A Free Syrian Army fighter runs for cover in the al-Jadeida neighbourhood of Aleppo. Photograph: Phil Moore/AFP/Getty Images Photograph: Phil Moore/AFP/Getty Images
A Free Syrian Army fighter runs for cover in the al-Jadeida neighbourhood of Aleppo. Photograph: Phil Moore/AFP/Getty Images Photograph: Phil Moore/AFP/Getty Images
The Syrian Revolution General Commission says a total of 43 people have been killed in Damascus today, including 24 "executed in front of their families" in Kfar Sousseh.
Syrian government forces are fighting rebels for control of a military base and an airfield near the eastern town of Albu Kamal on the Iraqi border, Reuters reports citing a local Iraqi official and a Syrian rebel commander.
Syrian forces killed a Syrian journalist sympathetic to the revolt against President Assad during a raid in the southern Nahr Eisha district of Damascus today, Reuters reports citing opposition activists.
'They are killing and destroying anything in their way'
Yesterday we were trying – without success – to contact people in Deraa following reports of the FSA pulling out. Today, however, our colleague Mona Mahmood has been speaking via Skype with a resident of al-Herak in Deraa who gave his name as Muhammed Abu Houran:
Yesterday morning the Syrian army began its campaign against al-Herak in Deraa. They launched a vicious raid against the people who were still in their houses, though most of the people had left the town earlier.
They Syrian army executed any men they found in these houses soon after arresting them. Most of the men who were executed were found in deserted houses. From yesterday until now, fires are still burning – there is not enough water to put them out.
After three days of fierce battles here, the FSA had to leave its positions as it had run out of ammunition. As soon as the FSA pulled out, field executions were carried out and houses were burned and destroyed. The FSA was able to keep only the southern part of Deraa under its control after long battles that lasted from dawn to the evening – almost 16 hours.
After that, the FSA got more ammunition from neighbouring towns and was able to attack some of the armoured vehicles of the Syrian army. Battles continued till 12 midday today in which the FSA was able to recover some other parts of the town that had been taken by the Syrian army.
Now, we are facing the toughest shooting since five days ago when the campaign started against Derrah. The Syrian army is entering al-Herak from the north-western part of the town. They are killing and destroying anything they see in their way. The Syrian army is accompanied by armoured vehicles and tanks – with every metre they get forward, they level the ground completely.
The whole military campaign to clear the FSA men out al-Herak, which is the biggest town in Deraa [province] with 40,000 population. There are more than 80 small villages in Deraa. Seventy per cent of the towns in Deraa are under heavy fire now, but the Syrian army is focusing on al-Herak. They want to kill as many as they can of the FSA men and defected soldiers. If they can't find them they kill the civilians in revenge for their support of the FSA.
The people of Deraa are the hotbed for the FSA. In fact 50% of the FSA here are from the people of Deraa itself. The people of al-Herak decided to take up arms to fight the regime. This is not the first military campaign against our town or other towns in Deraa. All other towns in Derrah have had their share.
There was a military campaign against al-Mukhaim and al-Mua'tasim district in Deraa, then Deraa al-Balad, Taffas, Busra al-Hareer and now against al-Herak. In all these campaigns, these towns are semi destroyed. The Syrian army are combing these towns searching for FSA to eliminate its men.
We have tens of FSA brigades here – in each town there are two or three. The biggest brigade we have here now is Shuhada al-Hurriya ("Freedom Martyrs") which is made up to of more than 500 men and under the control of Lieut Muhammed Taffass. There are also al-Omeri, al-Mua'atasim and Ahmed Al-Khalaf [brigades] in other towns in Deraa.
We have had 107 martyrs in the last three days, Most of them are civilians. Forty-five of the bodies were executed. There were 13 bodies which were charred completely and today we found another nine charred bodies. We could not identify them at all. They were in the districts which were under the control of the Syrian army yesterday. Most of the executed bodies were slain by knives, and luckiest ones executed by gunshot.
