Troops counterattack after rebel incursion

BEIRUT — Air strikes and artillery fire shook Damascus on Tuesday as government forces tried to repel a second rebel attack on the Syrian capital in three days.

The military deployed tanks along the city’s leafy Fares al-Khoury Avenue leading to the eastern Jobar and Qaboun neighborhoods, where opposition forces have been pinned for years, and the cracks of gunfire could be heard from Abbassin Square.

Government jets pounded the areas behind rebel lines, according to footage released by opposition factions, and fighters scrambled between rubble and burning buses to take up positions. Smoke clouded the skies.

Syrian state media said 15 people were wounded in rebel shelling across the capital. State-affiliated al-Ikhbariya TV said government forces had killed and wounded several “terrorists” and arrested several more.

A broad federation of insurgent factions renewed their assault on Damascus on Tuesday after their first attack launched Sunday stalled. That attack marked the most serious infiltration of the capital, seat of President Bashar Assad’s power, in years.

On Tuesday, the rebels detonated a car bomb in the eastern parts of the city before launching their attack. On Sunday, the al Qaeda-linked Levant Liberation Committee claimed responsibility for two car bomb explosions.

The campaign brought together a number of rival factions, including the Levant Liberation Committee, two ultraconservative factions — Ahrar al-Sham and the Islam Army — and the Free Syrian Army-affiliated Failaq al-Rahman.

Assad’s armed opponents are divided over strategy, with the al Qaeda-affiliated groups preaching a military approach, and others — including the Islam Army — agreeing to political discussions.

But the government’s own intransigence — ratcheting up military pressure against its opponents across the country despite peace talks in Europe and Asia — appears to have brought the factions closer together.