Feared forces launch assault on Damascus

Feared forces led by President Bashar al-Assad’s brother used helicopter gunships yesterday in a new assault on rebels in Damascus, activists said, as clashes also raged in Syria’s second city Aleppo.

The Fourth Brigade headed by Maher al-Assad mounted an offensive in the Damascus neighbourhood of Barzeh, triggering an exodus of residents, as a rebel commander appeared in a video saying the battle to “liberate” 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,” he said.

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.” The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said “the feared Fourth Brigade” commanded by President Assad’s powerful younger brother Maher was carrying out the Barzeh attack.

“Troops have stormed the northwestern Barzeh district of Damascus with tanks and armoured personnel carriers,” the group’s director Rami Abdel Rahman said, adding that snipers had been deployed on rooftops.

The rebel Free Syrian Army’s (FSA) military council head General Mustafa al-Sheikh said “a real war of attrition” was under way in Damascus.

“The regime is collapsing, the speed at which it is falling has increased. That means it will use greater violence in order to try and save itself,” said General Sheikh.

The Observatory also warned that a siege was under way on the outskirts of the upscale Mazzeh neighbourhood, saying “dozens of tanks” were preventing medical teams from accessing the area to scores of injured. As battles continued in the capital, a rebel FSA commander declared that the battle to “liberate” the northern city of Aleppo had begun. In a YouTube video, Colonel Abdel Jabbar Mohammad Oqaidi announced “the start of the operation to liberate Aleppo from the hands of Assad’s gangs,” while pledging that rebels would protect civilians, including the city’s minorities.

On Syria’s borders, rebels battled troops for control of crossing posts with Turkey, Iraq and Jordan, as Turkey moved batteries of ground-to-air missiles to its frontier with the Arab state.

By yesterday afternoon, fighters were in control of three crossings with Turkey – Bab al-Hawa, al-Salama and Jarabulus. They also controlled Albu Kamal post with Iraq but lost hold of Rabiyah on the same border a day after capturing it.