I'm an engineer and have 11 other members of my family. All my family members have left the town because of the bad situation here.
Originally there were 40,000 people in al-Herak but now only 4,000 people are left here. They have been under a tough siege for three months so far – they can't flee the town.
The shooting used to come from far away by mortars and no infantry came inside the town but now it seems the regime decided to change its strategy.
At the beginning of the siege, food supplies were allowed to reach the town –not that much, but they were coming. For the last month, though, no food got inside the town or fuels at all.
People now are eating a local sweet named Hallawa. Bread is missing completely. Al-Herak is an agricultural town but the Syrian army is blocking the way to get to the farms. The farmers themselves do not dare to come inside the town.
The Syrian Revolution General Commission claims a total of 43 people have been killed in Damascus today, including 24 "executed in front of their families" in Kfar Sousseh.
It also lists six people killed by "summary execution" in Nahr Aisha, three killed as a result of a car bomb in Dumma and three killed by shelling in each of Harasta and Darayya.
Finally, it says one person was killed in each of Jobar, Arbeen and Zamalka.
The SRGC has provided videos and photos purporting to be of a number of the victims but the Guardian cannot independently verify the information.
The video below purport to show shelling in Darraya.
Our colleague Mona Mahmood has interviewed Nizar Hazim, a resident of Kfar Sousseh, in Damascus, via Skype. He told her 24 bodies have been found there:
The shelling against Kfar Sousseh started at 6am in the morning today. The shelling was coming from tanks based at Damascus highway called al-Mutahelq al-Janoubi. The tanks were shooting also at Nahr Aisha, which is a neighbouring district and al-Qadam district.
The shooting lasted for almost two hours, it included mortars which were coming from Mezzeh airport. Soon afterwards, the Syrian army started a big campaign of raids against the house in Kfar Sousseh. As a result of the raids, people in Kfar Sousseh found 24 bodies (WARNING: graphic pictures).
All these bodies were executed by gunshots to the head from close distance. We still have some missing people whom we can't find. We were targeted by the Syrian army because Kfar Sousseh is the front for Darayya and al-Mouadamiyeh districts. These two districts are the base for the FSA. When they want to do any attack against the Syrian army in the heart of Damascus, they come to Kfar Sousseh to launch their attack and then pull out soon after to the groves al-Bassateen. The Syrian army is taking revenge on us but I can assure you all these people who have been executed today are civilians, none of them are FSA.
Hazim said the regime army then turned its attention to the FSA, who it has been battling in the groves for four hours.
The groves are at the far end of the southern part of Kfar Sousseh, it is very vast and so difficult to be controlled. The FSA would always come from the southern part to launch its attacks against the Syrian security forces which are heavily based at the northern part of Kfar Sousseh.
I live in Kfar Sousseh with five other members of my family, everything is available here when it comes to food and water but the problem is the high prices. Also people whose houses were destroyed are homeless now as they can't afford to pay a rent. They are living now in the mosques and public parks. A lot of people here can't get a single meal.
People who have money, they go to some posh areas here and rent, others would go to some countryside districts that are somehow quiet like Sahnayia. Sahnayia now is full of refugees from Kfar Sousseh, Nahr Aisha and al-Qadam.
All the bodies of the martyrs are in a mosque in Kfar Sousseh now, I can't tell you its name in fear that the Syrian army would come and take the mourners and the families. We can't bury them now, we are waiting for the situation to get less tense and then we will take them to the cemetery. Now, it is impossible to reach the cemetery.
People in Kfar Sousseh were able to identify all the bodies, except two, we still can't identify them. All the bodies are for men, young and old, none of them are children or women.
All parties must re-commit to a sustained cessation of armed violence in all its forms and implementation of the six-point plan immediately and without waiting for the actions of others.
Syrian government forces are fighting rebels for control of a military base and an airfield near the eastern town of Albu Kamal on the Iraqi border, Reuters reports citing a local Iraqi official and a Syrian rebel commander.
