As fighting in Aleppo rages, frightened civilians seek shelter
July 31, 2012 -- Updated 1851 GMT (0251 HKT)
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- NEW: FSA commander confident about rebel strides
- NEW: Fighting rages in Damascus, Homs, Daraa and Deir Ezzor
- The displaced continue to flee to safer ground
- More than 129,000 Syrian refugees have been registered by the U.N.
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Northern Syria (CNN) -- Syria's most populous city
remained engulfed by fighting Tuesday as opposition groups reported
incremental rebel gains and the United Nations said civilian
displacement rose.
Fighters attacked Syrian
police stations in the central neighborhoods of Salhin and Bab
al-Nayrab, and seized control of the buildings after hours of clashes,
the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
At least 40 police
officers died in the violence, the observatory said. Deama, an activist
who asked that her full name not be used for her protection, said Salhin
has been the center of many "aggressive operations by the police and
Shabiha militia."
A opposition video,
purportedly from the Bab al-Nayrab neighborhood, showed bloody corpses
amid rubble and rebels chanting "Allahu akbar," an Arabic phrase for
"God is great."
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Amid spurts of gunfire,
emboldened and elated fighters also shouted "Hafez Assad, the dog of the
Arab Nation" and "the Free Syrian Army forever, stepping on Assad's
head."
Hafez Assad, the late
leader of Syria, is the father of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The
Free Syrian Army is an anti-government fighting force.
One rebel who identified himself as Faris said Shabiha militia and rebels were fighting in Bab al-Nayrab.
Among those fighting for
the regime, he said, are people from the well-known al-Berri clan, who
have members in parliament. A lot of FSA fighters died in the clashes,
Faris said.
Deama said rebels remain
in control of the neighborhood of Salaheddine and battled regime forces
there Tuesday. The area is in the southwestern part of the city.
Even though clashes
engulfed Salaheddine, helicopter shelling had not been reported Tuesday,
prompting speculation from opposition people that the regime might be
planning a big push in the area, Deama said.
Free Syrian Army deputy
commander Malek Kurdi, now in rural Aleppo, said the regime has been
trying to storm Salaheddine, but has been regularly repelled by the FSA.
He said he's seen the regime forces use rockets, 130 mm shells and 120
mm mortars.
"The situation is good
now," Kurdi told CNN in a phone call. "I think the regime's troops are
too scared to go in. Eight tanks and BMPs have been destroyed by our
fighters in the first attempt by the regime to overrun the neighborhood.
The regime forces tried to go in today as well, but they couldn't."
"BMP" is the Russian and Arabic acronym for armored personnel carrier.
Also, he said, FSA
fighters overran a big security checkpoint in the town of Anadan just
north of the city two days ago and the rebels are working to take
control of Minakh military airport in Aleppo.
"If that is achieved
successfully, then we can say the entire northern and northeastern part
of Aleppo will be liberated," he said.
Kurdi said he believes the rebels are geared up for government strikes from three directions.
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"The regime is bringing
infantry reinforcements by helicopters to the civilian airport in Aleppo
and to Ramousa in Aleppo," he said. "But we are ready, and the FSA
fighters are already making advances."
Elsewhere in Aleppo,
helicopters fired rockets at several neighborhoods, including Maisar,
Bab Road, Ard Hamra, Sakhour and Karm Almuyassar, opposition sources
said.
The Syrian Observatory
said a sniper killed the leader of a rebel battalion in the Marjeh
neighborhood, and the opposition Local Coordination Committees of Syria
said the Free Syrian Army and regime soldiers were battling in the
Meredian neighborhood.
State-run TV said Syrian
forces clashed with "armed terrorist groups" on the outskirts of Aleppo
and destroyed nine armored vehicles "with all terrorists inside."
"Our armed forces
continue to pursue terrorists in the Salaheddine neighborhood in Aleppo.
The operations resulted in inflicting heavy losses among the terrorists
and the confiscation of their weapons," state TV said.
Aleppo is the commercial
and cultural hub of Syria, and the fight to seize control of the urban
center is a major battle in what world powers now regard as a civil war.
The fighting comes a day
after rebels scored a notable victory when they captured an army
outpost near Aleppo, taking possession of tanks and crates of ammunition
in the process.
Unrest spread across
other volatile regions of the country Tuesday, as regime forces shelled
targets and launched raids in and around Damascus, Homs, Daraa and Deir
Ezzor.
The LCC said at least 49
people have been killed in these regions of Syria on Tuesday. At least
20 of them died in Aleppo. It is not clear if any of them were among
those killed in the siege of the police stations.
The regime is trying to
wrest territory away from rebels who have been able to establish growing
enclaves in northern Syria and control much of the main western highway
from Aleppo to the Turkish border.
An estimated 200,000
people in and around Aleppo fled their homes over the weekend, the U.N.
refugee agency said Tuesday, citing the International Committee of the
Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.
"With armed violence
raging in Syria's most populous city, thousands of frightened residents
are seeking shelter in schools, mosques and public buildings," the
agency said in a briefing.
People calling the U.N.
High Commissioner for Refugees office in Damascus report "a lack of
safety," "fear of ongoing shelling" and a "lack of access to food, water
and sanitation, the agency said.
The United Nations says
it has registered more than 129,000 Syrian refugees in Turkey, Jordan,
Lebanon, Iraq, Algeria, Morocco and Egypt. The refugees include "growing
numbers" from Aleppo who "are fleeing across the Hatay border" into
Turkey.
The U.N. refugee agency says thousands of people that it hasn't registered have entered those nations.
For example, the
Jordanian government said that about 150,000 refugees have entered
Jordan since March of last year, when the conflict began. But the United
Nations said more than 38,000 are getting protection and assistance,
and the rest aren't registered.
Only 70 Syrians have
approached the U.N. refugee office for help in Algeria, but there are
reports of 10,000 to 25,000 Syrians in Algeria, the refugee agency said
Tuesday.
Many Iraqi refugees who
took refuge in Syria because of violence in their homeland are
returning. More than 20,000 people have returned home in the past 10
days.
The unrest in Syria
started when al-Assad's security forces launched a violent crackdown on
peaceful protests in March 2011. That clampdown spurred a nationwide
uprising and led to the appearance of armed rebels, such as groups of
military defectors and other fighters battling under the rubric of the
Free Syrian Army.
The conflict has claimed
almost 17,000 lives, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said last week.
Opposition activists put the toll at more than 20,000.
The violence has been
decried across the globe, and it is taking its toll in the inner circles
of government. A recent bombing at a government building in Damascus
killed four top Syrian officials, and several diplomats have abandoned
the government.
The top diplomat at the
Syrian Embassy in London resigned his post, the British Foreign and
Commonwealth Office said Monday. Charge d'Affaires Khaled al-Ayoubi told
British officials that he was "no longer willing to represent a regime
that has committed such violent and oppressive acts against its own
people," the office said in a statement.
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