Fighting in Aleppo raged through the night and into Thursday, a monitoring group said, after the army and rebels rushed in reinforcements for what is seen as a decisive battle for Syria’s second city.
Clashes also erupted Thursday in the Palestinian Yarmouk camp in Damascus, activists said, as regime forces set about mopping up last pockets of rebel resistance in the capital.
The battles in Aleppo followed a day of heavy fighting in the northern city in which at least 19 civilians, three rebel fighters and an unknown number of soldiers died, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
“There are clashes (Thursday) in the Muhafaza district and shelling on the Mushhad and Sheikh Badr neighbourhoods, which killed a child and injured seven people,” the Britain-based Observatory said.
Aleppo’s Salaheddin neighbourhood, scene of fierce fighting for days, was also bombarded by regime troops during the night, the watchdog said.
Fighting has flared in Aleppo since rebel forces on July 20 launched an all-out assault to overrun Syria’s commercial hub, in a move analysts say is aimed at establishing a bastion inside the country close to the rebel military headquarters across the border in Turkey.
Both sides have rushed in reinforcements and the fighting on Wednesday saw the regime strafing rebel strongholds with helicopter gunships, according to the Observatory.
Colonel Abdel Jabbar al-Oqaidi of the rebel Free Syrian Army told AFP via Skype that a “large number” of troops have been moved from the northwestern province of Idlib to Aleppo.
A Syrian newspaper journalist confirmed the rebels were also reinforcing.
“Hundreds of rebels from all over the north of Syria are arriving in Aleppo, which appears to have become the decisive battle,” the journalist told AFP.
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In Damascus, street battles were being fought on Thursday in the Palestinian Yarmouk camp in the south of the capital, the Observatory said.
A resident of the camp reached by phone confirmed the fighting.
“It started at 7:00 am. The night was quiet. They are using RPGs and heavy machineguns,” he told AFP.
After a week of heavy clashes in Damascus, activists say regime forces have largely regained control of the city, with only a few pockets of rebel resistance remaining.
As the violence spirals, high-level defections from President Bashar al-Assad’s regime are growing.
The United States on Wednesday confirmed the defections of two more senior Syrian diplomats, the ambassadors to the UAE and Cyprus who are husband and wife.
White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One that the moves showed that “senior officials around the Assad inner circle are fleeing the government because of the heinous actions taken by Assad against his own people, and the recognition that Assad’s days are numbered.”
UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous, meanwhile, said he had told Syrian officials that without a significant reduction in violence, the remaining 150 UN observers would leave on the expiry of the “final” 30-day extension of the mission’s mandate, agreed by the Security Council on July 20.
Riad Kahwaji, director for the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, said the capture of Aleppo would mark a significant gain by the rebels.
“Taking Aleppo after they take control of the borders of Turkey makes sense because it’s all connected, close to supply routes, close to the command headquarters of the rebels on the borders,” he said.
British military expert Paul Smyth, director of the firm R31 Consulting, warned that the regime was likely to fight hard to prevent the rebels from capturing Aleppo, or any similarly large city.
“They have to deny the rebels a Benghazi,” he said, referring to the eastern Libyan city that became a stronghold for rebels in last year’s uprising against Moamer Kadhafi’s regime.
In an updated toll on Thursday, the Observatory said 143 people were killed throughout Syria on Wednesday, including 75 civilians, 41 soldiers and 27 rebel fighters.
According to the Observatory’s tally, more than 19,000 people, mostly civilians, have died since a popular uprising against Assad erupted in March last year.
The regime’s crushing of protest sparked an armed response by defecting soldiers joined by civilians who took up arms, with many analysts saying the conflict can now be categorised as all-out civil war.
Meanwhile, aiming to regain the diplomatic initiative, Russia’s UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Moscow was ready to host talks between the two sides.
“We are ready to give the opposition and the government a platform in Moscow to forge contacts to unify the opposition and for negotiations with the government,” he said.
Russia has protected its Soviet-era ally and last week, with China, vetoed a Security Council resolution on Syria for the third time to the outrage of western nations.
The United States, Britain, France and Germany have said they will seek action against the Syrian government outside the council. All have rejected providing military aid to the opposition, however.
Battles rage as Syrian troops, rebels fight for Aleppo
