Assad forces escalate air strikes on rebel-held cities

BEIRUT: The Damascus region came under artillery fire and airstrikes yesterday 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 yesterday, the watchdog said.
Violence has so far claimed the lives of more than 39,000 people, mostly civilians, the observatory said yesterday.
It listed 27,410 civilians, 9,800 soldiers and 1,359 military deserters as among those killed since the uprising began on March 15, 2011.
The watchdog regards citizens who have taken up arms against Assad as civilians.
Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman said another 543 persons who could not be identified needed to be added to the figure, for a total of 39,112.
Even these figures are short of the real total, because they do not include people who have disappeared, many of whom are presumed dead, and deaths among the pro-regime “shabiha” militias.
And Abdel Rahman added that it is difficult to get accurate figures on both army and rebel deaths, “because both sides tend to minimise their losses.”
The Observatory relies on a countrywide network of activists and medics in civilian and military hospitals for its numbers.
Turkey sent fighter jets to its southeastern frontier with Syria for a second day yesterday, a Reuters witness said, following an air assault this week by Syrian warplanes on the rebel-held border town of Ras Al-Ain.
A Reuters reporter in the Turkish town of Ceylanpinar, which abuts Ras Al-Ain, said he saw two Turkish jets roar along the frontier.
He said there was no sign of fighting in Ras Al-Ain, after days of bombing by Assad forces.
Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said yesterday that Turkey “recognizes the Syrian National Council as the sole legitimate representative of the people of Syria.”
Davutoglu made the comments during a ministerial meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation which is being held in Djibouti, according to Anatolia news agency.
Davutoglu also called on the international community to follow suit and give more support to the Syrian opposition, which emerged newly unified on Sunday after marathon talks in Doha.