BEIRUT — Rebels on Friday pressed their broadest assault yet to drive President Bashar Assad’s forces out of Syria’s largest city, activists said, with fierce fighting erupting in an Aleppo neighborhood that is home to Kurds, an ethnic minority that has mostly stayed out of the civil war.
BEIRUT — Rebels on Friday pressed their broadest assault yet to drive President Bashar Assad’s forces out of Syria’s largest city, activists said, with fierce fighting erupting in an Aleppo neighborhood that is home to Kurds, an ethnic minority that has mostly stayed out of the civil war.
In Washington, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said intelligence suggests Assad has moved some of Syria’s chemical weapons to better secure them. Panetta said the main sites are believed to be secure, though his comments indicated that there are lingering questions about what happened to some of the weapons.
On the diplomatic front, top representatives from Western nations and Middle East allies met Friday at the U.N. to urge Syria’s fractured opposition to unite. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told the Friends of Syria group that the U.S. would deliver an additional $15 million in non-lethal aid and $30 million in humanitarian support, on top of more than $175 million already given to political opposition.
Diplomacy has been largely sidelined in the 18-month-old Syria conflict because a key tool — U.N. Security Council action — has been neutralized by vetoes from Assad allies Russia and China.
The military battle for control of the country has also been locked in a stalemate, most visibly in Aleppo, a northern city of 3 million. Since a rebel offensive on Aleppo two months ago, each side has controlled about half the city and has repeatedly tried — but failed — to capture the rest. Aleppo would be a major strategic prize, giving the victor new momentum.
Late Thursday, rebel forces launched what they said would be a “decisive battle” that by Friday had spread to wide swaths of the city. “The city is witnessing one of the most violent days. All fronts are on fire,” Aleppo-based activist Baraa al-Halabi said.
Heavy clashes were reported Friday, with regime troops firing tank and mortar shells, and rebels using heavy machine guns, mortars and rocket-propelled grenades, said Aleppo activist Mohammed Saeed.
Amateur video broadcast by the Arab satellite TV station Al Jazeera showed a group of rebel fighters, identified as a single unit by their white headbands, marching through a rubble-strewn street. Others fired assault rifles from behind barricades of cinder blocks and sandbags.