Syrian forces clash with rebels around Aleppo police academy
US to bolster support for opposition
BEIRUT, Feb 27, (Agencies): Syrian warplanes carried out airstrikes on rebels trying to storm a police academy outside Aleppo on Wednesday, while jihadi fighters battled government troops along a key supply road leading to the southeastern part of the city, activists said.
Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and former commercial capital, became a key front in the country’s civil war after rebels launched an offensive there in July 2012. In months of bloody street fighting, opposition fighters have slowly expanded the turf under their control, although the combat has left much of the city in ruins.
The police academy has recently emerged as a new front in the fight for Aleppo, which is considered a major prize in the conflict. Activists say the government has turned the facility into a military base, using it to shell opposition areas in the countryside as well as rebel-held neighborhoods inside the city.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said clashes raged Wednesday around the complex, which is located in the suburb of Khan al-Asal.
“The rebels are still trying to storm the school, but they can’t because the regime is carrying out airstrikes and bombarding rebel forces,” said Observatory director Rami Abdul-Rahman.
He said at least six rebels were killed Wednesday in the fighting, bringing the three-day death toll to 37 opposition fighters and more than 50 regime troops.
Another key front in the battle for control of Aleppo is the city’s international airport. Rebels have been trying for months to seize the facility, and have made headway in recent weeks, overrunning checkpoints and capturing a military base charged with protecting the airport.
The government is desperate to hold onto the facility, which it has used in the past to fly in supplies to its troops bogged down in the city. However, the fighting has forced the government to close the airport to flights and try to send supplies and reinforcements overland.
Most of those reinforcements, including dozens of vehicles and thousands of troops, are now stuck in the city of Safira, southeast of Aleppo, according to AbdulRahman. Fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist extremist rebel group that the US has designated a terrorist organization, have cut the road leading from Safira to the airport, and for weeks have battled troops along the road, preventing them from pushing north to the city to link up with government troops there.
The Observatory reported fierce clashes north of Safira on Wednesday, with both sides shelling each other with mortars and artillery.
The rebels have notched a number of strategic victories in recent weeks that appear to mark a shift in momentum in the nearly 2-year-old conflict, which the UN says has killed some 70,000 people. Already in control of much of the countryside in the northeast, the rebels have captured the nation’s largest hydroelectric dam, a major oil field and two army bases this year.
They have also begun peppering the center of Damascus with mortar shells as part of their effort to bring the fighting from the capital’s rebel-held suburbs into the center of the city. On Wednesday, the Observatory said several mortar shells exploded near the military judiciary and near the College of Literature in central Damascus.
Part of the rebel strategy appears to be to try to shatter the sense of normal life that President Bashar Assad’s regime has desperately tried to maintain in the capi- tal, which has been insulated from much of the violence ravaging the rest of the country.
The civil war has forced hundreds of thousands of Syrians to flee their homes and seek shelter elsewhere inside the country or abroad.
Jordan said Wednesday new surge in refugees is escaping across the border into the kingdom as fighting intensifies in southern Syria.
Anmar Hmoud, a government spokesman for Syrian refugee affairs, said around 3,000 Syrians a day have crossed into Jordan recently, pushing the total number in the country to nearly 420,000. Some of those coming through unofficial border crossings find shelter in Jordan’s Zaatari camp, now home to more than 105,700 refugees. Many more live with Jordanian families.
The UN says there are nearly 925,000 displaced Syrians scattered throughout the region.
Support
The United States is looking for more tangible ways to support Syria’s rebels and bolster a fledgling political movement that is struggling to deliver basic services after nearly two years of civil war, US Secretary of State John Kerry said Wednesday.
Officials in the United States and Europe have said the Obama administration is nearing a decision on whether to provide non-lethal assistance to carefully vetted fighters opposed to Syrian President Basher Assad, and Kerry’s comments indicated that the Americans are working to make sure that its aid doesn’t fall into the wrong hands.
“We are examining and developing ways to accelerate the political transition that the Syrian people want and deserve,” Kerry said. “We need to help them to deliver basic services and to protect the legitimate institutions of the state.”
The Obama administration is concerned about military equipment falling into the hands of radical Islamists who have become a significant factor in the Syrian conflict and could then use that materiel for terrorist attacks or strikes on Israel. But they’re equally fearful that Syrians tired of constant instability will lose faith in an opposition that can do little to improve their daily lives.
Assad “needs to know that he can’t shoot his way out of this, and we need to convince him of that, and I think the opposition needs more help in order to do that,” Kerry said.
A decision whether to vastly increase the size and scope of assistance to Assad’s foes is expected by Thursday when Kerry will attend an international conference on Syria in Rome that leaders of the opposition Syrian National Coalition have been persuaded to attend, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the shift in strategy has not yet been finalized and still needs to be coordinated with European nations, notably Britain.
France, Syria’s former colonial ruler, has been among the strongest supporters of the rebels, and French President Francois Hollande was the first Western leader to recognize their leadership.
“We agree all of us on the fact that Basher al-Assad has to quit,” said French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.
Officials in Washington said the United States was leaning toward providing tens of millions of dollars more in non-lethal assistance to the opposition, including vetted members of the Free Syrian Army who had not been receiving direct US assistance. So far, assistance has been limited to funding for communications and other logistical equipment, a formalized liaison office and an invitation to opposition coalition leader Mouaz alKhatib to visit the United States in the coming weeks. It could be expanded to include pre-packaged meals and medical supplies.
Meanwhile, the lack of clear leader among Syria’s opposition is no reason to maintain support for the “cruel” regime of President Bashar al-Assad, Turkey’s prime minister said Wednesday.
“The international community thus far unfortunately has not taken the kind of position it was expected to take,” Recep Tayyip Erdogan said at a UN event in Vienna.
“Some countries ask who will replace Assad when he leaves. I always say that major events, major revolutions, bring their own leaders,” he said through an interpreter at a news conference.
“Sometimes leaders are instrumental in bringing about major developments or revolutions,” he said.
“The struggle of the opposition is important and should be appreciated. Their effort is the way to prepare the ground for a democratic process to take hold for the Syrian people.”
Early in the ongoing two-year revolt against Assad’s regime, Turkey broke ties with Damascus. It led international calls for Assad’s ouster, has offered shelter to defectors from the army and hosted opposition meetings.
Turkey will host this weekend a meeting in Istanbul of the main opposition National Coalition aimed at electing a “prime minister” and government to run parts of the rebel-controlled country.