Syrian troops push into Aleppo to oust rebels

Syr­i­ans on motor­cy­cles look at the dam­age of a destroyed house after it was hit by an air strike killing six Syr­i­ans Wednes­day in town of Tal Rifat on the out­skirts of Aleppo city, Syria. In another sign of vio­lence con­tin­u­ing through­out Syria, Syr­ian fighter jets car­ried out air strikes early Wednes­day on the vil­lage of Tel Rifat north of Aleppo, hit­ting a home and a high school and killing six peo­ple from the same fam­ily, res­i­dents said. (Asso­ci­ated Press | Khalil Hamra)

BEN HUBBARD

Asso­ci­ated Press

TEL RIFAT, Syria — Syria launched a ground assault Wednes­day on rebel-held areas of the besieged city of Aleppo, the cen­ter of bat­tles between gov­ern­ment forces and oppo­si­tion fight­ers for more than two weeks.

It was not imme­di­ately clear if the offen­sive was “the mother of all bat­tles” that Syria’s state-controlled media vowed last month would take place for con­trol of Aleppo. In recent weeks, the regime’s blis­ter­ing attacks on rebel posi­tions seem to have slowly chipped away at the opposition’s grip on its strong­holds in the country’s largest city.

The offi­cial SANA news agency said regime forces have fully regained con­trol of the Sala­hed­dine neigh­bor­hood, the main rebel area in Aleppo. It claimed the “fall” of hun­dreds of “armed ter­ror­ists,” the government’s catchall term for its oppo­nents, with­out spec­i­fy­ing what that meant.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, the direc­tor of the Britain-based Syr­ian Obser­va­tory for Human Rights, said troops met resis­tance in the offensive.

About 25 miles (40 kilo­me­ters) north of Aleppo, Syr­ian fighter jets car­ried out airstrikes early Wednes­day on the vil­lage of Tel Rifat, hit­ting a home and a high school and killing six peo­ple from the same fam­ily, res­i­dents said.

Res­i­dent Mohammed Zakkour, 35, said the sound of the jets and blasts jolted him awake and he left his house to see a huge cloud of dust and smoke ris­ing above the village.

Hours later, all that remained of a small home in the vil­lage was a tan­gled pile of rub­ble and iron bars. A bou­quet of plas­tic red flow­ers poked out of the rub­ble, and clothes still hung from one of the few walls that remained standing.

There was a large blood­stain on a rock where res­i­dents said they found one of the bodies.

“The bod­ies were under the rub­ble,” Zakkour said. “Some were cut in half and parts of them had been blown onto the neigh­bors’ roofs.”

Neigh­bors said the six were mem­bers of the Blaw fam­ily: the grand­fa­ther, his adult daugh­ter and son, the son’s wife and two of their cousins.

Other strikes left two car-sized craters in the court­yard of the adja­cent Tadamor Girls’ High School.

It was unclear why the area was tar­geted. Res­i­dents said gov­ern­ment forces often shelled the vil­lage, but that this had been the first airstrike. They acknowl­edged that there were some rebels in the vil­lage, though an Asso­ci­ated Press reporter saw no armed men dur­ing a brief drive through the area.

Res­i­dents said the Blaw fam­ily was not involved in the uprising.

“They were sim­ple farm­ers who had a trac­tor and a car wash,” Zakkour said. “They never had any­thing to do with politics.”

The inter­na­tional com­mu­nity has widely con­demned the Syr­ian regime’s use of fighter planes in the civil war. The atten­tion has focused on the strug­gle for Aleppo, but Wednesday’s attack shows that the regime is using such meth­ods elsewhere.

Chaos is mount­ing inside Syria as the country’s civil war deep­ens. Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad’s regime has suf­fered a series of set­backs over the past month: Four senior secu­rity offi­cials were assas­si­nated in Dam­as­cus, there have been a string of high-level defec­tions includ­ing the prime min­is­ter this week, and gov­ern­ment forces have strug­gled to put down rebel chal­lenges in Dam­as­cus and Aleppo.

