ALEPPO: Fierce fighting raged for a second straight day in Syria’s commercial capital Aleppo on Sunday as troops pressed an offensive against rebel-held areas of the city, sparking fears for trapped civilians.
The opposition Syrian National Council accused the government of President Bashar-Assad of preparing to carry out “massacres” in the city and called on the UN Security Council to hold an emergency session.
As rebel fighters held out against the superior firepower of Assad’s regime, SNC chief Abdel Basset Sayda called on foreign governments to provide them with heavy weapons.
International peace envoy Kofi Annan urged both sides to hold back, saying that only a political solution could end a conflict that human rights monitors say has killed more than 20,000 people since the uprising erupted in March 2011.
An activist who gave his name as Abu Alaa said there was renewed shelling of the Salaheddin district in southwest Aleppo where rebels repulsed a ground assault on Saturday.
He said there were also clashes between troops and rebels in the Bab Al-Nasr, Bab Al-Hadid and Old City neighborhoods of the city center.
The central districts’ “narrow streets and alleys, with covered markets and densely populated buildings, are impossible to penetrate with tanks or shelling from afar,” he said.
After massing for two days, troops backed by tanks and helicopter gunships on Saturday launched a ground assault on Salaheddin, where rebels concentrated their forces when they seized much of Aleppo on July 20.
Both sides claimed to have made advances, but an AFP correspondent reported that rebels had largely repulsed the army’s offensive.
Civilians in the city of some 2.5 million people crowded into basements seeking refuge from the intense bombardment by artillery and helicopter gunships, the correspondent said.
Col. Abdel Jabbar Al-Oqaidi of the Free Syrian Army said the rebels had inflicted heavy losses on the army in Salaheddin but that there had been many civilian deaths.
“We have destroyed eight tanks and some armored vehicles and killed more than 100 soldiers,” he said.
“Three rebels were killed, but also many civilians.”
Oqaidi said the regime’s resort to air strikes was responsible for the high death toll among civilians, and called for the imposition of a no-fly zone.
“The FSA can face air strikes. This bombardment has no impact on the FSA, but it does have an impact on civilians,” he said.
“We ask the West for a no-fly zone. We have already liberated one zone and all we need is a no-fly zone, and we are ready to bring down this regime.”
The pro-government Al-Watan newspaper said the army had launched a “very delicate operation in Aleppo to eradicate terrorism, impose the rule of law and free residents from the hands of terrorists sent from various parts of the world.”
“The fate of the terrorists will be the same as that of their comrades in Damascus,” the paper added, alluding to an offensive by the army earlier this month that prompted rebel fighters to withdraw from the capital.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported heavy fighting on Sunday in the Salaheddin and Saif Al-Dawla neighborhoods and at the entrance to the Hindrat Palestinian refugee camp.”
“The army is trying to retake the Bab Al-Hadid district in the center of Aleppo city,” Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman added.
Nationwide, violence killed 168 people on Saturday — 94 civilians, 33 rebels and 41 soldiers, the Britain-based watchdog said.
Annan, the joint envoy on the Syrian conflict of the United Nations and the Arab League, issued a renewed call for a political settlement.
“The escalation of the military build-up in Aleppo and the surrounding area is further evidence of the need for the international community to come together to persuade the parties that only a political transition, leading to a political settlement, will resolve this crisis,” he said.
The former UN chief brokered a peace plan that was supposed to begin with a cease-fire from April 12, but it never took hold.
The SNC chief called on Arab governments to provide the rebels with heavy weapons. “We want weapons that would stop tanks and jet fighters,” Sayda said after talks in Abu Dhabi late on Saturday.
But Russia said that governments such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia which advocate the arming of the rebels were responsible for the mounting death toll.
“Our Western partners... together with some of Syria’s neighbors are essentially encouraging, supporting and directing an armed struggle against the regime,” said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.
“The price of this is yet more blood.”
As the violence raged, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Al-Muallem arrived in key ally Tehran for previously unscheduled talks, Iranian state media reported, adding that he would discuss “developments in Syria” with officials.