"There is fierce fighting between the Free Syrian Army and Syrian border guards to control the base, where tanks and artillery were used to bombard (Albu Kamal)," Farhan Ftiakhan, mayor of the nearby Iraqi town of Qaim, told Reuters.
"Most Albu Kamal areas are in the hands of the Free Syrian Army, but the Syrian regular army is deployed and controlling the areas just outside Albu Kamal," he said by telephone.
Insurgents fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar al-Assad have made gains in Albu Kamal in the past week.
A rebel commander said they now controlled the town, which sits on a supply route from Iraq, where many Sunni tribes sympathise with their Syrian kin fighting Assad's forces.
The commander, known as Abu Khalid, told Reuters by satellite telephone that the Syrian army now only held the military base and the area around it.
Opposition sources said on Tuesday Syrian state forces had abandoned two security compounds in Albu Kamal that had been run by the Airforce Intelligence and Political Security agencies.
Albu Kamal lies 120 km (75 miles) southeast of the city of Deir al-Zor, capital of a Sunni province with strong family and clan connections to Iraq's Sunni heartland in Anbar province.
Longstanding alliances between Syria's Alawite-dominated ruling elite and Sunni tribes in Deir Ezzor began collapsing after Assad cracked down in the oil-producing region as part of efforts to crush a 17-month-old revolt.
Syrian forces killed a Syrian journalist sympathetic to the revolt against President Assad during a raid in the southern Nahr Eisha district of Damascus today, Reuters reports citing opposition activists.
Soldiers shot Mosaab al-Odaallah, who worked for the state-run Tishreen newspaper, at point blank range after they entered his home as they were conducting house to house raids in the district, they said.
With the restrictions imposed by Syrian authorities on independent media, the report by the activists could not be immediately confirmed.
Our colleague Mona Mahmood has been talking on the phone to a resident of Mouadamiyeh, four miles west of Damascus. The man, who gave his name as Ahmed Mua'dami, described the events there over the last few days:
A large number of Syrian army and security entered Mouadamiyeh the day before yesterday, raiding houses and arresting people. Soon after that, warplanes, tanks and artillery started to shell the district from different directions. More than 18 people were killed.
The Syrian army left the district at about midnight the day before yesterday but came back yesterday at 7am.
The first thing they did, they arrested three people. Later on, their bodies were found in one of the alleys. They were all executed by gunshot, their names are Imad Fadhl Allah, Zuhair Ma'touq and Muhammed Ali al-Hamshari who was about 80 years old. Another body found was that of Waleed Tawfiq abd al-Ghani who was executed too but in a different place.
After that, a large number of the Syrian army raided the district accompanied by the so-called People's Committees – which means committees made up of the retired officers or sons of officers in the Syrian army. Most of them are Alawite, and they wear civilian clothes. They were formed soon after the outbreak of the revolution.
The Syrian army came with a large number of vehicles, some of them were even civilian [vehicles] but with guns on their tops.
When they first came, they broke inside the stores and emptied everything that was inside them – almost 50 shops. After that all these shops were burned.
Soon after, the Syrian army started to raid houses and just at the end of their campaign they burned 30 houses. [Many of] these houses were deserted already as their owners had left to escape the shooting. They were arresting any man they found in the houses where people were still living. Some of the men were executed inside these houses. More than 10 bodies were found inside the houses.
After 4pm, vehicles and tanks pulled out of the district but they were loaded with stuff confiscated from stores and houses. As soon as they pulled out, people in Mouadamiyeh went out to the streets. We were shocked to find bodies scattered in the streets.
We found 10 bodies in different streets and alleys in Mouadamiyeh – all of them were executed. People continued searching everywhere in the district, there were many people who had gone missing or been taken by the army. Their families were scared that they have might been executed too.
As people were looking in one of the basements of the houses, they were stunned to find the bodies of 40 people. The house was near the high road and beside Omer ben al-Khattab mosque.
