Syrian regime opens new urban front, shells Homs

KARIN LAUB

Asso­ci­ated Press

BEIRUT — The Syr­ian mil­i­tary opened a sec­ond urban front Fri­day, attack­ing the rebel strong­hold of Homs with the most intense artillery bar­rage in months and putting oppo­si­tion fight­ers there and in Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, increas­ingly on the defensive.

Syria’s civil war has been locked in a bloody stale­mate, and embat­tled Pres­i­dent Bashar Assad could extend his hold on power if he retakes Aleppo and Homs. Ama­teur video from Homs, a sym­bol of resis­tance, showed black columns of smoke ris­ing from the city, as loud explo­sions went off every few seconds.

While Assad stepped up attacks at home, ten­sions with neigh­bor­ing Turkey flared again Fri­day, reviv­ing fears that the 18-month-old con­flict in Syria could ignite a regional conflagration.

The cri­sis began on Wednes­day, when a Syr­ian shell killed five civil­ians in a Turk­ish bor­der town and trig­gered unprece­dented artillery strikes by Turkey, cou­pled with warn­ings that Turkey would no longer tol­er­ate such acts. On Fri­day, a Syr­ian mor­tar round again hit inside Turkey, caus­ing no injuries, and Turk­ish troops returned fire, the state-run news agency Anadolu said.

In the past, Turkey did not respond to stray Syr­ian shells, but Turk­ish Prime Min­is­ter Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan sug­gested Fri­day that those days are over. “I once again call on Assad’s regime and its sup­port­ers: Do not try to test Turkey’s patience, do not try to test Turkey’s lim­its,” Erdo­gan said.

Ear­lier in the day, Turkey had deployed more troops on its bor­der with Syria.

The U.S sided with Turkey, con­demn­ing what White House spokesman Josh Earnest called the “aggres­sive actions of the Syr­i­ans.” Earnest said Turkey’s response was appro­pri­ate and that the U.S. stands by Turkey, a NATO ally.

Still, there were signs that both sides are try­ing to defuse the situation.

Since Wednesday’s deadly shelling, Syria has pulled tanks and other mil­i­tary equip­ment away from the bor­der, a Turk­ish For­eign Min­istry offi­cial said, speak­ing on con­di­tion of anonymity in line with gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tions. He said the weaponry was moved far enough to remove the “per­cep­tion of threat.”

Syr­ian offi­cials could not be reached for comment.

Turkey, along with other coun­tries sid­ing with the rebels, is averse to inter­ven­ing mil­i­tar­ily, while Assad has also tried to avoid provo­ca­tions he believes would trig­ger a for­eign intervention.

Unde­terred by its trou­bles with Turkey, the Syr­ian regime on Fri­day launched a new offen­sive against Homs, unleash­ing heavy shelling and air attacks. The attack is the worst Homs has seen in five months, said the Britain-based Syr­ian Obser­va­tory for Human Rights, which relies on a net­work of activists on the ground.

“Around dawn, the regime went crazy and started shelling hys­ter­i­cally,” Homs-based activist Abu Rami told The Asso­ci­ated Press via Skype from rebel-held Old Homs. “An aver­age of five rock­ets a minute are falling,” he said, ask­ing to be iden­ti­fied by his nick­name for fear of reprisal. Most res­i­dents who still live in rebel-held areas around the city were hid­ing in shel­ters, he said.

Regime forces fired rock­ets and mor­tar shells at the rebel-held neigh­bor­hoods of Old Homs, Khaldiya, Qusour and Jouret el-Shayah, the activist said, adding that regime forces were also tar­get­ing vil­lages around Homs and the rebel-held town of Ras­tan to the north.

Ear­lier this week, Syr­ian refugees in Lebanon said their vil­lages in Homs province had come under heavy air attack from so-called bar­rel bombs, makeshift weapons con­sist­ing of con­tain­ers stuffed with explosives.

Mohammed Yousef, a 25-year-old rebel fighter tak­ing a break from bat­tle in the Lebanese bor­der town of Arsal, said most homes in his vil­lage, Zar’a, were lev­eled in the recent air attacks. Yousef said he fled last week, after his home was destroyed.

Homs, Syria’s third largest city and a cen­ter of the upris­ing against Assad, was sub­jected to intense regime shelling in Feb­ru­ary and March, the first area to suf­fer wide­spread dev­as­ta­tion. The regime assault slowed in April, as the focus shifted to other areas, includ­ing Aleppo, where rebels first seized con­trol of some areas in an offen­sive in late July.

After weeks of stale­mate in Aleppo, rebel fight­ers announced a new push last week to take the city, but the regime has fought back hard, shelling from tanks and bomb­ing from the air.

An AP jour­nal­ist in Aleppo said fight­ing has inten­si­fied this week, and that the rebels appear to be los­ing some ground in close-quarter com­bat. Over a period of a few days, rebels lost con­trol of sev­eral build­ings in one of the front-line neigh­bor­hoods, Saif al-Dawla, he said.

Syria’s con­flict began with a peace­ful upris­ing against Assad, inspired by last year’s Arab Spring rebel­lions against author­i­tar­ian rulers. Amid an esca­lat­ing regime crack­down, the rebel­lion grad­u­ally turned into a civil war. The regime’s troops are stretched thin, enabling rebels to con­trol large stretches of coun­try­side in Syria’s most densely pop­u­lated west.

But nei­ther side has been able to deliver a deci­sive blow, even though the Syr­ian mil­i­tary has supe­rior weapons, includ­ing com­bat air­craft. In recent weeks, rebels have been tar­get­ing Syr­ian air­craft and air bases in hopes of reduc­ing the regime’s advantage.

On Fri­day, ama­teur video posted by activists showed what appeared to be a Syr­ian gov­ern­ment heli­copter hurtling to the ground with a trail of white smoke behind it. Rami Abdul-Rahman, the head of the Obser­va­tory, said he was told by rebels that the heli­copter was hit over Saqba, a town east of Damascus.

Another video, posted late Thurs­day, showed the pur­ported cap­ture of an air defense base by rebels. The video showed dozens of gun­men out­side an area where smoke was bil­low­ing. Off cam­era, one gun­man says a “mis­sile air defense bat­tal­ion” had been cap­tured. Another video showed mis­siles inside a room.

Activist Mohammed Saeed, based in the Dam­as­cus sub­urb of Douma, said rebels cap­tured an air defense base in the East­ern Ghouta area near the cap­i­tal on Monday.

Syria imposes tight restric­tions on for­eign jour­nal­ists and the con­tent of ama­teur videos can­not be con­firmed independently.

The rebels did not give any other evi­dence that would con­firm the cap­ture of a base, or iden­tify the loca­tion of the video.

If con­firmed, the cap­ture of a stock of work­ing anti-aircraft mis­siles would be a boost to a lightly-armed rebel force that says it faces fre­quent attacks by low-flying heli­copters and warplanes.

Posted by AP News on Oct 5 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.