Syria civil war close to a reality as most violent fighting yet hits Damascus
Syria may be tottering towards a long, vicious civil war.
After ten months of non-violent popular protests were met with repeated violent reprisals, armed Syrian rebels have now staged prolonged battles with government troops on the doorstep of Damascus.
In the most intense fighting since the uprising began, Free Syrian Army defectors mounted scattered attacks Monday against government troops and tanks that were trying to recapture working class suburbs just 10 kilometres from the centre of the Syrian capital.
Syria’s power struggle has become increasingly militarized and has moved from provincial hotbeds of revolt in cities like Homs, Hama and Daraa to the very gates of Damascus — the heart of the Assad family dictatorship that has ruled Syria for 40 years.
A series of car bombs in the capital in late December, outside state security offices, were followed last week by small bands of rebels briefly seizing control of rural and working class areas to the east and north of the capital.
Monday, as convoys of government tanks, armoured personnel carriers and infantry troops surged into the Ghouta region east of Damascus, rebels resorted to guerrilla tactics and staged ambushes and counterattacks before withdrawing.
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Videos posted on the Internet show Syrian soldiers shadowing a tank as it rolled through the streets of Saqba, a town just east of Damascus where rebels last week brazenly unfurled a green, white and black Syrian flag that predates the Assad family dynasty.
Activists claim more than 100 people have died in three days of fighting east of Damascus, while rebel groups say they lost 15 dead before withdrawing Monday from towns that had been the sites of repeated anti-government protests.
Evidence the Syrian conflict is intensifying came during the weekend when the government reported there were 50 military funerals for soldiers killed by rebels.
On Monday, Syria’s state news agency said another six soldiers died in a single attack near Daraa, when a convoy was ambushed and said “terrorists” blew up a gas pipeline near Homs.
The escalation in violence comes just days after the Arab League suspended its observer mission to Syria, as the pace of killing in the country increased, and a day before Arab League diplomats are scheduled to appear before the United Nations Security Council to seek a resolution calling on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down and transfer power to a government of national unity.