AMMAN — Syrian troops fought rebels trying to seize central Aleppo on Tuesday and quelled a jail mutiny on the outskirts of the northern city, killing 15 prisoners, opposition activists said.
After a week of battles between Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and his opponents in Damascus, fighting intensified in Aleppo, a more populous commercial city that long seemed immune to the 16-month-old upheaval convulsing Syria.
Rebels seeking to capture downtown Aleppo were combating Syrian troops and intelligence men at the gates of the Old City, a UN World Heritage site, residents and activists said.
The deaths in the prison mutiny were caused when Assad’s forces used machineguns and teargas on inmates overnight, activists in contact with surviving prisoners said.
At least nine people were killed in army shelling of alHerak, a town south of Deraa, the cradle of the revolt against more than four decades of Assad family rule, activists said.
Video posted on the Internet showed the shattered bodies of a veiled woman and six children in colourful pyjamas, some of them very young. Four lay on one doctor’s table.
Activist accounts and videos are hard to verify independently due to Syrian restrictions on media access.
In Damascus, explosions and gunfire rocked the central district of Barzeh after government forces stormed in overnight, opposition activists said.
Tanks prowled the streets of Midan, a neighbourhood recaptured by the army from rebels on Friday.
Several shells landed in the southern suburb of Hajar al- Aswad, where Assad’s forces have been trying to dislodge rebels.
Elsewhere, residents buried their dead or ventured back to check on homes they had fled to escape the fighting.
Outside Damascus and Aleppo, Assad’s forces have used artillery and helicopter gunships to keep rebel fighters off balance in the last few days, while avoiding ground incursions, rebel and opposition sources said, saying Deir al-Zor and al- Herak were among towns suffering such long-range bombardments.
As the struggle for Syria intensified, Western leaders seized on an admission by Damascus that it has chemical and biological arms and could use them if foreign powers intervened.
U.S. President Barack Obama said the world would hold Assad and his entourage accountable “should they make the tragic mistake of using those (chemical) weapons.”
Israel, which has publicly discussed military action to prevent Syrian chemical weapons or missiles from reaching Assad’s Lebanese Shiite militant allies Hezbollah, said there was no sign any such diversion had occurred.
The Global Security website, which collects published intelligence reports and other data, says there are four suspected chemical weapons sites in Syria: North of Damascus, near Homs, in Hama and near the Mediterranean port of Latakia. Weapons it produces include the nerve agents VX, sarin and tabun, it said, without citing its sources.
With the conflict raging in Syria’s two biggest cities, as well as many provincial ones, Western and many Arab nations are pushing for Assad’s removal, although Russia, China, Iran and Iraq are among others opposed to any forced handover of power.