Country ... Syria
Fight for Aleppo

Syrian army 'launches Aleppo fightback' ... Activists say Assad forces mount ground assault on commercial capital, as rebels make gains in countryside in north.

COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Syrian army 'launches Aleppo fightback' Activists say Assad forces mount ground assault on commercial capital, as rebels make gains in countryside in north.

Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught reports exclusively from Al-Bab in Aleppo province

Syrian government forces have launched a ground assault in the city of Aleppo, and are bombarding rebel-held areas with heavy artillery, activists and witnesses have said.

Battered and burnt-out tanks littered one of the main roads into the commercial capital, according to activists, who said the move marked the beginning of the expected government assault on the city.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a UK-based rights group, said the army poured troops into the southwest of the city on Saturday, and that at least 22 people had died in Aleppo province during Saturday's violence.

Syrian army troops 'have moved on the Salaheddine district, where the largest number of rebel fighters are based', the SOHR said.

'The fiercest clashes of the uprising are taking place in several neighbourhoods of the city,' the head of the group, Rami Abdel Rahman, told the AFP news agency. 'You can say that the fightback has begun.'

The group says that eight armed opposition members were among the dead, as were several army soldiers.

Colonel Abdel Jabbar al-Oqaidi, a member of the Free Syrian Army, said that the rebels had destroyed eight armoured vehicles, and that 100 tanks were massed on the outskirts of Aleppo.

The General Committee of the Syrian Revolution, another anti-government activist group, also said that troops were raking Salaheddine with heavy machinegun fire as they advanced on the neighbourhood, which has been a stronghold of rebel fighters since they seized large parts of Syria's second city on July 20.

Tanks, helicopter gunships and warplanes have poured into Aleppo over the last two days with troops firing on a string of rebel neighbourhoods in the battle to control the commercial hub of 2.5 million people.

In the surrounding countryside, however, the balance of power is changing fast. In an exclusive report from Al-Bab in Aleppo province, Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught said Free Syrian Army fighters have taken control while the Syrian army has largely disappeared.

'What we have been hearing from activists is that some neighbourhoods in Aleppo have become battlefields, especially the neighbourhood of Salaheddine in the southwest,' Al Jazeera's Zeina Khodr reported from Beirut, in neighbouring Lebanon, on Saturday.

'The battle for Aleppo really has begun. We have seen clashes over the past two days, and we have seen both sides send in reinforcements. It is really important for both sides to win, to take control of Aleppo, it's such a strategic territory.'

The Syrian state news agency reported that clashes had taken place between security forces and 'armed terrorist groups' in Aleppo and Latakia, resulting in the killing and arrest of several members of those groups. It did not report an exact figure.

International concern

Russia warned on Saturday that a 'tragedy' was looming in Aleppo but also said it was unrealistic to expect the government would stand by when armed rebels were occupying major cities.

'We are persuading the government that they need to make some first gestures but when the armed opposition are occupying cities like Aleppo, where yet another tragedy is brewing as I understand ... it is not realistic to expect that [the government] will accept this,' Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, said.

He said 'pressure must be put on everyone,' and warned that international support for the rebels would only lead to 'more blood'.

Meanwhile on Friday, David Cameron, the British prime minister, said he feared Syrian government forces were about to carry out 'some truly appalling acts' in Aleppo and condemned the regime offensive as 'completely unacceptable'.

Al Jazeera speaks to an activist in Aleppo

Published on Jul 28, 2012 by AlJazeeraEnglish

Syrian forces have begun their assault on several neighbourhoods in the city of Aleppo, where anti-government forces and activists say they are coming under heavy fire.

Al Jazeera spoke to Muhammad Saeed, an activist based in the city, about the situation there on Saturday.

'This regime needs to realise it is illegitimate, it is wrong and it needs to stop what it is doing,' he said after meeting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in London.

Erdogan said termed developments in Syria 'very dangerous', and said the Syrian government 'kills and massacres its own people'.

'There is a build up in Aleppo and the recent statements, with respect to the use of weapons of mass destruction, are actions that we cannot remain an observer or spectator to,' he added.

The US also showed heightened concern about the renewed fighting.

'We are very concerned about the situation in Aleppo,' Jay Carney, the White House spokesman, said on Friday, condemning President Bashar al-Assad's 'heinous, reprehensible' assault on civilians.

'The kinds of weaponry that they're using against unarmed civilians I think demonstrates the depths of depravity to which Assad has sunk,' he told reporters.

Despite the US concern over the violence, however, the administration has not called for military intervention.

ICRC partial pullout

Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross announced that it was temporarily relocating some of its foreign staff from Damascus to Lebanon, and was partially suspending operations in Aleppo, due to security concerns.

On Friday, activists said helicopter gunships opened fire on civilians in Aleppo province and that the army had massed troops on the city's borders.

In-depth coverage of escalating violence across Syria

'The violence is increasing together with more military forces coming from Hama and Idlib to support the already existing Assad forces in the west of Aleppo for launching more attacks and committing more massacres,' Majid Abdul-nour, an activist, told Al Jazeera on Friday.

Violence spills into Lebanon

In addition to Aleppo, rebels continued to battle with pro-government forces in the capital Damascus on Saturday. Fresh fighting was also reported on Friday in Idlib and Deraa, activists said.

Meanwhile in neighbouring Lebanon on Saturday, gun battles between Sunni Muslims and their Alawite rivals left at least eight people injured in a Sunni district in Tripoli. The city has seen sporadic fighting througout the Syrian uprising.

The heavy fighting around Aleppo and Damascus marked a new phase of the violence that has gripped Syria since protests broke out about 17 months ago.

According to figures released by the SOHR on Saturday, more than 20,000 people have been killed since the uprising began in March 2011. That number includes 13,978 civilians and rebels, 968 army defectors and 5,082 government soldiers, Rahman, the head of the SOHR, said.