People decided to take the bodies to the cemetery to bury them at 6pm yesterday, but as they were carrying out the burial a warplane came to fire on the mourners and killed 16 people.
All the people who were executed had received several gunshots and had been stabbed with knives too. A few of the bodies were even burned. All the martyrs were young and old men – there were no children among them although there is a single body of a woman.
The shelling against Mouadamiyeh is relentless and continues till now. Warplanes and the artillery based at the mountains of Mouadamiyeh are shooting at us. It is the base for the 4th Brigade of the Syrian army.
Mouadamiyeh is one of the first districts in Damascus's countryside that went out in demonstrations against the regime. In April 2011, dignitaries of Mouadamiyeh were invited to see Bashar and Maher al-Assad.
They were told that all their demands would be met and they would even be granted pieces of land if they stopped supporting the revolution – otherwise, the district would be destroyed.
The dignitaries told the them that they would have to speak to the people on the ground. But the people refused all the offers by the regime and continue to support the revolution. We want to restore our dignity, we do not want pieces of land.
There is no life here at all, to be a martyr is much better than to stay alive like this. We are nine people in one house, it is so difficult to go out.
Since the first massacre discovered in Mouadamiyeh on 28 July, every day we find new bodies in the district. The district is sealed off from four directions – no one can get out or get in. If you want to get out, you have to show your ID.
But the problem is that any young man whose ID is registered in Mouadamiyeh will be arrested and then his body will be found in the street.
Most of the stores were already empty or short of goods, but the burning of these stores yesterday has left even nothing.
The snipers are targeting most of the water tanks. We are relying on people who have wells inside their houses to supply us with water. Water trucks stopped coming here as they were targeted by snipers. There are no bottles of still water.
Thank God we get used to store a lot of food at home which proved to be very useful in such hard days.
The most vicious military campaign against Mouadamiyeh started on the first day of Ramadan which was 20 July.
We used to have a lot of FSA here but they decided to pull out as they do not have the capability to face up to tanks and artillery. All the shooting against Mouadamiyeh is done from outside. We do not have face-to-face clashes here. All the shelling now is coming from the military airport and the mountains.
The FSA did not want to shoot among the civilians – that is why they decided to withdraw. But the shelling did not stop. We believe if the FSA had been inside Mouadamiyeh yesterday, the Syrian army would not have dared to commit such a brutal massacre.
The situation here is very risky. At the eastern part of the district we have al-Mezzeh [military] airport, at the south we have the 4th brigade, at the north shabiha brigades.
Yes it's true. Around 70% of Aleppo city is with the regime. It has always been that way. The countryside is with us and the city is with them. We are saying that we will only be here as long as it takes to get the job done, to get rid of the Assads. After that, we will leave and they can build the city that they want.
The Associated Press reports that at least 23 suspected rebels have been killed in two Damascus districts, according to activists:
Regime forces rained mortars down on the upscale Kfar Sousseh neighborhood and the adjacent Nahr Aisha area at daybreak, according to activists. The shelling apparently came from Qasioun mountain overlooking the capital, a Damascus resident said on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.
The attacks may have been designed to kill or capture rebel mortar teams who have used the two neighborhoods in recent days to target the city's Mezzeh military airport, activists said.
An activist, who only wanted to be identified by the name Bassam for fear of retribution, said 11 people were killed in Kfar Sousseh and that as many as 22 tanks stormed the district with about 20 soldiers on foot behind each one. He spoke via Skype from central Damascus.
Bassam and the observatory also reported heavy government shelling of Nahr Aisha early on Wednesday. They said regime forces then conducted house-to-house raids in search of rebels. Bassam said as many as 12 people were killed in Nahr Aisha, while the observatory had no word on casualties.
It was not clear whether those killed in the two areas died in the shelling or later. Other activists, including one reached by Skype in Kfar Sousseh, spoke of execution-style killings in both areas. The activists' reports could not be independently verified.
