Syrian rebels warn Assad regime they can strike ‘anywhere and anytime’
The Free Syrian Army, an increasingly potent rebel outfit led by defecting military officers, easily penetrated the Assad regime’s supposedly ironclad defences around the capital to launch raids on at least three security checkpoints on its outskirts.
But in a far more bruising blow that will chill the government, it also launched a three-pronged assault on Syria’s air force intelligence directorate in the north of Damascus, a powerful, feared and widely hated symbol of the regime’s once over-arching authority.
The rebels reportedly attacked the compound with machine guns and rocket propelled grenades. Residents living nearby said they heard numerous explosions and the sound of army helicopters in the air above the complex.
The directorate is seen as a vital part of the Syrian security apparatus and has been at the heart of its bloody repression of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, which the UN says has claimed more than 3,500 lives since it erupted in March.
It is accused both of overseeing the shooting of unarmed protesters in and around Damascus and of imprisoning and torturing thousands more