Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad shelled rebel-held areas across Syria yesterday as fierce clashes were reported in second city Aleppo, where a fire tore through a medieval souk.

Two helicopters damaged by rebel mortar fire

The fighting in Aleppo was accompanied by intense overnight shelling that continued yesterday morning, destroying houses and killing at least three people including two civilians, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Aleppo, Syria’s most populous city, has been the main battleground for the past two months of the country’s 18-month conflict, and has been gripped by fighting on an unprecedented scale in recent days.

Much of the violence has centred in and around the Old City, and this is believed to have sparked the fire in the centuries-old souk marketplace, which destroyed many shops, said an AFP correspondent and the Observatory. Clashes were reported elsewhere in the northern province of Aleppo, where rebel mortar fire damaged two helicopters at the Al-Nairab military airport, said the group which relies on a network of activists on the ground. The army also shelled several other districts of Aleppo and battled rebels in Aleppo’s northern district of Jandul.

In Damascus province, rebels killed nine soldiers when they attacked a military checkpoint on the road linking the capital with Qatana to the southwest, the Britain-based group reported. That came after soldiers backed by aerial firepower stormed the rebel stronghold of Harasta as regime forces carried out arrest raids in Zabadani, said the Observatory.

Elsewhere, troops trying to dislodge rebels fired heavy artillery into areas of the southern province of Daraa, central region of Hama and Idlib in the country’s northwest, the watchdog said.

In the northeastern province of Hasakeh, the army fired on houses, injuring several people, as security forces conducted arrest operations in the coastal city of Banias.

The rebel Free Syrian Army attacked a checkpoint in Deir Ezzor, killing four soldiers, said the Observatory, whose latest toll for yesterday was 23 dead including 13 troops, five civilians and five rebels.

Meanwhile, a suicide car bomb rocked the Kurdish city of Qamishli yesterday, state TV said, in the first such attack in Syria’s Kurdish region that has kept out of the conflict between rebels and the regime.

The broadcaster said at least four people were killed in the Qamishli blast, while the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said eight members of the security forces were killed and that the attack targeted their headquarters in the city.