Regime attacks strategic city; Turkey sees no point in talks

Syrian warplanes pounded a strategic northern city with three airstrikes yesterday as ground troops pushed forward to recapture the area recently taken by rebels, activists said.
The fighting over Maaret Al-Numan, which sits along the main highway that connects Aleppo and Damascus, comes as the regime intensifies efforts to retake the area that was seized by rebels earlier this month.
Their presence has disrupted the regime’s ability to send supplies and reinforcements to Aleppo, where regime forces are bogged down in a bloody fight for control of the country’s largest city.
Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said ground troops were fighting rebels on the southern edge of the city, 80 km southwest of Aleppo.
“The regime wants to recapture Maaret Al-Numan because it links Damascus with Aleppo,” Abdul-Rahman said referring to Syria’s two largest cities. “It is a very strategic city.”
In Damascus, meanwhile, Syrian troops and rebels clashed in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk, activists said. The LCC and the Observatory said the fighting broke out after midnight, but they had no word on casualties.
Palestinian refugees in Syria tried to stay on the sidelines when the uprising began. But many Palestinian youths have joined the fight as they became enraged by mounting violence and moved by Arab Spring calls for greater freedoms.
Meanwhile, Iran has criticized neighboring Iraq for forcing a Syria-bound Iranian cargo plane to land for inspection in Baghdad to ensure it was not carrying weapons.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said Iraq should not be influenced by anti-Iranian Western countries, adding that the search of two Iranian planes over the past month had proved that no weapons were aboard Syria-bound Iranian flights.
Mehmanparast said the US and its allies seek to divert global attention away from their own shipment of arms to Syrian rebels. He made the remarks during a press conference in Tehran yesterday.
Turkey is ruling out any dialogue with the Syrian regime, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said yesterday, a day after Moscow called for negotiations with Damascus as the only way to end the escalating conflict.
“There is no point in engaging in dialogue with a regime that continues to carry out such a massacre against its own people, even during Eid Al-Adha,” Davutoglu said at a news conference.
"What matters now is to encourage peace through the strongest messages. We had maintained our relationship with the Syrian regime for months and delivered messages of dialogue," said Davutoglu.
"We still do, but first of all the Syrian regime must demonstrate the will to make peace with its own people," he added, arguing that negotiations while a civil war was raging could not yield any results.