adminHis comments to Egyptian weekly magazine Al-Ahram al-Araby will be published yesterday.
“The armed groups exercise terrorism against the state. They are not popular within society . . . they will not be victorious in the end,” he was quoted as saying.
Speaking from his office in the heart of the Syrian capital Damascus, Assad said “change cannot be achieved through foreign intervention”.
“Both sides of the equation are equal and political dialogue is the only solution. Violence, however, is not allowed . . . and the state will not stand with its hands tied in the face of those who bear arms against it,” he told Al-Ahram al-Araby.
The release of Assad’s comments came as Syrian troops backed by helicopter gunships clashed with rebels near an army barracks in Aleppo, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
Fighting erupted overnight near the Hanano barracks in the Arkoub district of northeast Aleppo yesterday, the UK-based watchdog group said.
Several districts of Aleppo, including Sakhur in the north-east and Bustan al-Qasr in the centre, came under overnight attack, SOHR said.
Elsewhere in Aleppo, fighting broke out between troops and rebels near the Meng military airport, SOHR said.
Military airports have been a key target for the rebels as the army has increasingly deployed fighter jets and helicopter gunships to launch devastating attacks against them.
SOHR further reported a massive explosion, believed to be a car bomb, northwest of Damascus. Heavy gunfire was heard afterwards but there were no immediate reports of casualties, it said.
In the central province of Homs, a civilian was killed in dawn shelling of Rastan, while the eastern city of Deir Az-Zor and the town of Daal, in the southern province of Deraa, also came under bombardment.
The violence across the country came a day after dozens of people were killed when an air raid hit a fuel station in the northern province of al-Riqqa on Thursday.
Al Jazeera’s Andrew Simmons, reporting from Antakya in neighbouring Turkey yesterday, said there is “no doubt that it was a targeted attack on an area being used by civilians”.
“The petrol station was crowded with vehicles,” he said.It was the only petrol station in the entire region that was open to the public, according to activists.
“It was supposed to be an improvised device; we are hearing from unconfirmed reports it was a barrel bomb. These sorts of things have been described in Aleppo before. It was devastating.
“The casualties number in the dozens, and now we are getting unconfirmed reports that the death toll has reached 60.”
In the interview to Al-Ahram al-Araby, Assad said he was neither optimistic nor pessimistic about the Brahimi mission.
Lakhdar Brahimi, the joint UN-Arab League negotiatior, who met Assad last week in Damascus, said his visit confirmed that the situation was “extremely dangerous and escalating”.
“I welcome dialogue with the national opposition but those who choose arms have put themselves in confrontation with the Syrian Arab army,” Assad said.
He also admitted there was corruption and mistakes had been made.
In another development, diplomats from more than 60 nations and the Arab League met in The Hague, Netherlands, on Thursday to toughen and improve co-ordination of sanctions against Assad’s regime. — AP.
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