Peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said yesterday the deadly conflict in Syria was getting worse as he arrived on his first official trip aimed at ending nearly 18 months of violence.
“We came to Syria to hold meetings with our Syrian brothers because there is a big crisis, and I think it is getting worse,” the official Sana news agency quoted the UN-Arab League envoy as saying at Damascus airport.
“I think everybody agrees the need to stop the bloodshed and to restore harmony, and we hope that we will succeed,” said Brahimi, who succeeded former envoy Kofi Annan who quit after his six-point peace plan for Syria foundered.
Brahimi spoke after rebels were reported to have advanced into a key district of the northern city of Aleppo, where activists said at least 11 people were killed in a strike by a helicopter gunship.
“During his visit to Syria, Mr Brahimi will hold talks with the government and with representatives of the Syrian opposition and civil society,” said a statement from his spokesman Ahmad Fawzi, who also said that the veteran Algerian diplomat would be meeting President Bashar al-Assad.
Brahimi highlighted to Arab League envoys in Cairo this week that he knows he faces an uphill struggle, with no sign of a lull in the violence. He told the envoys that “he was approaching the crisis in Syria with his eyes open and the full knowledge that it was an extremely difficult task”.
In Brussels yesterday, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi reiterated that Assad must step down because “a President that kills his own people is not acceptable.”
And British Foreign Secretary William Hague, visiting Baghdad, told reporters the Damascus regime is “doomed, that it is not possible for it to survive, and so many crimes (have been) committed that it should not survive.”
On the ground, rebels and troops battled for control of the strategic Midan district of central Aleppo, which opens the way to the main square, with fighting raging around two police stations, residents said.
Rebels captured the police stations at dawn but were repelled by the army, residents said, adding that the insurgents fought their way back into the area and clashed fiercely with troops as the army tried to dislodge them again.
An AFP journalist reported columns of black smoke hanging over the cit.
Warplanes fired at several districts from high altitude in a bid to stay out of range of rebel weapons.
Most of the wounded brought to the field hospital were women and children hit by shelling as they were out on the streets, the AFP correspondent reported.