Syria Army, rebels reinforce Aleppo for ‘decisive’ confrontation

DAMASCUS—Syrian troops and rebels sent reinforcements to the intensifying battle in the second city Aleppo, as the US said fresh defections from the regime showed President Bashar alAssad’s “days are numbered.”

Clashes raged Wednesday in Aleppo’s central Al-Jamaliya neighborhood, near the local headquarters of the ruling Baath party. In Kalasseh in the south of the city, rebels set a police station ablaze, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Helicopter gunships strafed several neighborhoods of the commercial capital, causing deaths and injuries, according to the British-based watchdog group.

A rebel spokesman told Agence FrancePresse via Skype that a “large number” of troops have been moved from the northwestern province of Idlib to Aleppo.

A Syrian newspaper journalist confirmed that the rebels were also reinforcing.

United Nations peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said he had told Syrian officials that without a significant reduction in violence, the remaining 150 UN observers would leave on the expiry of the “final” 30day extension of the mission’s mandate, agreed by the Security Council on July 20.

As the violence increases, high-level defections from Assad’s regime are growing.

The United States on Wednesday confirmed the defections of two more senior Syrian diplomats, the ambassadors to the United Arab Emirates and Cyprus.

White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One that the moves showed that “senior officials around the Assad inner circle are fleeing the government because of the heinous actions taken by Assad against his own people, and the recognition that Assad’s days are numbered.” Earlier a senior State Department official said; “these defections serve as a reminder that the bottom is starting to fall out of the regime. It is crumbling and losing its grip on power.” UN chief Ban Ki-moon, in Bosnia to visit the site of the Srebrenica genocide in 1995, told the parliament there that “the international community is being tested in Syria.” The juxtaposition of the massacre and what is happening in Syria was clear.

“I make a plea to the world: Do not delay… Act now to stop the slaughter in Syria,” Ban said. “The echoes are deafening: An accelerated slide to civil war. Growing sectarian strife. Villages and children butchered.” White House spokesman Carney condemned the use of attack helicopters as “another indication of the depth of depravity” of Assad’s regime.

Meanwhile, aiming to regain the diplomatic initiative, Russia’s UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin said Moscow was ready to host talks between the two sides.

“We are ready to give the opposition and the government a platform in Moscow to forge contacts to unify the opposition and for negotiations with the government,” he said.

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov lashed out at the United States for backing the armed opposition, saying a US failure to condemn the July 18 bombing that killed four top Syrian security officials meant it was justifying terror.

And a Russian foreign ministry statement said a new round of EU sanctions agreed this week, which allows for the inspection of vessels and planes suspected of carrying arms to Syria, amounted to an air and sea “blockade”. It said experts needed to look into the EU legislation to see whether it was in line with international law.

Russia has protected its Soviet-era ally and last week, with China, vetoed a Council resolution on Syria for the third time to the outrage of western nations.

The United States, Britain, France and Germany have said they will seek action against the Syrian government outside the council. All have rejected providing military aid to the opposition, however.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory also reported clashes in the Al-Hajar AlAswad district of Damascus, one of the last remaining rebel bastions after 10 days of fighting in the capital.