ALEPPO, Syria, July 29, (Agencies): The government of Bashar al-Assad declared victory on Sunday in a hard-fought battle for Syria’s capital Damascus, and pounded rebels who control parts of its largest city Aleppo.
Assad’s forces have struggled as never before to maintain their grip on the country over the past two weeks after a major rebel advance into the two largest cities and an explosion that killed four top security officials.
Government forces have succeeded in reimposing their grip on the capital after a punishing battle, but rebels are still in control of sections of Aleppo, clashing with reinforced army troops for several days.
“Today I tell you, Syria is stronger... In less than a week they were defeated (in Damascus) and the battle failed,” Foreign Minister Walid Moualem said on a visit to Iran, Assad’s main ally in a region where other neighbours have forsaken him.
“So they moved on to Aleppo and I assure you, their plots will fail.”
Rebel fighters were clearly in control of parts of Aleppo, where Reuters journalists saw neighbourhoods dotted with Free Syrian Army checkpoints flying black and white Islamist banners.
Helicopter gunships hovered over the city shortly after dawn and the thud of artillery boomed across neighbourhoods.
Rebel fighters, patrolling opposition districts in flat-bed trucks flying green-white-and-black “independence” flags, said they were holding off Assad’s forces in the south-western Aleppo district of Salaheddine, where clashes have gone on for days.
Opposition activists also reported fighting in other rebel-held districts of Aleppo, in what could herald the start of a decisive phase in the battle for Syria’s commercial hub, after the army sent tank columns and troop reinforcements last week.
Snipers
Cars entering one Aleppo district came under fire from snipers and a Reuters photographer saw three bodies lying in the street. Unable to move them to hospital for fear of shelling, residents had placed frozen water bottles on two of the corpses to slow their decomposition in the baking heat.
Other rebel-held areas visited by Reuters were empty of residents. Fighters were basing themselves in houses - some clearly abandoned in a hurry, with food still in the fridges.
A burnt out tank lay in the street, while nearby another one had been captured intact and covered in tarpaulin.
In a largely empty street, flanked by closed shops and run-down buildings, women clad in long black abaya cloaks walked with children next to walls daubed with rebel graffiti - “Freedom”, “Free Syrian Army” and “Down with Bashar.”
Rubbish lay uncollected. In one street families were packing vans full of mattresses in apparent preparation to flee.
Near the centre of town, most shops were shuttered, some with the word “Strike” painted over them. The only shop doing business was a bakery selling subsidised bread, where the queue stretched around the block. Burnt cars could be seen in many streets, some with the word “shabbiha” marked on them - a reference to pro-Assad militiamen.
UN Undersecretary-General for humanitarian affairs Valerie Amos said 200,000 people had fled the fighting in and around Aleppo in the last two days, and the violence across Syria made it hard for humanitarian agencies reach them.
“Many people have sought temporary shelter in schools and other public buildings in safer areas. They urgently need food, mattresses and blankets, hygiene supplies and drinking water.”
Late on Sunday Syrian state television said soldiers were repelling “terrorists” in Salaheddine and had captured several of their leaders.
Control
“Complete control of Salaheddine has been (won back) from those mercenary gunmen,” an unidentified military officer told the television news, saying the gunmen included fighters from Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Turkey and Yemen. “In a few days safety and security will return to the city of Aleppo.”
Reuters journalists in the city were not able to reach the district to verify whether rebels had been pushed out. The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human rights said fighting continued in Salaheddine late on Sunday.
The leader of Syria’s main political opposition group, the Syrian National Council, called for foreign allies to provide heavy weapons to fight Assad’s “killing machine.”
“The rebels are fighting with primitive weapons...We want weapons that we can stop tanks and planes with,” SNC chief Abdelbasset Seida said in Abu Dhabi. He urged foreign allies to circumvent the divided UN Security Council and intervene.
“Our friends and allies will bear responsibility for what is happening in Aleppo if they do not move soon,” he said, adding that talks would start on forming a transitional government.
Arab League head Nabil Elaraby said the battle in Aleppo amounted to “war crimes”, and perpetrators would eventually be punished, Egypt’s MENA state news agency reported.
