ALEPPO, Syria, Aug 10, (Agencies): Syrian troops and rebels fought fierce battles on Friday in the city of Aleppo, where several people died when a shell crashed into a bakery as hundreds queued for bread, AFP correspondents said.

They said around a dozen people were killed and 20 wounded at the bakery in the increasingly desperate city. At least three children were among the dead in the eastern Tariq al-Bab district of Syria’s commercial capital.
And troops repelled a rebel attack on Aleppo’s international airport, state news agency SANA reported. “Mercenary terrorists” had tried to attack it but the “army hit back and killed most of them.”

Rebels vowed to fight on in Aleppo, a day after being driven out of a key district under heavy shellfire.
In the latest clashes, Aleppo’s historic Citadel, part of a UNESCO-listed world heritage site, was heavily damaged by bombing, according to the opposition.

The violence raged on as world powers prepared to name veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi as their new envoy to seek a peaceful and politically workable end to a 17-month uprising that has cost more than 21,000 lives.

A rebel commander, Hossam Abu Mohammed, said his men were still fighting in parts of Aleppo’s southwestern district of Salaheddin after most fled on Thursday in the face of heavy bombing and advancing troops.

“We will not let Salaheddin go,” the Free Syrian Army’s Abu Mohammed told AFP by telephone on the third day of a government offensive to take the city.

The army again bombed parts of Salaheddin, as well as the Sakhur and Hanano districts in the northeast, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that five civilians were among 56 people killed nationwide.
Before dawn, a MiG 21 fighter jet dropped four bombs on rebel positions in Hanano, an AFP correspondent said. One struck the courtyard of the FSA headquarters in the area and another a nearby house, wounding a number of people.
Angry residents shouted hostile slogans against France and the United States, saying: “No one is helping us.”
“We are behind the Free Syrian Army, but it is because of them that all of this is happening,” one of them lamented.
The opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) said Aleppo’s 13th-century Citadel, part of a complex of sites in the city’s historic heart that the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation says is of “outstanding universal value” had been damaged in army shelling.
It was not possible to independently verify the opposition’s claim.
Regime forces shot dead a 19-year-old protester in New Aleppo, an upscale district of the embattled city, as they opened fire on demonstrators, according to monitors.
The Observatory said the youth died from a gunshot to the head, adding that three other demonstrators were wounded in the army-controlled district.
Brahimi
Veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi is expected to replace Kofi Annan as the UN-Arab League joint special envoy for Syria barring a last-minute change, diplomats said on Thursday.
The former Algerian foreign minister, who has a long history as a diplomatic troubleshooter, will have his work cut out for him in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad is using his security forces to try to crush a 17-month-old pro-democracy rebellion.
Annan, a former UN secretary-general and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, said last week he would step down as the special envoy because he was unable to do his job with the UN Security Council hopelessly deadlocked over Syria.
Brahimi’s appointment could be announced as early as next week but the diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said there are sometimes last-minute changes if a key government has concerns about the choice or the candidate has misgivings.
Brahimi, 78, has served as a UN special envoy in a series of challenging circumstances, including in Iraq after the US invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, in Afghanistan both before and after the end of Taleban rule and in South Africa as it emerged from the apartheid era.
Syria, however, may present an unusually vexing assignment, in part because international action to try to end the violence has been stymied by the disagreements between the five veto-holding permanent members of the UN Security Council.
While the council united in April to approve the deployment of 300 monitors to Syria to observe a failed ceasefire as part of Annan’s peace plan, Russia and China vetoed three other resolutions that criticized Syria and threatened sanctions against Damascus.
In announcing his resignation, Annan explicitly blamed “finger-pointing and name-calling” at the Security Council for his decision to quit, but suggested his successor may have better luck.
Assad’s forces have killed more than 15,000 people since March of 2011 in a sustained effort to end the anti-government rebellion, some Western leaders say. Damascus says the rebels have killed several thousand members of its security forces.
Assad has suffered a series of blows in recent weeks, including the defection of his prime minister, Riyad Hijab, on Monday and the assassination of four of his top security officials last month.
He named a new prime minister, Wael al-Halki, on Thursday as government forces pushed rebels back from a strategic district in Aleppo, Syria’s commercial hub and largest city.
In accepting Annan’s resignation, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon thanked him for having taken on “this most difficult and potentially thankless of assignments.”
A spokesman for Ban, who is expected to formally name Annan’s successor, was not immediately available for comment.
Sanctions
The United States denounced the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah for backing Bashar al-Assad on Friday, and added it to a list of organizations under sanctions for their ties to the Syrian regime.
“This action highlights Hezbollah’s activities within Syria and its integral role in the continued violence the Assad regime is inflicting on the Syrian population,” the US Treasury Department said in a statement.
Washington already classes Hezbollah a “terrorist organization” and it is under US sanctions, but Friday’s move explicitly ties the group to the violence underway in Syria, where Assad is attempting to put down a revolt.
“Hezbollah’s extensive support to the Syrian government’s violent suppression of the Syrian people exposes the true nature of this terrorist organization and its destabilizing presence in the region,” said David Cohen, the Treasury’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence.
“Long after the Assad regime is gone, the people of Syria and the entire global community will remember that Hezbollah, and its patron Iran, contributed to the regime’s murder of countless innocent Syrians.”
Hezbollah was added to a blacklist associated with an executive order signed by US President Barack Obama in August last year which targeted the government of Syria and its supporters.
Those sanctions were designed increase pressure on Damascus as Washington called for the first time for Assad to step down over his military assault on rebelling Syrians opposed to his rule.
But 17 months after the start of the uprising the Syrian leader remains in power, and more than 20,000 people have been killed.

