1/30/2012 01:56:00 AM
DAMASCUS: Syrian troops backed by tanks launched an assault to retake Damascus suburbs from rebels on Sunday, activists said, a day after the Arab League suspended its monitoring mission in Syria because of worsening violence.
They said 19 civilians and rebels were killed as the soldiers in buses and armoured personnel carriers moved in at dawn, along with at least 50 tanks.
The forces of President Bashar al-Assad pushed into the Ghouta area on the eastern edge of Damascus to take part in an offensive in the suburbs of Saqba, Hammouriya and Kfar Batna.
Tanks advanced into the centre of Saqba and Kfar Batna, the activists said, in a move to flush out rebel fighters who had taken over districts just a few kilometres from Mr Assad’s centre of power.
“It’s urban war. There are bodies in the street,” said one activist, speaking from Kfar Batna. Activists said 14 civilians and five insurgents from the rebel ‘Free Syrian Army’ were killed there and in other suburbs.
The escalating bloodshed prompted the Arab League to suspend the work of its monitors on Saturday. Arab foreign ministers, who have urged Mr Assad to step down and make way for a government of national unity, will discuss the crisis on Feb 5.
A Syrian government official was quoted by state media as saying Damascus was surprised by the Arab League decision to suspend monitoring, which would “put pressure on (UN Security Council) deliberations with the aim of calling for foreign intervention and encouraging armed groups to increase violence”.
Mr Assad blames the violence on foreign-backed militants.
State news agency SANA reported funerals on Saturday for 28 soldiers and security force members killed by “armed terrorist groups” in Homs, Hama, Deraa, Deir al-Zor and Damascus province.
Another 24 soldiers were reported killed on Sunday.
SANA said six soldiers were killed in a bombing southwest of Damascus, while the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said 18 soldiers were killed in two attacks by army deserters in the northern province of Idlib.
The SOHR claimed in statements received in Nicosia that at least 66 people were killed on Sunday across the country, including 26 civilians.
Its head, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP that the clashes near Damascus were the fiercest since the revolt broke out in mid-March.
The ‘Free Syrian Army’ said 50 more officers and soldiers turned their back on Mr Assad and in a “steady progression of fighting towards the capital” clashed with army regulars only 8km from Damascus.
“The more the regime uses the army, the more soldiers defect,” Ahmed al-Khatib, a local rebel council member on the Damascus outskirts, told AFP.
Other rebel sources reported heavy fighting in Rankus, 45km from Damascus, and heightened tension in Hama, further to the north.
Rankus was “besieged for the past five days and is being randomly shelled since dawn by tanks and artillery rounds,” rebel Abu Ali al-Rankusi said.
In Hama, pro-regime snipers were deployed on the rooftops, according to activists, with security forces leaving “bodies of dead people with their hands tied behind their backs” on the streets across several neighbourhoods.—Reuters/AFP
Posted in: INTERNATIONAL
