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Fighting for Syria capital intensifies

Rebel gains on borders; launches 'liberate' Aleppo offensive; death toll tops 19,000

AFP, Damascus
Feared forces headed by President Bashar al-Assad's brother used helicopters yesterday in a new offensive against rebels in Damascus to regain control, as clashes also raged in Syria's second city Aleppo, activists said.
The Fourth Brigade headed by Maher al-Assad was leading the assault in the Damascus neighbourhood of Barzeh, triggering an exodus of residents, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Activists on the ground also reported heavy fire at Barzeh, in the northeast of the capital.
"Dozens of tanks are besieging scores of wounded people. A medical team could not reach (the area) because of the presence of military and security forces," the Observatory said, warning that lives were at risk if the siege continued.
The monitoring group estimated that more than 19,000 people have been killed in the 16-month uprising against the Assad family's four decades of iron-fisted rule.
With the nationwide death toll for yesterday standing at least 19, according to the Observatory, a rebel Free Syrian Army commander declared the battle to "liberate" the second-biggest city of Aleppo had begun.
Abu Omar also said the army was raiding the nearby Rukn al-Din neighbourhood, while "helicopters used machineguns to fire into the district'sstreets."
"This morning, regime forces dropped leaflets into the neighbourhood, telling people to evacuate. This is a way to get people to turn against the revolt."
He added that several parts of Damascus were suffering from food and fuel shortages, and that clashes were continuing in the districts of Tadamon, Al-Midan and Nahr Ayshe.
On Syria's borders, rebels battled troops for control of crossing posts with Turkey, Iraq and Jordan.
Fighters were able to hold onto the Albu Kamal crossing to Iraq, after capturing it Thursday, but regime forces regained hold of the Rabiyah crossing one day after it was claimed by opposition fighters.
A Turkish diplomat told AFP that had also rebels taken over Al-Salama crossing early yesterday.
Meanwhile, the official SANA news agency said government forces had "cleansed" the Qaboon neighbourhood of "terrorists," the regime's term for rebel fighters.
State television aired footage reportedly from Qaboon showing dead bodies and weapons, communications equipment and money it said was captured from rebels.
Fierce clashes engulfed the districts of Salaheddin and Sakhur in Aleppo, Syria's commercial hub in the north which has seen heavy fighting since Friday.
An anti-regime activist in the city said the army began an assault on the Salaheddin district at dawn, in a bid to reclaim it from rebel hands.
Fighting has intensified in Syria since a Wednesday bombing that killed national security chief General Hisham Ikhtiyar, Defence Minister General Daoud Rajha, Assad's brother-in-law Assef Shawkat and General Hassan Turkmani, head of the regime's crisis cell on the uprising. .