But the regime has far more pow­er­ful weapons than the rebels and retains a firm grip on much of the country.

Aleppo, Syria’s com­mer­cial cen­ter, holds great sym­bolic and strate­gic impor­tance. Some 25 miles (40 kilo­me­ters) from the Turk­ish bor­der, it has been a pil­lar of regime sup­port dur­ing the upris­ing. An oppo­si­tion vic­tory there would allow eas­ier access for weapons and fight­ers from Turkey, where many rebels are based.

A for­eign diplo­mat in Turkey told The Asso­ci­ated Press on Wednes­day that the rebels were likely not receiv­ing any heavy weapons, mak­ing any chance of their tak­ing over Aleppo exceed­ingly low. The diplo­mat asked that his name and details of his posi­tion not be pub­lished because he was not autho­rized to speak to the media.

There has been a marked increase in the num­ber of refugees flee­ing to Turkey in the past two days as Aleppo-based activists reported fresh clashes.

Some 3,350 peo­ple crossed the bor­der overnight and Wednes­day to escape the esca­lat­ing vio­lence, Turkey’s state-run news agency reported Wednes­day. Some 50,000 Syr­i­ans have now found refuge in Turkey. Even more refugees have crossed into Jor­dan and Lebanon.

“Unfor­tu­nately, there is a human tragedy going on in Syria,” Turkey’s Deputy Prime Min­is­ter Ali Baba­can said Wednes­day, keep­ing up Turkey’s crit­i­cism of the violence.

The regime has been hit by a wave of defec­tions, most recently by Prime Min­is­ter Riad Hijab.

The rebel Free Syr­ian Army and a Jor­dan­ian secu­rity offi­cial said Hijab arrived in Jor­dan on Wednes­day, two days after hid­ing in a “safe loca­tion” inside Syria near the border.

FSA leader Ahmed Kassem, who told The Asso­ci­ated Press on Mon­day that Hijab had defected to Jor­dan, said Wednes­day that he had actu­ally been inside Syr­ian ter­ri­tory for the past two days wait­ing to cross. He said his ear­lier account was meant to “con­fuse the Syr­ian regime over the prime minister’s whereabouts.”

A Jor­dan­ian secu­rity offi­cial said Hijab’s escape was coor­di­nated between the Jor­dan­ian army and FSA. He insisted on anonymity because he is not allowed to speak to the media.

Assad has been forced to rely on a shrink­ing list of allies, includ­ing Iran. Senior Iran­ian envoy Saeed Jalili vis­ited Dam­as­cus on Tues­day, appear­ing with Assad in a show of solidarity.

The rebels have blasted Iran’s influ­ence in the coun­try, and over the week­end rebel forces inter­cepted a bus car­ry­ing 48 Ira­ni­ans and kid­napped them. Rebels claimed the men are mil­i­tary per­son­nel, includ­ing some mem­bers of Iran’s pow­er­ful Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard who were on a “recon­nais­sance mis­sion” to help Assad’s crack­down on the uprising.

Iran ini­tially said the 48 were pil­grims vis­it­ing a Shi­ite shrine in Dam­as­cus. The Iran­ian for­eign min­is­ter said Wednes­day that some of the kid­napped Ira­ni­ans are retired mem­bers of the army and Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard.

“The Islamic Repub­lic of Iran has announced openly that some of the pil­grims kid­napped are retired mem­bers of the Guard and the Army,” Iran’s offi­cial IRNA news agency quoted Salehi as say­ing dur­ing a visit to Turkey.

“If these peo­ple had been dis­patched to Syria for spe­cific pur­poses, then how did they drive in a nor­mal bus with­out equip­ment and hold­ing their iden­ti­fi­ca­tion cards?” Salehi asked.

Iran’s Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Guard is the nation’s largest mil­i­tary force.

Posted by AP News on Aug 8 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.