Fighting raged for a second straight day in Syria’s commercial capital Aleppo on Sunday as troops pressed an offensive against rebel-held areas of the city, sparking fears for trapped civilians.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem, on a surprise visit to key ally Iran, said the rebels “will definitely be defeated” in Aleppo. Tehran’s Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi warned the consequences “would engulf the region and eventually the whole world” if the regime of President Bashar al-Assad were to fall. The opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) accused the government of preparing to carry out “massacres” in the northern city and called on the UN Security Council to hold an emergency session.
As rebels held out against the superior firepower of Assad’s regime, SNC chief Abdel Basset Sayda called on foreign governments to provide them with heavy weapons. Peace envoy Kofi Annan urged both sides to hold back, saying that only a political solution could end a conflict that human rights monitors say has killed more than 20,000 people since the uprising erupted in March 2011. An activist who gave his name as Abu Alaa said there was renewed shelling of the Salaheddin district in southwest Aleppo where rebels repulsed a ground assault on Saturday.
He said there were also clashes between troops and rebels in the central neighbourhoods of Bab al-Nasr, Bab al-Hadid and Old City. The central districts’ “narrow streets and alleys, with covered markets and densely populated buildings, are impossible to penetrate with tanks or shelling from afar,” he said.
After massing for two days, troops backed by tanks and helicopters on Saturday, launched a ground assault on Salaheddin, where rebels concentrated their forces when they seized much of Aleppo on July 20. Both sides claimed to have made advances, but an AFP correspondent reported rebels had largely repulsed the army. Civilians in the city of some 2.5 million people crowded into basements seeking refuge from the intense bombardment by artillery and helicopter gunships, the correspondent said. Colonel Abdel Jabbar al-Oqaidi of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) said the rebels had inflicted heavy losses on the army in Salaheddin but that there had been many civilian deaths. “We have destroyed eight tanks and some armoured vehicles and killed more than 100 soldiers,” he said. “Three rebels were killed, but also many civilians.”
Oqaidi said the regime’s resort to air strikes was responsible for the high death toll among civilians, and called for the imposition of a no-fly zone. “The FSA can face air strikes. This bombardment has no impact on the FSA, but it does have an impact on civilians,” he said. “We ask the West for a no-fly zone. We have already liberated one zone and all we need is a no-fly zone, and we are ready to bring down this regime.”
Pro-regime newspaper Al-Watan said the “fate of the terrorists (in Aleppo) will be the same as that of their comrades in Damascus”, alluding to an offensive that prompted rebels to withdraw from the capital. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported heavy fighting in the Salaheddin and Saif al-Dawla neighbourhoods and at the entrance to the Hindrat Palestinian refugee camp.” “The army is trying to retake the Bab al-Hadid district,” said Rami Abdel Rahman of the Observatory.
The Britain-based group put the number of people killed nationwide at six on Sunday, a day after reporting 168 people killed across the country.
The conflict has also seen tens of thousands of people flee to Syria’s neighbours, and Jordan announced on Sunday that it has opened its first official refugee camp. Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh, who opened the Zaatari camp for up to 120,000 refugees, said Jordan is now hosting more than 142,000 Syrians, around 36,000 of whom are UN-registered.