Commercial trucks from Syria and any other foreign country will also be barred in both directions but any foreign national trying to leave Syria will be allowed to do so, Yazici said.

A Turkish official told AFP that foreigners who want to cross the border into Syria would be required to sign a document that warns them about potential dangers there.

Turkey and Syria were once close political allies but Ankara has become a vocal critic of Assad and his regime since the launch of a brutal crackdown on dissent in March last year.

Turkey in November halted joint oil exploration with Syria and threatened to cut the electricity it supplies to the country’s north.

The threat was renewed last month after Syria shot down a Turkish fighter jet but on Wednesday, Ankara said it would maintain its power supply to Syria for now, saying people there needed it “now more than ever”.

Syria and Turkey share a border stretching nearly 900 kms (560 miles).

Slaughter
UN General-Secretary Ban Ki-moon said Wednesday the world must unite in its response to Syria’s civil war and do all it can to stop what he called the slaughter taking place there.
Speaking in Sarajevo, Ban said other countries intervened in Libya and the Ivory Coast to stop widespread killing there, but failed during Bosnia’s 1992-95 war to prevent Bosnian Serbs from killing more than 8,000 Muslim Bosniaks in Srebrenica while the town was officially under UN protection.
But Ban did not say in his speech exactly what the international community should do in Syria beyond already calling for Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down. He also did not criticize Russia and China by name for vetoing a Western-backed UN resolution threatening Assad’s regime with sanctions.
“Quite simply, we must do better in seeing atrocities coming and telling it like it is. We cannot take refuge behind strong words and weak action,” Ban said in a speech to Bosnia’s Parliament.
“We must work to prevent and respond to grave violations of international humanitarian law. That is why we acted in Libya. We acted in Cote d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast). Today, the international community is being tested in Syria.”

