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Fierce fighting has resumed today in Syria’s second city, Aleppo, according to activists, who say rebels are resisting a major army offensive.
Air and ground attacks by President Assad’s forces have so far failed to dislodge opposition fighters from the many neighbourhoods under their control.
The Syrian army launched a massive assault on rebels in Aleppo on Saturday amid growing world concern about the risks of reprisals against the civilian population of the country’s second city.
Troops backed by tanks and helicopter gunships, which had been massing for the past two days, moved on southwestern districts of the commercial hub, where rebel fighters concentrated their forces when they seized much of the northern city on July 20.
Artillery pounded Salaheddin and other rebel neighbourhoods from 8 am (0500 GMT) as ground troops advanced, an AFP correspondent reported.
The State Department said Thursday the Syrian dictatorship is preparing a massacre in Syria’s largest city, Aleppo.
Aleppo is a city of more than 3 million people, the size of Los Angeles. Refugees are pouring out of town. It was a year and a half ago that a popular uprising rebelled against the 42-year-old dictatorship of the Assad family. Rebels have taken some Aleppo’s neighborhoods.
One recent photograph from the embattled city stands out: Five-year-old Mohammad Amumrej, wounded during Syrian army shelling of the town, is whisked away for medical treatment.
For the first time since start of revolt in Syria, regime loyal forces clashed with jordanian army along the border between two countries.
Border sources confirmed it to ANSA, after that syrian activists published video about fights. Sources said that three jordanian soldiers have been wounded.
Philippine elite troops backed by helicopter gunships have fought al-Qaeda-linked militants in the group’s stronghold on a southern island, in clashes that killed 14 people, the military said.
The soldiers battled Islamic extremists from the Abu Sayyaf group on the troubled island of Basilan, with the fighting leaving at least nine soldiers and five militants dead.
The group, which was founded in the 1990s with seed money from then al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, has been blamed for the worst terror attacks in Philippine history including deadly bombings and kidnappings for ransom.