Fighting intensifies in Syria, jolts capital; deaths put at 159

A rebel fighter fires a machine gun toward Syrian troops hiding in a building during heavy clashes Sunday in the Jedida district of Aleppo, Syria.
A rebel fighter fires a machine gun toward Syrian troops hiding in a building during heavy clashes Sunday in the Jedida district of Aleppo, Syria.

— Some of the worst violence in months racked Syria on Monday with residents of southern Damascus fleeing heavy shelling, several smaller towns shattered by air attacks, and the explosion of at least two car bombs.

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The Local Coordinating Committees, a collection of activist organizations across Syria, said the daily toll reached at least 159, including 72 killed in Idlib, and 47 in Damascus and its suburbs.

People in Damascus, the capital, said the fighting was the fiercest they could remember since July, with thousands fleeing as a Palestinian faction that supports the Assad government skirmished with government opponents in three southern neighborhoods.

“It’s a real war,” an activist reached in southern Damascus said via Skype. She used only one name, Eman, for her safety. “Explosions, bombing and gunfire, and of course the helicopters, which have become part of the sky in Damascus now, like birds.”

The fighting, escalating over three days, ignited the quarters of Yarmouk and Tadamon, both heavily Palestinian, as well as Hajjar al-Aswad, a center of resistance to the government.

Syria took in large numbers of Palestinians who fled their homes at the founding of Israel, and they and their descendants number about 450,000 now. Many have sided with those leading the uprising, but the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a faction with a prominent role in the neighborhoods, still supports the government. Much of the fighting involved Popular Front units, backed by government artillery. Rounds fired from the military airfield in Mezze slammed into the area, activists said.

Yarmouk, founded as a Palestinian refugee camp in 1957, gradually became a residential district barely distinguishable from the rest of greater Damascus. A Facebook page focused on camp news published a statement from the Popular Front group saying it had thwarted an infiltration by government opponents.

Civilians have been fleeing in droves. Small artillery hit a minibus that was carrying people who were trying to escape from Yarmouk, killing five of them. Each side blamed the other for that strike.

A car bomb exploded in Mezze 86, a Damascus neighborhood on the slopes below the official palace that houses the offices of President Bashar Assad. The area is heavily populated by families linked to the security forces, which Assad’s Alawite minority dominates. Pictures posted on Facebook showed a large black column of smoke rising from the area.

The Free Syrian Army claimed responsibility for that attack, saying in a statement that it targeted military officers and members of the armed militias who fight for the government.

The bomb, a booby trapped car, exploded in Bride Square, killing at least 11 people and wounding more than 30, some of them critically, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the conflict from abroad.

The official news agency, SANA, also put the death toll at 11 but said at least 56 were injured. The explosion ignited other cars and caused widespread destruction, it said.

Accounts differed more sharply on another car bombing, outside a government-owned Rural Development Center near Hama. The rebels and activists reported that dozens of soldiers were killed; the government said just two civilians had died.

The Syrian Observatory said that Jabhet Al-Nusra - known as a jihadist organization - and other rebel groups in the region collaborated to explode a car bomb at a government checkpoint in a village near Hama, killing at least 50 soldiers.

The accounts from the observatory and rebel groups stated that the military had taken over the development center to house military units. Checkpoints in rural areas often serve as rudimentary bases for the government, with large numbers of men and equipment.

“They targeted one of the biggest checkpoints in the region,” said Ahmad Raadoun, a member of the Free Syrian Army in the Hama suburbs who was reached by Skype. “It’s a big building where the regime forces were headquartered.”

Raadoun said he was about 20 miles from the site, the village of Ziyara. He said the bomb caused extensive casualties and other damage.

The SANA account said a suicide bomber in a vehicle killed two civilians and wounded 10 others. The government routinely refers to rebels as terrorists and has repeatedly singled out the Jabhet group as a terrorist organization.

In its daily roundup of violence around the country, SANA also said that government forces clashed with “terrorists” in the eastern city of Deir al-Zour, and in Aleppo, in the north.

Activist organizations reported a number of airstrikes around the country, with the toll particularly high in the northern towns of Harem and Kafr Nabl, both near Idlib. Kafr Nabl has gained a reputation throughout the conflict for its savvy demonstrations.

Local activists said Monday that a government airstrike had killed at least 17 people and that more were buried under the rubble.

Elsewhere, a Turkish government official based in the border town of Kilis confirmed two Syrian rebel groups were “engaged in a power struggle,” fighting each other for control of the Bab el-Salameh border crossing. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government rules, said Turkish officials are still trying to determine who the two groups were.

Meanwhile, the main Syrian opposition bloc on Monday broadened its ranks to accommodate more activists and political groups from inside the country, officials said, in an apparent nod to international demands for a more representative and cohesive leadership.

However, the Syrian National Council’s changes may not suffice to counter a U.S.-backed plan to create a new opposition leadership that would greatly dilute the council’s influence. The U.S. has criticized the council, dominated by exiles and academics, as ineffective and out of touch with those fighting in Syria to overthrow President Bashar Assad.

Under the U.S.-backed plan, proposed by prominent dissident Riad Seif, the council would become part of a new leadership group, holding only 15 of the organization’s 50 seats - thus making room for more representatives from inside Syria.

Information for this article was contributed by Neil MacFarquhar of The New York Times; and by Barbara Surk, Bassem Mroue, Suzan Fraser, Karin Laub and Bradley Klapper of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/06/2012

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