Feared forces headed by President Bashar al-Assad’s brother used helicopters on Sunday in a new offensive against rebels in Damascus, as clashes also raged in Syria’s second city Aleppo, activists said.
The Fourth Brigade headed by Maher al-Assad was leading the assault in the Damascus neighbourhood of Barzeh, triggering an exodus of residents, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The Observatory, meanwhile, put at more than 19,000 the overall number of people killed during the 16-month uprising against the Assad family’s four decades of iron-fisted rule. Activists on the ground reported heavy fire at Barzeh, in the northeast of the capital, as a rebel commander declared the battle to “liberate” the second-biggest city of Aleppo had begun.
“Regime forces are using helicopters to pound the Barzeh district,” an activist who identified himself as Abu Omar told AFP via Skype.
“Families are trying to flee their homes, but it is difficult to get out of the neighbourhood. It is surrounded, and violence on the edges is intense.”
Abu Omar also said the army was raiding the nearby Rukn al-Din neighbourhood, while “helicopters used machineguns to fire into the district’s streets”.
“This morning, regime forces dropped leaflets into the neighbourhood, telling people to evacuate. This is a way to get people to turn against the revolt.”
He added that several parts of Damascus were suffering from food and fuel shortages, and that clashes were continuing in the districts of Tadamon, Al-Midan and Nahr Ayshe.
The Observatory’s director Rami Abdel Rahman said “the feared Fourth Brigade” commanded by President Assad’s powerful younger brother had launched an operation in Barzeh.
“Troops have stormed the northwestern Barzeh district of Damascus with tanks and armed personnel carriers,” he said, noting snipers had been deployed on rooftops.
The official SANA news agency also said government forces had “cleansed” the Qaboon neighbourhood of “terrorists”, the regime’s term for rebel fighters.
State television aired footage reportedly from Qaboon showing dead bodies and weapons, communications equipment and money it said was captured from rebels.
Regime forces also deployed in the outskirts of the Mazzeh district of the capital, he said, adding one person was killed there on Sunday and several were wounded.
Meanwhile, fierce clashes engulfed the districts of Salaheddin and Sakhur in Aleppo, Syria’s commercial hub in the north which has seen heavy fighting since Friday.
In a video, Colonel Abdel Jabbar Mohammad Oqaidi, head of the Free Syrian Army’s military council in Aleppo province, announced “the start of the operation to liberate Aleppo from the hands of Assad’s gangs”.