Members of "the Syrian community in Jordan" (which presumably does not mean the Syrian refugees who are fleeing to Jordan at a rate of 1,000 a day) held a pro-Assad demonstration outside the Syrian embassy in Jordan yesterday.
The "Jordanian Popular Committee for Supporting Syria" also took part, the Syrian government news agency, Sana, reports.
The participants in the event ... expressed great confidence in the Syrian Arab Army's ability to protect Syria and its people from terrorism.
They applauded the Syrian people over their steadfastness and awareness of the conspiracy hatched against their homeland, stressing that the Syrians are able to defend their homeland against whoever thinks to tamper with its security and stability.
"Victory is close…we say to the Syrian Arab Army: 'be patient because you have a date with victory and pride,'" Ahmad Tahtamouni, member of the Jordanian Committee, told the Syrian TV.
He added that the Syrian army is considered "the last fortress of the Arab nationalism, and this why they are trying to destroy it."
Rustam Gelayev, son of Ruslan Gelayev, was killed between 11 August and 13 August during a "battle with superior forces of the Alawite regime", according to Kavkazcenter.com. It says his body was flown back to Chechnya where he was buried on 17 August.
If true, it will raise further concerns about the presence of jihadist foreign fighters in Syria.
A spokesman for the pro-Moscow Chechen government was quoted by Interfax as saying "there are no people from the Chechen Republic among the armed opposition in Syria".
Gelayev's father was killed in a clash with Russian border troops in the remote mountains bordering Chechnya in 2004.
Two activist groups report the death of 12 people in the Kfar Sousseh district of the capital. One of the groups, the Local Coordination Committees claims they were publicly executed:
Fierce clashes are reported between the Free Syrian Army and the regime army in the Kfar Sousseh farms, after the massacre that regime forces committed this morning and which resulted in 12 martyrs who were publicly executed.
Twelve men have been killed so far by the regime's military operations, gunfire and bombardment, in the Kfar Sousseh neighbourhood of Damascus. It began this morning. One civilian was killed by gunfire during the regime forces' raids in the Jobar neighbourhood.
An explosion rocked the capital at dawn today, it turns out to be caused by a car-bomb in the Dummar neighbourhood; the three men in the car were killed by the explosion. Clashes took place by the Mezzeh military airport, several explosions were heard in the area.
Regime forces are going on a series of raids and arrests in the Nahr Aisha neighbourhood, which witnessed clashes and some bombardment earlier this morning. Clashes also took place on the Damascus-Deraa highway, by the al-Qadam neighbourhood, which was also bombarded by regime forces; the clashes resulted in the destruction of a tank. Clashes also took place on the southern Mutahalliq (southern ring road) in the Liwan area.
The Guardian cannot independently verify these activist reports.
Patrick Seale, who wrote a biography of Bashar al-Assad's father, has welcomed the appointment of Lakhdar Brahimi as the UN/Arab League envoy on Syria. In an article for Agence Global, he writes:
Lakhdar Brahimi has many qualities which prepare him for his difficult task in Syria. First of all, as a man of the Maghrib, he views the turbulent Mashriq with a certain valuable detachment. In other words, he comes to the conflict with no emotional baggage.
Secondly, he is well-known and respected by all the Arab leaders, and also by the leaders of the external powers most directly involved in the conflict – the United States, Russia, Britain, France and Turkey. All have welcomed his appointment as UN peace envoy.
Thirdly, few people on the international political scene today can match his personal experience at mediating conflicts in different parts of the world ...
Lakhdar Brahimi has some advantages over Kofi Annan, his unfortunate predecessor as peace envoy. The most notable of these advantages is that the various parties to the conflict are beginning to understand that a clear victory by either side is unlikely, and that a prolonged war will destroy the country and will serve no one’s interest – except Israel.
