Civilians and security officers at the scene of a bombing in the Mazzeh 86 Area in Damascus yesterday.
AMMAN: Syrian rebels battled President Bashar Al Assad’s forces in and around the northern city of Aleppo yesterday, seeking to reverse gains made by loyalist forces in the commercial hub over the last two months, activists said.
The fighting, by a variety of insurgent groups, happened as France urged moderate rebels to wrest territory back from radical Islamists whose role in the fight to topple Assad poses a dilemma for Western countries concerned that arms shipments could fall into the hands of people it considers terrorists.
The 11 Western and Arab countries known as the “Friends of Syria” agreed on Saturday to give urgent military support to the rebels, channelled through the Western-backed Supreme Military Council in a bid to prevent arms getting to Islamist radicals.
But radical forces showed they remained formidable yesterday when the Islamist Ahrar Al Sham brigade detonated a car bomb at a roadblock at an entrance to Aleppo killing at least 12 loyalist soldiers, according to the opposition Aleppo News Network and other activists in the city. Aleppo, 35km south of Turkey, has been contested since July last year, when rebel brigades entered the city and captured about half of it. In recent weeks, Assad has focused his military campaign on recapturing rebel-held areas.
He has also been expanding control of the central province of Homs after capturing a strategic town on the border with Lebanon, and has used heavy bombardment and siege warfare to contain rebels dug in around the capital, according to opposition sources and diplomats monitoring the conflict.
Firas Fuleifel, with the moderate Islamist al-Farouq Brigade, said six rebel fighters were killed in fighting in Aleppo in the last day.
In Damascus, the Ahrar Al Sham and the Islamist Tawhid Al Asima brigades detonated a car bomb in an area known as Mezze 86, inhabited by members of Assad’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shia that has controlled Syria since the 1960s. Two people were killed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.
Rebels also attacked two security compounds in Damascus, killing at least five people, sources in the capital said.
In regional repercussions of the increasingly sectarian Syrian conflict, four Lebanese soldiers were killed in clashes with followers of a Sunni Islamist cleric who is a critic of the role of Hezbollah — the Shia Lebanese group — in giving military support to Assad.
Sources in the city said the fighting broke out when a follower of Sheikh Ahmed Al Assir was arrested at an army roadblock in Sidon, 40km south of Beirut.
The clashes were followed by fighting between Hezbollah members based in the mostly Sunni city and Assir’s followers in which automatic weapons and shoulder fired rockets were used, the sources said.
Meanwhile, French President Francois Hollande yesterday urged support for the Syrian opposition but said it should “clarify” its ties with extremists, in talks with Jordan’s King Abdullah II.
“We want the opposition to be given the necessary support,” Hollande said in Amman during a one-on-one meeting with the king at which journalists were present.
“We share the same point of view. We want to help the Syrian opposition to organise themselves and clarify their relationship with extremist groups.” He urged the mainstream rebel Free Syrian Army to “retake” areas that have fallen into the hands of extremist groups. The French leader said in Amman he appreciated Jordan’s assistance and hosting of around 540,000 Syrian refugees who have fled across the border into the kingdom. AFP/Reuters