The Arab League has suspended Syria and lined up with the West and Turkey against Assad. Assad’s government blames Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia and Qatar, for the revolt.
Reuters reported on Friday that Saudi Arabia and Qatar had set up a base in southeastern Turkey to aid the rebels.
A Saudi Foreign Ministry spokesman declined on Sunday to comment directly but said Riyadh gave financial and humanitarian aid to the Syrian people. He also hinted at more direct support, saying countries should enable Syrians “to protect themselves at the very least, if the international community is not able to do so.”
Structure
Assad’s ruling structure draws strongly on his Alawite minority sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam, while his opposition is drawn largely from the Sunni Muslim majority, backed by Sunni leaders who rule nearly all other Arab states.
That has raised fears that the 16-month-old conflict could spread across the wider Middle East, where a sectarian divide between Sunnis and Shi’ites has been at the root of violence in Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain and elsewhere.
Shi’ite Iran demonstrated its firm support for Assad by hosting his foreign minister. At a joint news conference with Moualem, Iran’s own Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi rebuked the West and Arab states for holding the “illusion” that Assad could be easily replaced in a managed transition.
In Damascus, where Assad’s forces have pushed back a rebel offensive since a deadly July 18 bomb attack on his inner circle, many residents have fled fighting in the outskirts for relative safety in the heart of the capital.
In the centre, shops open only between 9 am and 3 pm, food prices have soared and no one dares walk outside after dusk, even in the holy month of Ramadan when streets are normally packed late into the night with people breaking the fast.
“To begin with I was with the regime, for sure,” said Ahmed, from one of the southern suburbs where the army, backed by helicopters and tanks, launched its counter-offensive.
“But now, no, the regime must go. Take what they want with them, but they must go.”
The battle for Aleppo, a city of 2.5 million people, is a decisive test of the government’s ability to retake its two main cities. It has committed huge military resources to the battle there after losing control of outlying rural areas and some border crossings with Turkey and Iraq.
The British-based Observatory said 26 people were killed in Aleppo on Saturday and 190 across Syria. It reported fighting in Deraa, Homs and Hama. There was no way to verify its figures.
The Aleppo fighting follows the July 18 bomb attack, which killed four top security officials including Assad’s defence minister, intelligence chief and powerful brother-in-law.
Interior Minister Mohammad al-Shaar, who was wounded in the attack, told state media the assassination had only hardened the authorities’ determination to crush the revolt.
“Before this cowardly explosion, we were all working flat out. But now we will exert 10 times the effort to pursue those who threaten the security of our country,” Shaar said.
Guards
Syrian border guards killed a large number of “terrorists” who attempted to cross into the country from neighbouring Turkey on Sunday, the official SANA news agency said.
“The border guards managed to kill a large number of terrorists in the Ain Bayda area near Jisr al-Shughur, and the rest fled back into Turkey,” SANA quoted an unnamed official as saying.
The incident occurred in Idlib province, the agency said, adding that elsewhere in the same region “several terrorists’ cars, fitted with machineguns, have been destroyed, and weapons have been confiscated.”
SANA said regime forces had foiled a similar attempt on Saturday, this time from Syria’s border with Lebanon.
Lebanon’s northern and eastern borders with Syria have seen frequent exchanges of fire in recent weeks, some of them deadly, as well as shelling from Syria into Lebanon.
The head of the exiled Syrian opposition called on Saturday for the rebels to be armed, insisting that President Bashar al-Assad should be tried for “massacres” and not be offered asylum in any future solution.
Syrian National Council chief Abdel Basset Sayda also said that the opposition will discuss a proposed transitional government with rebel forces.
“We want weapons that would stop tanks and jet fighters. That is what we want,” he said following talks in Abu Dhabi as regime forces launched an all-out assault on the northern city of Aleppo.
He urged Arab “brothers and friends to support the Free (Syrian) Army” saying the support should be “qualitative because the rebels are fighting with old weapons.”
He said that the rebellion needs support in order to achieve a “significant change” in the uprising that began in March last year.
“There should be relief support, but also support that allows this people to defend itself against the machine of killing,” he said.