The number of people fleeing from Syria to Iraq has jumped sharply in the past few weeks, Sherif Elsayed-Ali, head of refugee and migrants’ rights at Amnesty International, told SBS News. Six years ago more than a million Iraqi refugees fled to Syria to escape bloodshed in their own country. Elsayed-Ali said:
At the beginning of the year, there were 80,000 Iraqis still in Syria. Only in the past few weeks, we have had 20,000 return. That is predominantly because of the situation in Syria and the violence there. It is now a lot safer [to return to Iraq] than to remain.
Jordan
Between Monday night and Tuesday night over 3,000 Syrians entered Jordan, the Jordanian Times reports. It cites government spokesman Samih Maaytah saying the number of refugees has averaged around 1,000 a day.
Reporters Without Borders condemns TV journalist Malek Abu Al-Kheir’s arrest by the Syrian security forces after he set off for Beirut from Damascus on 18 August. No information has been provided about the reasons for his arrest or where he is currently being held.
Reporters Without Borders says at least 30 Syrian journalists and citizen-journalists are currently being held in Syria.
Louai Miqdad, the spokesman for the rebel army [FSA], said al-Shara left Damascus more than a week ago and fled to Deraa to try to make sure his relatives, close proteges and other officials would be secure. Al-Shara is from Deraa province, the area bordering Jordan where the regime's violent crackdown against protesters began in March 2011.
The rebel spokesman said he thinks the Syrian regime intensified attacks in Deraa province recently to assassinate al-Shara before he left the country ...
He said rebel army leaders "lost communications with our commanders in Deraa who were trying to get him to cross the borders to Jordan," expressing concerns government forces may have detained some of al-Shara's relatives to compel him to surrender.
The Local Coordination Committees activist group claims a number of people have been wounded after several shells landed in Masaken Hanano, in Aleppo. It linked to this video.
A report from Reuters suggests that today's intensified clashes in Damascus are a result of rebels returning to the city.
Maaz al-Shami, a member of the Damascus Media Office, a group of young opposition activists monitoring the crackdown in the capital, said rebels who had left the city during a fierce army campaign last month had started to return.
"They went back to their homes, or disappeared in the green belt surrounding Damascus," Shami said.
"They are back now, and the regime is responding with daily shelling and helicopter bombardment. A war atmosphere in Damascus is setting in," he added.
Explosions have been heard all over Damascus this morning as a result of tank shelling and the artillery positioned on Mount Qasioun, the city's Revolution Leadership Council says. "Sounds of gunfire are also heard due to clashes that erupted in some areas." The report adds:
• Shelling targeted Nahr Aisha and clashes have been spotted on Damascus-Amman international highway • Sounds of the clashes and shelling are heard from Midan • Three tank shells have fallen in Dummar (west) • Reports of storming Mouadamiyeh (in the western suburbs of Damascus) and Kfar Sousseh by regime forces this morning • Helicopters are hovering in the sky over Mezzeh and Kfar Sousa. • Helicopters are opening their cannon fire on Darayya, Kfar Sousa and Nahr Aisha • Initial reports say that the area near Mezzeh military airport has been under shelling due to clashes that erupted there.
The Guardian is unable to verify this information.
Russia believes Syria has no intention of using its chemical weapons and is able to safeguard them, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported on Wednesday, citing a unidentified foreign ministry official. From Reuters:
The report seemed aimed to reassure the west that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad will not use chemical weapons against rebels after US president Barack Obama threatened "enormous consequences" if Damascus even moved them in a menacing way.
A "confidential dialogue" with the Syrian government on the security of the arsenal has convinced Russia that "the Syrian authorities do not intend to use these weapons and are capable of keeping them under control themselves," Kommersant reported.
The Russian Foreign Ministry declined immediate comment on the report, which cited the official as saying Russia considered it "entirely probable" the United States would take military action if it saw a threat from chemical arms ...
Kommersant also quoted the foreign ministry official as saying the United States had "firmly warned insurgents not to even come close to chemical weapons storage sites and production plants" and that "opposition groups are heeding" those demands.