As he spoke, Syrian tanks attacked insurgents in Aleppo, Syria, in an effort to end a five-day rebel fight to take the city. Activists say that Syria’s 16-month-old uprising has killed 19,000 people.
The UN chief urged the international community to act together to take what he called “meaningful action.”
“Without unity, there will be more bloodshed. More deadlock means more dead,” Ban said.
“That is why, here in the heart of a healing Bosnia and Herzegovina, I make a plea to the world: Do not delay. Come together. Act. Act now to stop the slaughter in Syria.”
Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Wednesday that the West must do all it can to persuade Syrian President Bashar Assad to step down but warns that the country would face acute divisions if Assad is ousted.
With a loosely linked group of rebel forces trying to overpower the regime, Blair said in an interview with The Associated Press that he fears unifying the country would be the toughest challenge in a post-Assad Syria.
“It’s very clear that in the end this regime will change,” said Blair, who serves as special envoy for the Quartet on the Middle East, a diplomatic peace initiative. “What we’ve got to do is both to hasten its end because the truth is, it’s lost the ability and the legitimacy to govern the country, but we’ve then got to work with everybody to construct the aftermath in the right way.”
Saudi Arabia is proposing a UN General Assembly resolution which will highlight a Syrian government threat to use chemical weapons, its UN envoy said Wednesday.
The new Arab initiative follows the failure of a western-attempt to get the UN Security Council to threaten sanctions against Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad over the 16-month-old conflict, diplomats said. Russia and China vetoed the council resolution last week.
Saudi Arabia’s UN Ambassador Abdallah al-Mouallimi told a small group of reporters the resolution would be submitted in coming days and he hoped for a vote “probably early next week.”
Asked whether the resolution would mention the Syrian government’s threat made this week to use its chemical weapons if attacked, al-Mouallimi said “it will reference all of the issues that are of significance in the Syrian situation.”
Talks
Russia is ready to host talks between the Syrian opposition and President Bashar al-Assad in a bid to end the country’s conflict, its UN envoy said Wednesday.
Ambassador Vitaly Churkin made the offer as he stepped up Russian attacks on the United States and European countries for saying they will seek to increase pressure on Assad outside of the UN Security Council.
Russia has sought to regain the diplomatic initiative since vetoing a western-backed Security Council resolution that would have threatened sanctions against Assad.
Russia will “press for inter-Syrian dialogue,” Churkin told a council debate on the Middle East.
“To further this we are ready to give the opposition and the government a platform in Moscow to forge contacts to unify the opposition and for negotiations with the government,” he said.
Syrian opposition groups are divided, but nearly all have said there can be no talks on a political accord to end the 16-month-old conflict while Assad stays in power.
Russia has protected its Soviet-era ally, however, and last week, with China, vetoed a Council resolution on Syria for the third time to the outrage of western nations.
The consequences of the vetos are “clear,” Britain’s UN ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said, highlighting the “further violence and bloodshed, and a deteriorating situation that is now spilling over the borders and sucking in the region.”
Russia on Wednesday lashed out at the United States for backing the armed opposition to the Syrian regime, saying Washington’s failure to condemn the July 18 blast that killed top security officials meant it was justifying terror.
“This is quite an awful position, I cannot even find the words to make clear how we feel,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters. “This is directly justifying terrorism. How can this be understood?”
Lavrov expressed bewilderment at calls on Russia to clarify its position on Syria, saying Moscow’s policy was crystal clear and it was the West whose actions were contradictory.
He criticized US ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, saying she had argued that the Damascus attacks meant the UN Security Council had to agree a sanctions resolution against Syria last week that Russia later vetoed.
Two more Syrian brigadier generals crossed into Turkey Tuesday, bringing to 27 the number of generals who have fled the unrest in Syria, a foreign ministry diplomat told AFP.
Turkey has given sanctuary to dozens of army defectors who have formed the Free Syrian Army in opposition to President Bahsar al-Assad’s regime.
It is also sheltering more than 42,000 Syrian refugees who have fled the violence and been accommodated in camps near the border. The camps also shelter rebel forces made up of army defectors.
Half of the members of the United Nations observer mission in Syria have left the country, as it starts its “final” 30-day mandate, the UN’s chief peacekeeper Herve Ladsous told reporters on Wednesday.
“UNSMIS (is) in a reduced format,” he said of the United Nations Supervision Mission in Syria, speaking at a press conference in Damascus.
“About half the military observers have been for the time being sent back to their countries, so the mission operates on a reduced basis, reduced in numbers, reduced in team size in the provinces and does what it can,” he said.
“But of course taking into account the security situation, which of course in many places is extremely delicate.”
Earlier, two members of the observer mission told AFP that about half the team of 300 unarmed military observers had quit Syria.
“One hundred and fifty observers left Syria on Tuesday evening and Wednesday and they will not come back,” one observer told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“They left after a decision was taken to reduce the mission by half,” a second observer said, without specifying who had taken the decision.
The UN mission, which consists of 300 unarmed military observers accompanied by around 100 civilian support staff, was deployed in April to oversee a ceasefire that went largely unrespected.
In mid-June, it suspended patrols as fighting intensified.
On July 20, the UN Security Council voted to extend the mission’s mandate for a “final” 30 days.
Ladsous pointed out that the resolution says any extension of the mandate would only be considered if there was “very specific and sustainable progress on the level of violence, which should subside substantially, and on the use of heavy weapons.
“So this is what we have to bear in mind,” he said.
The new head of the mission, Lieutenant General Babacar Gaye, also addressed reporters, noting he was taking over “in a very difficult situation.”
“During our last trip in Damascus... we witnessed some decrease in the violence, but unfortunately since that we had to suspend our activities,” he said.
“We are back with the hope that reason will prevail, that there will be in this tunnel some light that we can seize and obtain less violence,” he said.
“We have 30 days and around today 27 to go, so every opportunity will be seized to alleviate the suffering of the population. This is our main concern.”