Aid
Britain’s government is giving an extra £5 million ($7.8 million) worth of aid to Syria’s opposition, supplying items including communications equipment, body armor and medical supplies to non-armed rebel groups, the foreign ministry said Friday.

Foreign Secretary William Hague insisted that the UK would not supply any weapons — and said supplies were not intended for rebel fighters — but declined to specify exactly who would receive the equipment, saying they would likely be targeted as a result.

Britain has previously given £1.4 million ($2.2 million) worth of nonlethal support to Syria’s opposition. The United States has earmarked a fund of $25 million to spend on nonlethal communications assistance.

Syrian President Bashar Assad’s crackdown on popular uprisings that began in March 2011 has evolved into a full-blown civil war in the Arab country. Human rights activists estimate 20,000 people have died in the conflict.

“This is assistance that will help save lives,” Hague told reporters at Britain’s foreign ministry. “It will help people caught up in a terrible conflict.”
Hague said that the new British support would be provided to “the Syrian people and the Syrian political opposition,” but that to identify specific groups or individuals would likely put them at risk.
“I cannot say anything, of course, that could risk identifying these people to the regime or reveal the precise nature of all of that assistance,” Hague said.
Britain has established contact with political figures tied to Syria’s rebels in Istanbul, where ex-British ambassador to Yemen Jonathan Wilkes is meeting with political elements of the Free Syrian Army, members of Syria’s National Coordination Council and the Syrian National Council.
The UK has previously been cautious over direct talks with Syria’s rebels. But Hague said the West must help them to prepare for Assad’s ouster or risk allowing the country to become a haven for al-Qaeda and other extremists.
“This is not taking sides in a civil war,” he wrote in an op-ed article for the Times of London published Friday. “The risk of total disorder and a power vacuum is so great that we must build relationships now with those who may govern Syria in the future.”
“If we do not work with those Syrians who want to see a democratic and open country, we leave a void to be exploited by al-Qaeda and others with extremist agendas who wish to hijack the conflict,” he added.
Hague said that discussions with Syria’s opposition activists would stress that they must adhere to international standards on human rights despite “whatever horrors are perpetrated by the regime.”
He told reporters that Britain was also providing video cameras and forensic equipment to Syrian activists to help them record human rights abuses by Assad’s forces.
Hague said civilians in areas under regime control would receive supplies including “paramedic trauma kits, specialist trauma treatment, surgical equipment, field dressings, antibiotics, painkillers and water purification kits.”
Satellite phones and electricity generators would help political activists overcome the regime’s communications blockade, he said.
In his op-ed, Hague said he was using the spotlight focused on London as it hosts the Olympics to draw attention to international divisions over the response to Syria.
Russia and China have vetoed attempts to pass tough UN Security Council resolutions aimed at Assad’s regime. Last week, the UN and Arab League envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, announced his resignation, following a frustrating six-month effort that failed to achieve even a temporary cease-fire.
Hague said he continued to hope Security Council members could agree to settle their differences, suggesting Britain would not pause “for a second in our efforts to secure the united, robust diplomatic action which this crisis demands.”
Refugees
A rising tide of civilians fleeing Syria’s violence is hitting four neighboring countries where almost 150,000 are being helped in camps run by the UN refugee agency and its partners, officials said Friday.
That figure counts only Syrians who have registered or are in the process of registering as refugees. Officials acknowledge the real number of Syrian refugees is likely above 200,000 since tens of thousands are believed to have not yet registered with authorities.
In late June, UN agencies estimated they would need $193 million to help 185,000 refugees from Syria by the end of 2012.

Spokesman Adrian Edwards told reporters Friday in Geneva that the UN refugee agency’s offices in Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan and Iraq have all reported big increases this week in the number of registrants.
As of Thursday night, the agency had taken note of 146,667 such people — 50,227 in Turkey, 45,869 in Jordan, 36,841 in Lebanon and 13,730 in Iraq.

“In several countries, we know there to be (additional) substantial refugee numbers, but these people have not yet registered,” Edwards said.

There were more than 6,000 new arrivals in Turkey this week alone, many from the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo and surrounding villages, while others came from Idlib and Latakia. “Where fighting happens, we tend to see the consequences,” he added.

Turkey has nine sites, including a new camp this week at Akcakale, for its fast-growing refugee population, of which 72 percent is women and children. It has notified UN and other aid officials that it intends to double its capacity by building enough camps to hold 100,000 refugees.

Jordan, meanwhile, is straining to build more camps to accommodate refugees from Syria’s south, where the uprising against President Bashar Assad’s government began in March 2011. An estimated 4,000 Syrians arrived in Jordan on one recent night alone.

The International Organization for Migration said in a report Friday that more than 1,100 third-country nationals have sought its help to return home from Damascus and that 25 embassies — including those of Indonesia, Sudan and Yemen — have asked it to arrange travel out of Syria for another 3,011 people.