Rebels vow to fight on as several people die in an explosion outside a bakery where hundreds were queueing for bread
Syrian troops and rebels fought fierce battles yesterday in the city of Aleppo, where several people died when a shell crashed into a bakery as hundreds queued for bread, AFP correspondents said.
They said around a dozen people were killed and 20 wounded at the bakery in the increasingly desperate city. At least three children were among the dead in the eastern Tariq al-Bab district of Syria’s commercial capital.
And troops repelled a rebel attack on Aleppo’s international airport, state news agency Sana reported.
“Mercenary terrorists” had tried to attack it but the “army hit back and killed most of them”.
Rebels vowed to fight on in Aleppo, a day after being driven out of a key district under heavy shellfire.
Meanwhile later yesterday Syrian rebels captured three journalists who work for state TV as they accompanied government troops operating near Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
“Three Syrian journalists who work for state television were seized by rebels while they were on assignment, accompanying soldiers in Al-Tal,” just north of Damascus, the monitoring group said.
In the latest clashes, Aleppo’s historic Citadel, part of a Unesco-listed world heritage site, was heavily damaged by bombing, according to the opposition.
The violence raged on as world powers prepared to name veteran Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi as their new envoy to seek a peaceful and politically workable end to a 17-month uprising that has cost more than 21,000 lives.
A rebel commander, Hossam Abu Mohammed, said his men were still fighting in parts of Aleppo’s southwestern district of Salaheddin after most fled on Thursday in the face of heavy bombing and advancing troops.
“We will not let Salaheddin go,” the Free Syrian Army’s Abu Mohammed told AFP by telephone on the third day of a government offensive to take the city.
The army again bombed parts of Salaheddin, as well as the Sakhur and Hanano districts in the northeast, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that five civilians were among 56 people killed nationwide.
Before dawn, a MiG 21 fighter jet dropped four bombs on rebel positions in Hanano, an AFP correspondent said. One struck the courtyard of the FSA headquarters in the area and another a nearby house, wounding a number of people.
Angry residents shouted hostile slogans against France and the US, saying: “No one is helping us.”
“We are behind the Free Syrian Army, but it is because of them that all of this is happening,” one of them lamented.
The opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) said Aleppo’s 13th-century Citadel, part of a complex of sites in the city’s historic heart that the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation says is of “outstanding universal value” had been damaged in army shelling. It was not possible to independently verify the opposition’s claim.
Regime forces shot dead a 19-year-old protester in New Aleppo, an upscale district of the embattled city, as they opened fire on demonstrators, according to monitors.
The Observatory said the youth died from a gunshot to the head, adding that three other demonstrators were wounded in the army-controlled district.
Adding to the pressure on the regime on the international front, a US State Department official said Washington was planning to impose new sanctions.
“One of the key forms of pressure is economic sanctions, which in the coming days, or very shortly, we will be tightening further with additional sanctions (on) both Syrian entities and those who are supporting the efforts of the Syrian government to oppress its own people,” the US official said.
The official spoke during Mrs Clinton’s visit to Ghana.
Meanwhile, diplomats at the United Nations said former Algerian Foreign Minister Brahimi was expected to be named as the new UN-Arab League envoy to Syria.
Negotiations were still under way over the envoy’s role and how the United Nations will operate in Syria amid the intensifying civil war. The mandate of the UN mission in the country ends on August 20.
An official announcement of the 78-year-old’s appointment is expected to be made early next week, diplomats said.
Kofi Annan, a former UN secretary general, resigned from the post saying he had not received enough international support for his efforts to end the conflict but is staying on until August 31.
In a statement released by The Elders, a group of world statesmen, Mr Brahimi said “the UN Security Council and regional states must unite to ensure that a political transition can take place as soon as possible.”
“Millions of Syrians are clamouring for peace. World leaders cannot remain divided any longer, over and above their cries.”
Britain said yesterday it would give the rebels five million pounds (€ 6.3 million) in non-lethal assistance, including body armour and communications equipment.
“The people of Syria cannot wait indefinitely, people are dying. In the absence of diplomatic progress the UK will do much more,” Foreign Secretary William Hague said.
On the humanitarian front, the International Committee for the Red Cross said the Syrian Red Crescent had suspended most of its work in Aleppo because of the extreme danger, but that dozens of volunteers were still working.
A statement in Geneva said the ICRC had managed on Thursday to deliver food and other essential to cover the needs of at least 12,500 people in the city of some 2.7 million people.