Syrian death toll rises with fighting near capital
Arab ministers to meet, discuss pullout
Fierce clashes broke out near the Syrian capital on Sunday as President Bashar Assad’s opponents sought to crank up the pressure for UN action after the Arab League withdrew its observers.
The day’s toll of at least 80 people killed across Syria, half of them civilians, raised the count since Friday alone to 175 dead, activists from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Observatory’s head, Rami Abdel Rahman, said the clashes near Damascus were the fiercest since the anti-regime revolt broke out in midMarch.
Regime forces fired heavy artillery and mortar rounds against the Damascus suburbs of Douma, Saaba, Irbin and Hamuriyeh and were locked in close combat with rebel fighters emboldened by a fresh wave of desertions, activists said.
The rebel Free Syrian Army said 50 more officers and soldiers turned their back on Assad and in a “steady progression of fighting toward the capital” clashed with army regulars only eight kilometres from Damascus.
The regime, in turn, has launched “an unprecedented offensive in the past 24 hours, using heavy artillery” against villages in Damascus and Hama province of central Syria, the rebel army said.
“The more the regime uses the army, the more soldiers defect,” Ahmed al-khatib, said a local rebel council member on the Damascus outskirts.
Other rebel sources reported heavy fighting in Rankus, 45 kilometres from Damascus, and of 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 alRankusi said by telephone.
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.
In addition to 40 civilians, the London-based rights group said, 26 soldiers, five other members of the security forces and nine army deserters were also among those killed on Sunday.
The latest spike in violence, on top of what the United Nations said at the start of January already added up to 5,400 killings, pushed the Arab League to suspend its mission to Syria in a surprise move.
Arab foreign ministers are to meet in Cairo on Feb. 5 to review the suspension, a league official said.