Sayda pointed out that the opposition needs a minimum of $145 million monthly to provide basic needs, while it has received only $15 million over several months.
He thanked oil-rich Saudi Arabia for organising a five-day fundraising campaign which concluded on Friday after collecting over $72 million.
Sayda meanwhile said that any future plan should not include an amnesty to the Syrian leader, saying he should be put on trial.
“The Yemeni example can’t be applied in Syria,” he said, referring to the amnesty given to former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh following mass protests.
“There are massacres being committed. We believe Bashar al-Assad should be tried. He is a criminal and should not be given a shelter,” he added.
The SNC chief said the council would discuss a proposed transitional government with rebel groups on the ground, adding that its leader should be someone who had been committed to the uprising from the start, in an apparent rejection of giving General Manaf Tlass, who defected earlier this month, a leading role.
“We are studying the idea (of transitional government) and we will contact all forces on the ground in Syria,” he said.
The leader should be an “honest and patriotic person... committed to the objectives of the Syrian revolution since its beginning,” he said.
He said that coordination would be in the first instance with groups on the ground when he was asked about coordination with Tlass, the highest ranking officer to abandon the regime of Assad.
“We want a government that is strong and capable of managing the situation,” he said.
Sayda warned of “massacres plotted by the regime” against Aleppo, holding “brothers and friends responsible if they do not act.”
Refugees
More than 12,000 Syrians fleeing the violence in their home country have sought refuge in Algeria, a source close to the interior ministry said on Sunday.
The authorities have decided to “take charge of Syrians who have sought refuge in Algeria, and whose number is estimated officially at 12,000,” the source told AFP, although Syrian opposition sources put the number at up to 20,000.
Algiers is considering using schools that are closed for the summer to house Syrians who are currently in the capital.
Syrian opposition sources inside Algeria say many of their countrymen are also present in other towns in the North African nation, and say they number between 18,000 and 20,000.
Some newspapers have reported as many as 23,000 Syrians in the country, but such figures are hard to verify since they include only arrivals, and do not include those leaving later.
A number of Syrians are also thought to have arrived in Algeria from Lebanon and Jordan, which adjoin the violence-ridden state where a nearly 17-month-long uprising has cost the lives of more than 20,000 people, according to activists.
The large number of Syrians in Algeria may be attributed to the lack of visa requirements between the two countries.
Algeria has sought to rein in the exodus by reducing the number of weekly Air Algerie flights between Damascus and Algiers from three to one.
Passengers must also have return tickets and show proof of where they will stay in Algeria before being allowed to board flights.
Last week, the foreign ministry in Algiers estimated that around 1,000 Algerian families living in Syria had fled the violence there.
Brotherhood
Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood denounced on Sunday President Bashar al-Assad, his allies Iran and Russia, and the international community’s for its “silence” and failure to protect civilians.
In a statement issued amid raging battles in Syria’s commercial capital Aleppo, the influential Islamist movement said Assad was “legally and morally responsible for the death of every victim in Syria.”
The Brotherhood also said that both Iran and Russia — the powerful allies of the embattled Assad regime — were “drowning in the blood of the Syrian people.”
“Neither the Russians nor the Iranians will relieve (Assad) of responsibility for his crimes,” it added.
The statement was released as troops pushed an offensive for a second day in a row on rebel-held districts of Aleppo, the key city in northern Syria.
Russian Foreign Minister “Sergei Lavrov gave Bashar al-Assad the green light to carry out a massacre,” it said.
The Brotherhood also said the international community was “a partner” to violence in Syria, “by standing silent for too long... and failing to respect its obligation under international law to protect civilians.”
Echoing a statement issued earlier on Sunday by the opposition Syrian National Council — in which the Brotherhood plays an important role — the exiled Islamist group warned of an imminent “massacre” in Aleppo.
It also accused Assad’s regime of failing to deliver basic services to much of Aleppo’s population.
“There is no running water in the houses, nor is there flour in the bakeries,” it said. “There is no medicine in the pharmacies, nor any other kind of service being delivered.”
The Muslim Brotherhood was banned in Syria in 1963. Many of its members fled the country following a revolt that was violently suppressed in 1982, leaving nearly 20,000 people dead according to estimates.