Syrian rebels return to Damascus, as spillover clashes in Lebanon kill 12

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[url]http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/08/20128229218818879.html[/url]

[quote=AJE]The Syrian army has deployed tanks on a ring road surrounding Damascus and shelled southern neighbourhoods where rebels operate, the heaviest bombardment in the capital since the army reasserted control last month, residents and activists said.

At least 40 people were killed in the shelling, which was accompanied by attacks from helicopters, and in ensuing ground raids on the Kfar Souseh, Daraya, Qadam and Nahr Aisha neighbourhoods, they said.

"The whole of Damascus is shaking with the sound of shelling," a woman in Kfar Souseh said.

She said the army's artillery was also firing on the capital from the Qasioun and Saraya mountains overlooking Damascus. The assaults in the capital coincide with the departure of the United Nations observer mission, whose members are leaving after failing to secure a ceasefire.

Maaz al-Shami, a member of the Damascus Media Office, a group of young opposition activists monitoring the crackdown in Damascus, said rebels who had left the city during a fierce army campaign last month had started to return.

"They went back to their homes, or disappeared in the green belt surrounding Damascus," Shami said.

"They are back now, and the regime is responding with daily shelling and helicopter bombardment. A war atmosphere in Damascus is setting in."

The renewed attacks followed what activists said was a bloody raid on the Maadamiya neighbourhood on Tuesday.

[B]Funeral targeted[/B]

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), a London-based anti-government group, said it had documented the names of at least 42 civilians killed in the mixed suburb, which is home to around 200,000 Christians, Alawites and Sunni Muslims.

The SOHR said government troops had targeted a funeral procession, and that dozens of unidentified bodies had been found in a basement as well.

Heavy shelling and clashes also continued on Tuesday across swathes of Aleppo, the country's largest city, as both the regime and rebels claim they are gaining ground in the key northern battleground.

At least 24 people were reported to have been killed nationwide on Tuesday, among them women and children in Aleppo, as the Syrian government pressed rebel-held areas.

The rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) claimed that it controlled almost two-thirds of the city, which has been battered by a month of air strikes, shelling and fighting.

"We now control more than 60 per cent of the city of Aleppo, and each day we take control of new districts," Abdel Jabbar al-Okaidi, a colonel with the FSA, said.

He went on to list about 30 districts which he claimed were under FSA control, including about half of the neighbourhood of Salaheddin.

A security source in Damascus rejected the FSA claims, according to the AFP news agency, calling them "completely false".

"The terrorists are not advancing," the Syrian source said.

"It is the army that is making slow progress. Terrorist groups occasionally come out of districts under their control and attack other districts to be able to then claim they have this or that street under their control."

Activists also reported that troops had stormed a town near Damascus, torching homes and shops, while helicopters and war planes strafed several suburbs of the capital, which the regime claimed to have largely recaptured last month.[/quote]

[url]http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/08/2012822142040588686.html[/url]

[quote=AJE]The death toll from fighting between rival pro- and anti-Damascus gunmen in the city of Tripoli has climbed to at least 12, in clashes that the city's residents described as some of the heaviest since Lebanon's civil war.

More than 100 people have been wounded in the fighting which erupted this week along a sectarian fault line between the Sunni district of Bab al-Tabbaneh and the Alawite area of Jebel Mohsen.

Al Jazeera's James Bays, reporting in Tripoli on Wednesday, said the city's mayor had convened a crisis meeting to try to negotiate an end to the fighting but that no solution had been reached.

And the army said it will open up talks with city elders to restore stability.

The latest round of fighting has rattled the already fragile security situation in Lebanon, which lived under three decades of Syrian domination and remains deeply divided between supporters and opponents of the Damascus government.

The dead included a 13-year-old boy, while another 100 people have been wounded, including a boy of six who was paralysed by a gunshot wound and 15 soldiers, security sources said.

The fighting first erupted late Monday in Tripoli, home to a Sunni community hostile to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, and Alawites, an offshoot of Shia Islam to which the leader belongs.

The violence in Tripoli, Lebanon's second largest city, saw machineguns and anti-tank rockets fired.

[B]Alarming concerns[/B]

Prime Minister Najib Mikati, a native of Tripoli, on Wednesday raised fresh concern at "efforts to drag Lebanon more and more into the conflict in Syria when what is required is for leaders to cooperate ... to protect Lebanon from the danger."

The authorities have instructed the army and security forces "to bring the situation under control, to prohibit any armed presence and to arrest those implicated" in the violence, he said in a statement.

Later an army statement said: "Due to the gravity of the situation and in order to prevent attempts of dragging the whole of Lebanon into a state of unrest... the army command announces it will enter into dialogue with the city's leaders and officials, particularly in Bab al-Tebbaneh and Jabal Mohsen."

France and United States have expressed concern over the latest flareup and warned against a spillover of the Syrian conflict.

[B]Kidnappings[/B]

The latest unrest in Tripoli, which has been the scene of several deadly incidents over the past year, follows a wave of tit-for-tat kidnappings of Lebanese citizens in Syria and of Syrians living in Lebanon.

Last week, an armed Lebanese Shia clan claimed it had kidnapped around 20 Syrians in retaliation for the abduction of a family member by a Syrian rebel group, which accused him of being a sniper with the Shia movement Hezbollah.

Hezbollah, considered Lebanon's most powerful military force, has denied any connection with the clan member or the kidnappings.

Meanwhile, the opposition Syrian National Council has accused authorities of failing to act over the attacks and implicitly blamed Hezbollah which heads a ruling coalition in Lebanon.[/quote]