Humanitarian Conditions Dire as Damascus Region, Homs Pummelled
The Damascus region came under artillery fire and air strikes on Thursday as the army launched a major operation, a watchdog said, as activists decried the critical humanitarian situation.
The artillery was focused on the town of Daraya, just southwest of Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, also reporting shelling on the northeast town of Mudamiyeh al-Sham and air raids on the nearby town of Saqba.
"More than a dozen rockets landed on Daraya. There were flares in the sky and plumes of smoke from the shelling. There is an electricity blackout and residents are rushing for cover," the Local Coordination Committees, an activist network, reported overnight.
The Syrian Revolution General Commission (SRGC), a network of opposition activists on the ground, said humanitarian conditions were dire.
The southern districts of the capital, where battles have raged in recent days between rebels and troops fighting for control, were also rocked by shelling on Thursday, the watchdog said.
On Wednesday, shelling and clashes in the the Damascus area left 21 people killed, the Britain-based Observatory said.
State media has increasingly reported "terrorist infiltration" in the capital, saying that the army has thus far managed to outmaneuver them.
The regime of Bashar Assad, faced with an unprecedented popular uprising that broke out in March 2011 and later evolved into an armed insurgency, claims it is fighting terrorist groups that are armed and financed from abroad.
Elsewhere on Thursday, the army made a major incursion into the Homs district of Al-Waar, killing two insurgents and a civilian in a bid for control over the area, the Observatory reported.
The monitoring group said the neighborhood had come under shelling and the death toll was expected to rise amid fierce clashes and reports of many people critically wounded.
Also in Homs province, a number of civilians, including children, were wounded in shelling on the town of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border.
Near the restive Turkish border in the north, the army bombarded the rebel-held town of Aazaz, while on the Iraqi border to the east, three rebels were killed in fighting near a security headquarters.
In Aleppo in the north, Syria's second city, clashes erupted around an intelligence center and the military airport
In total, 126 people were killed on Wednesday: 45 civilians, 45 soldiers and 36 rebels, according to the Observatory, which relies on a nationwide network of activists, lawyers and medics in civilian and military hospitals.
On Thursday, it reported that more than 39,000 Syrians have perished over the course of the 20-month revolt, with the weekly death tolls exceeding 1,000 in recent months.
Source: Agence France Presse
| Copyright © 2012 Naharnet.com. All Rights Reserved. | https://www.naharnet.com/stories/en/60811 |