"This shows that the West can exert very specific influence on Assad's opponents when wants to do so," the official said.
An op-ed in the People's Daily, official newspaper of China's ruling Communist party, describes President Obama's "red line" warnings to Syria as "a pretext for intervention". Liu Chang writes:
With the hypocritical talks of eliminating weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and protecting civilians in Libya still ringing in the ears, such "red line" threats seem to have almost become a signal for the United States and some of its western allies to sharpen their weapons before exercising interventionism.
The world should stay vigilant that these dangerously irresponsible remarks would do nothing but effectively escalate the current bloody situation in Syria and gravely tarnish the prospects of settling Syria's 17-month-old crisis through political means ...
It is not difficult to find that, under the disguise of humanitarianism, the United States has always tried to smash governments it considers as threats to its so-called national interests and relentlessly replace them with those that are Washington-friendly.
That easily explains why both Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, who once worked closely with the United States, were later depicted as brutal dictators with the people's blood dipping through their fingers ...
Any attempt to scrap the chances for a political settlement and to turn Syria into the next testing ground for western weapons must be guarded against and ruled out.
China, being acutely aware of the harm of foreign interventions, has always stood firmly against them and supported the political settlement of all crises.
Thus, the Chinese government is keen to continue working with the international community to back UN-backed negotiations aimed at bringing real and lasting peace to Syria.
A Guardian editorial says that there is little chance at the moment of the civil war in Syria reaching a definitive conclusion.
The battle taking place in Aleppo is a case in point. Syria's second city is key and by general consent will, in theory, provide the tipping point so desperately sought in a conflict that has already claimed over 19,000 lives. In practice this is proving to be an elusive concept. The regime holds the west of the city, and the militias that comprise the Free Syrian Army the east. The regime has only committed troops to one front, Salaheddine district in the south-west, and is reluctant to throw in the rest of its infantry, opting to shell and bomb from the air.
There are theories as to why there have been no serious attempts to recapture the city, one of them being the fear of defections if units became detached from their officers. But in theory the eastern half of Aleppo, which is being contested by only 4,000 rebel fighters, should be relatively easy for a well-equipped army to retake.
The fight from the rebels' perspective is not going well either. As they openly acknowledge, their presence is contested by much of the city's population. The fighters are not seen here as liberators, but as harbingers of terrible suffering to come. The FSA fall between two stools. They are ill equipped to shoot down Assad's warplanes, but eminently visible enough to attract the regime's aerial firepower. Assad's warplanes are also using bigger bombs in civilian areas. If this is a deliberate strategy by the regime that has strewn the city with craters, it may be working. Aleppines blame the FSA for military operations in their city, rather than Damascus for its brutal response.
Whatever the cause, the rebels are by their own admission not getting the support in the city that they got in the countryside. This is not just a function of the demography of Aleppo. Support for the FSA in Damascus also depends on whether the insurgents are local. This may change, and could be more a result of the Balkanisation of Syrian society than the product of any lingering sympathy for Assad, which surely has evaporated. If the space for non-violent protest has shrunk – although there are still opposition groups who cling on to this hope – the road ahead for the armed revolt can only be long and bitter.
As for his [Assad's] resignation, making his resignation a condition for dialogue effectively makes holding such a dialogue impossible. During the negotiating process any issues can be discussed, and we are ready to discuss even this issue.
Asked about Jamil's comments, US state department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said:
Frankly, we didn’t see anything terribly new there ... The Syrian government knows what it needs to do, and the Russian government, as you know, joined us in Geneva in setting forth a very clear transition plan ... There’s no need to complicate it, as the deputy prime minister appeared to do there. We still believe that the faster Al-Assad goes, the more chance there is to quickly move on to the day after.
Yes it's true. Around 70% of Aleppo city is with the regime. It has always been that way. The countryside is with us and the city is with them. We are saying that we will only be here as long as it takes to get the job done, to get rid of the Assads. After that, we will leave and they can build the city that they want.
Comments (…)
Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion