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War targets resistance axis: Assad

Heavy clashes rage in Syria capital as Amnesty slams regime for atrocities

AFP, Damascus
President Bashar al-Assad yesterday told Iran's foreign minister that the war engulfing Syria is targeting not just it but the "resistance axis," state news agency SANA reported.
Assad's regime, Iran and the powerful Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah refer to themselves as a "resistance axis" in their common opposition to Israel.
"The ongoing battle is targeting the whole of the resistance axis, not just Syria," Assad told Iran's visitingAliAkbarSalehi.
Earlier, Salehi said the solution to the conflict "lies only with Syria and within the Syrian family, in partnership with international and regional organisations."
Assad and his allies in Iran, China and Russia have systematically blamed the conflict on foreign powers, notably theWest, Gulf countries andTUrkey.
Meanwhile, Syrian rebels seized control of a border crossing on the Turkish frontier yesterday after clashes with troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, aTUrkish official told AFP
Turkish media footage showed Syrian rebels pulling down the Syrian flag at the Tall al-Abyad border post on the main highway between the city of Raqa in northeastern Syria and the Turkish city of Sanliurfa.
Heavy fighting has been reported in the Syrian capital Damascus, and the northern city of Aleppo
yesterday.
Activists said government forces had stormed Hajar al-Aswad, a southern suburb of Damascus, and that the situation for residents was desperate.
State media said troops had killed many of what they called "terrorists".
Earlier, Amnesty International warned that indiscriminate air and artillery strikes were causinga dramatic rise in civilian casualties in Idlib and Hama.
Amnesty International said indiscriminate air attacks and artillery strikes by Syrian government
forces are killing, maiming, and terrorising civilians.
Donatella Rovera, Amnesty's senior crisis response adviser, who recently returned from northern Syria, told the BBC that there was evidence that the army and air force were increasingly using battlefield weapons in residential areas where government troops had been forced out by opposition forces, with disastrous consequences for civilians.
"They are using in equal measure air-delivered, large, old, Soviet-era unguided bombs - free-fall bombs - the opposite of smart bombs," she said. "They are dropped over an area. There's no way you can target them at a specific target or specific building."
Opposition activists yesterday said the military was attacking the south-western Damascus suburbs of Muadhamiya, Jadidat Artouz and Kanakir, Qudsaya to the north-west, and the southern districts of Qaddam, Assali, Yalda and Hajar al-Aswad.
They posted videos online which they said showed helicopter gunships firing rockets on Hajar al-Aswad, as well as the bodies of some of the more than 20 people they said had been killed in the assault. The army was destroying and setting houses on fire, they added.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based activist group, later said rebel fighters had announced their withdrawal from Hajar al-Aswad, Qaddam and Assali after weeks of violent