Syria pounds rebel bastions in Aleppo

After UN Security Council paralysis on Syria forced peace envoy Kofi Annan to resign last week, and with his ceasefire plan a distant memory, rebels have been battered by the government onslaught in Aleppo and the capital Damascus.

A correspondent in Aleppo witnessed fierce street fighting in the Salaheddine district, a gateway into the city of 2,5 million people.

Tanks pounded alleyways where rebels sought cover and one shell hit a building next to the reporter, pouring rubble onto the street and sending huge billows of smoke into the sky.

State television said Assad’s forces were “cleansing the terrorist filth” from the country, which has been sucked into an increasingly sectarian conflict that has killed some 18 000 people and could spill into neighbouring states.

In Damascus, jets bombarded the capital on Saturday as troops kept up an offensive they began a day earlier against the last rebel bastion there, a resident said.

Both cities — vital prizes in the battle for Syria — were relatively free of violence in the early months of the uprising but fighting flared in Damascus shortly before an 18 July bomb killed four of Assad’s inner circle. It later erupted in Aleppo.

On Saturday, a rebel commander in Aleppo said he expected a Syrian army attack on rebels “within days”, echoing the head of the UN peacekeeping department who said there had been a “considerable build-up of military means”.

“We know they are planning to attack the city using tanks and aircraft, shooting at us for three to four days and they plan to take the city,” Colonel Abdel-Jabbar al-Oqaidi said.

Once a busy shopping and restaurant district where residents would spend evenings with their families, Aleppo’s Salaheddine district is now white with dust, broken concrete and rubble.

Tank shell holes gape wide on the top of buildings near the front line, and homes of families and couples have been turned into lookouts and sniper locations for rebel fighters.

Large mounds of concrete are used as barriers to close off streets, the whiff of weapon fire and rotting garbage intermix. Lamp posts lie horizontally across the streets after being downed by shelling, their wiring swinging idly in the wind.

Civilians trickle back to collect their belongings and check on their homes. Late on Saturday a confused elderly man stumbled into 15th street as rebels exchanged fire with the army.

“Get out of the way! Get off the street!” fighters shouted, grabbing him and taking him to shelter from sniper fire.

“I just wanted to buy some blackberry juice,” he told the fighters, his face reflecting confusion and horror at the damage to his street. Instinctively, he took his personal ID out of his chest pocket to show the rebels, a habit from the strict days of the Assad security officials.

A couple stood shaking with fear at an intersection a few metres from the fighting, as a medic waved a car down to help take them to safety.

“Just to hold power he is willing to destroy our streets, our homes, kill our sons,” wept Fawzia Um Ahmed, referring to Assad’s determined counter-offensive against the rebels.

“I can’t recognise these streets any more.”

Rebels tried to extend their area of control in Aleppo from Salaheddine to the area around the television and radio station on Saturday, but were pushed back, an activist said.

Syrian television said a large number of “terrorists” were killed and wounded after they tried to storm the broadcaster.

Outgunned by Assad’s forces, the rebels are constantly on the hunt for captured weapons.

On one Salaheddine street, a rebel fighter drove up in a pick-up truck mounted with an anti-aircraft weapon, one of 15 that rebels said were seized during fighting last week.

But the weapon could not be aimed at the sky and neither did it fire. It remained parked on a side street.

After Annan’s resignation, the UN General Assembly voted on Friday to condemn the Syrian government and criticize the UN Security Council’s failure to agree tougher action, in a resolution that Western diplomats said highlighted the isolation of Assad supporters Russia and China. — Al Jazeera.