Fighting raged across Syria yesterday with clashes reported just a few miles from where President Bashar al-Assad had unveiled a “peace plan” that Syrians on both sides said would do nothing to end a 21-month-old uprising.
Hours after Assad addressed cheering loyalists at the Damascus Opera House on Sunday in his first public speech in months, fighting erupted near the road to the city’s international airport, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The opposition-linked group said artillery hit the district of Aqraba, three miles from the Opera House. Fighting continued all night and into yesterday around the capital, as well as in the northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, it said.
In central Syria, the towns of Taybet Imam and Halfaya were bombarded with aerial strikes and artillery, said Abu Faisal, an activist speaking over the internet from Taybet Imam.
“Every four to five minutes, we hear the burst from a rocket. We cannot get any wounded out because we are essentially under siege by the shelling,” he said.
Damascus residents said Assad’s speech, which offered no concessions to his foes, was met with celebratory gunfire in pro-Assad neighbourhoods.
But even there, some saw no sign peace was closer: a loyalist resident of southern Damascus reached by internet said the speech was eloquent but empty.
“It sounded more like gloating than making promises,” said the woman, who gave only her first name, Aliaa. “I agree with the ideas but words are really just words until he takes some action. He needs to do something. But even so, everything he suggests now, it is too late, the rebels aren’t going to stop.”
In the once-affluent district of Mezzeh, scene of several bomb attacks, an Assad critic said people had more pressing concerns than a TV speech. “Here, no one cares about this speech. They care about food and electricity.”
France, the US, Britain and Turkey all said Assad’s speech, his first to an audience since June last year, showed he had lost touch with reality after unrest that the UN says has killed 60,000 people.
Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan accused Assad yesterday of “directing state terrorism”.
The plan described by the Syrian leader as a new peace initiative proposed an army ceasefire only after rebels halt their operations and summoned Syrians to mobilise for a war to defend the state against “a puppet made by the West”.
The UN said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon was disappointed that Assad’s speech rejected the idea of a transitional government to pave the way to new elections – a central plank of a peace plan promoted by envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.
Assad’s ally Iran defended the speech as offering a “comprehensive political process”.