140 killed as Syria intensifies attack on rebel fighters

Thousands of refugees flood Jordan

Saturday, January 26, 2013

— Syria’s army unleashed a barrage of rocket and artillery fire on rebel-held areas in a central province Friday as part of a widening offensive against fighters who are seeking to oust President Bashar Assad.

At least 140 people were killed in fighting nationwide, according to activist groups.

The United Nations said a record number of Syrians streamed into Jordan this month, doubling the population of the kingdom’s already-cramped refugee camp to 65,000. More than 30,000 people arrived in Zaatari in January - 6,000 in the past two days alone, the U.N. said.

The newcomers are mostly families, women, children and elderly who fled from southern Syria, said Melissa Fleming, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. She said the agency is working with the Jordanian government to open a second major camp nearby by the end of this month.

Many of the new arrivals at Zaatari are from the southern town of Daraa, where the uprising against Assad first emerged nearly two years ago, the Britain-based Save the Children said Friday.

Five buses, crammed with “frightened and exhausted people who fled with what little they could carry,” pull up every hour at the camp, said Saba al-Mobasat, an aid worker with Save the Children.

Zaatari has recorded the birth of seven to 10 babies every day over the past month, according to Fleming. Many Syrians arrived sick because of the collapse of medical services. Three children, including a 2-day-old infant, died in the camp this week, she said.

The refugee agency reported it was also working double shifts to try to register Syrians who are living elsewhere in Jordan and expected to have 50,000 on its books by the end of February, but it noted that Jordanian authorities say 300,000 Syrians have now entered the country.

Jordan’s fears for the impact of this influx on its own stability surfaced last week when Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour said that if the Syrian government collapses, it would not allow refugees to cross its border but would use its military to create safe havens inside Syria for those displaced by conflict.

The number of Syrian refugees in the region is approaching 700,000, the refugee agency said, with 221,000 registered as refugees in Lebanon, 156,000 in Turkey and 76,000 in Iraq.

The exodus reflected the latest spike in violence in Syria’s civil war. The conflict began in March 2011 after a peaceful uprising against Assad, inspired by the Arab Spring wave of revolutions that toppled leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, turned violent.

Despite significant rebel advances on the battlefield, the opposition remains outgunned by government forces and has been unable to break a stalemate on the ground.

In Lebanon, the leader of the Syria-backed Lebanese Hezbollah group, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, said Friday in a speech that those who dream about “dramatic changes” taking place in Syria should let go of their fantasies.

“Particularly those who were expecting the fall of Damascus,” he told supporters, adding that military, political and international developments point to the futility of such dreams.

Activists said the army recently brought in military reinforcements to the central province of Homs and launched a renewed offensive aimed at retaking patches of territory that have been held by rebels for months.

An amateur video posted online by activists showed rockets slamming into buildings in the rebel-held town of Rastan, just north of the provincial capital, Homs. Heavy gunfire could be heard in the background.

Another video showed thick black and gray smoke rising from a building in the besieged city. “The city of Homs is burning ... day and night, the shelling of Homs doesn’t stop,” the narrator is heard saying.

Troops also battled rebels around Damascus to dislodge opposition fighters who have set up enclaves in surrounding towns and villages. The troops fired artillery shells Friday at several districts, including Zabadani and Daraya, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees, said regime warplanes carried out airstrikes on the suburb of Douma, the largest patch of rebel-held ground near Damascus.

Other video showed devastation in the Damascus neighborhood of Arbeen, after what activists said were two airstrikes there. The video shows a bleeding, wounded man being helped out of the rubble of the destroyed building. The videos appeared consistent with reporting on the fighting.

Last month, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said it needed $1 billion to aid Syrians in the Mideast, and that half of that money is required to help refugees in Jordan.

In Turkey, U.S. officials announced that the United States was providing an additional $10 million in assistance to help supply flour to bakeries in the Aleppo region.

Nancy Lindborg, assistant administrator for the U.S. Agency for International Development, said the aid would help provide daily bread for about 210,000 people for the next five months.

She said that with the new assistance, the United States is providing $220 million to help Syrians.

“Too many people - an unconscionable number of Syrians - are not able to get daily bread, in addition to other supplies,” Lindborg told journalists after a visit to a Syrian refugee camp near Turkey’s border with Syria.

In a rare gesture, Syria’s Interior Ministry called on those who fled the country during the civil war to return, including regime opponents. It said the government will help hundreds of thousands of citizens return whether they left “legally or illegally.”

Syrian opposition figures abroad who want to take part in reconciliation talks will also be allowed back, according to a ministry statement carried late Thursday by the state SANA news agency.

If they “have the desire to participate in the national dialogue, they would be allowed to enter Syria,” it said.

Tens of thousands of activists, their family members and opposition supporters remain jailed by the regime, according to international activist groups.

Opposition leaders repeatedly have rejected any talks that include Assad, insisting he must step down. The international community backs that demand, but Assad has clung to power, vowing to crush the armed opposition.

More than 60,000 people have been killed since the conflict began, according to the U.N.

Activists also said two cars packed with explosives blew up near a military intelligence building in the Syrian controlled part of the Golan Heights, killing eight people. Most of the dead were members of the Syrian military, the Observatory said.

The Syrian government had no comment on the attacks, which occurred Thursday night in the town of Quneitra, and nobody claimed responsibility for them.

Car bombs and suicide attacks targeting Syrian troops and government institutions have been the hallmark of Islamic militants fighting in Syria alongside rebels trying to topple Assad.

Quneitra is on the ceasefire line between Syria and Israel, which controls most of the Golan Heights, which it captured from Syria in the 1967 war.

Information for this article was contributed by Barbara Surk, Albert Aji, Suzan Fraser and Zeina Karam of The Associated Press and by Nick Cumming-Bruce of The New York Times.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 01/26/2013