Revolt at 'turning point' as battles rage in Damascus

DAMASCUS: Syria’s military deployed armored vehicles near central Damascus yesterday as troops battled rebels around the capital in what activists said could be a turning point in the 16-month uprising.
Meanwhile Russia slammed as “blackmail” Western pressure to push for a UN Security Council resolution against Syria’s regime and said it would be “unrealistic” for its ally President Bashar Assad to quit.
With battles raging between the army and rebels around Damascus for a second straight day, troops deployed armored vehicles near the historic neighborhood of Al-Midan.
“This is the first time that armored and military transport vehicles are deployed in Al-Midan,” Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in Beirut.
“Before, the security forces were deployed to suppress protests. Now, we have army troops engaged in combat,” said the director of the Britain-based watchdog.
A activist on the ground said the army was trying to overrun Al-Midan and described the fighting as a “turning point” in the revolt against Assad’s autocratic regime.
The battles are “the first of their kind. You can say there is a before and after in the Syrian revolution, and the turning point was July 15,” said the activist who identified himself as Abu Musab.
“The army is trying to storm Al-Midan from two sides, with military vehicles,” he said. “There are many injured and some killed. We need blood donations.” Activists said the army and Free Syrian Army rebels had been locked in fierce clashes since Sunday in the southern Damascus neighborhood of Tadamon, Kfar Sousa in the west and Jobar in the east.
They said the clashes are the worst in the capital since the start of the uprising in March 2011.
“Mortar shelling resumed in the early morning,” targeting Tadamon, said the Local Coordination Committees activist network.
The Observatory reported “dawn battles on the road south of Kfar Sousa, between rebel fighters and soldiers who were in a convoy passing through the area.” “(It has) never been this intense,” said Abdel Rahman said. A resident of nearby Jaramana said the area is like a “war zone.” Activists said residents were fleeing Tadamon, with many seeking shelter in the nearby Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp.
The pro-government Al-Watan newspaper said the army was battling “terrorist groups” and accused the gunmen of seeking to launch “the great Damascus battle.” But the opposition Syrian National Council accused the regime of transforming Damascus into “battlefields.”
In Geneva, the International Committee of the Red Cross sounded a note of alarm, saying Syria is in a state of all-out civil war and that all sides must respect humanitarian law or risk facing war crimes prosecutions.
“Each time there is fighting we can see conditions that can be defined as a non-international armed conflict,” ICRC spokesman Alexis Heeb said, adding “international humanitarian law applies” in such circumstances.
The latest violence comes as diplomatic pressure builds ahead of a key Security Council vote on Friday to decide if the 300-strong UN Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS) will be renewed.
The unarmed observers are tasked with overseeing the implementation of a six-point peace plan brokered by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan which has been flouted daily since mid-April when it went into effect.
Speaking ahead of talks with Annan, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the West of trying to “blackmail” Moscow to get its backing for possible sanctions against Syria.
“To our great regret, we are witnessing elements of blackmail,” said Lavrov, adding it was “unrealistic” for Moscow to back calls for Assad to step down as the population supports him.
“It is simply unrealistic... he will not leave power. And this is not because we are protecting him but because there is a very significant part of the Syrian population behind him.” Annan is on his way to Moscow for talks with Lavrov and President Vladimir Putin while UN chief Ban Ki-moon is due in Beijing on Tuesday also for a mission to get support for tougher action on Syria.
Moscow and Beijing have twice blocked resolutions against Syria at the Security Council which is divided over Western calls to pile new sanctions on Damascus.
Britain, the United States, France, Germany and Portugal want a resolution passed this week that would threaten sanctions if Assad does not pull back his main weapons.
Syria’s neighbor Jordan yesterday also agreed the Security Council must act. “It is necessary to exert big pressure on the Syrian government,” Prime Minister Fayez Tarawneh said in Prague.
The diplomatic moves come after Syria denied its troops carried out a massacre in the central village of Treimsa, where activists said dozens of people were slaughtered Thursday by troops and pro-regime militiamen.
Syria has denied there was a massacre while UN observers are probing the reported killings.
On Sunday, violence across Syria killed 105 people, the Observatory said, adding to its toll of more than 17,000 people killed in the country since the uprising began.
Yesterday at least five people were killed, four of them rebels, it added.
Meanwhile, Morocco declared Syria’s ambassador to Rabat persona non grata and asked him to leave the country, before Damascus said the Morocco envoy in its capital was unwelcome, in a tit-for-tat move.
The UN humanitarian office’s operations director says the Syrian president’s regime has refused entrance visas to aid workers from Britain, Canada, France and the United States.
John Ging says “tremendous political obstruction” by Bashar Assad’s government has hindered the United Nations’ and other international organizations’ aid efforts.
He told reporters Monday in Geneva that his agency, however, enjoys “a positive engagement” with Assad’s government, with which a written deal “is being implemented” to allow aid workers and supplies to enter four hard-hit provinces.
Radhouane Nouicer, the UN’s regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria, says much of the help for the four provinces — Daraa, Deir el-Zour, Homs and Idlib — is held up by visa delays and other bureaucratic hurdles.