Tyr-Ziu Saxnot
07-22-2012, 01:11 PM
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/07/22/12883923-a-first-helicopter-gunships-bombard-syrian-capital?lite
An image grab taken from a video uploaded on YouTube on Sunday shows smoke billowing a neighborhood in Damascus.
By NBC News staff and wire services
Helicopter gunships bombarded several districts of Syria's capital in an effort to drive out insurgents, as rebels battled President Bashar Assad's forces near the main intelligence base in the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday, witnesses said.
"Helicopters are fiercely shelling the northern quarter of Barzeh with rockets and machine guns," an NBC News contact in Damascus said. "They're flying over my head. The shelling is the first of [its] kind ever witnessed in Damascus."
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Residents and opposition activists told Reuters that Syria's elite Fourth Division troops were besieging the northern neighborhood of Barzeh, one of three northern areas hit by helicopter fire. Rebels were also driven from Mezze, the diplomatic district of Damascus, they said.
The eye-witness report came even as Syrian state television quoted a media source denying that helicopters had fired on the capital. "The situation in Damascus is normal, but the security forces are pursuing the remnants of the terrorists in some streets," it said.
The fourth division is run by Assad's younger brother, Maher Assad, 41, who is widely seen as the muscle maintaining the Assad family's four decades of Alawite minority rule.
UN extends Syria observer mission as fighting continues
His role has become more crucial since Assad's defense and intelligence ministers, a top general and his powerful brother-in-law were killed by the bomb on Wednesday, part of a "Damascus volcano" by rebels seeking to turn the tables in a revolt inspired by Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.
Assad has not spoken in public since the bombing. Diplomats and opposition sources said government forces were focusing on strategic centers, with one Western diplomat comparing Assad to a doctor "abandoning the patient's limbs to save the organs."
London School of Economics Professor Fawaz Gerges discusses what we know about the bomber who killed seven, including five Israeli tourists and himself, then analyzes whether the fall of Syria's President Assad is close.
Fighting also raged in parts of Aleppo -- the country's main commercial and industrial hub -- and in Deir al-Zor on the Euprhates river, the largest city in the east.
Death toll hits 19,000
The news of the worsening violence came as an activist group said the death toll had hit more than 19,000 since anti-Assad protests slid into violent clashes in March 2011.
Good. Better the dictator stays in power than the Islamist takeover that is planned and being fought for now.
We win, if a dictator stays in power because the Islamists are worse when they gain control. And that is what the fighting is truly about IMHO. Having to choose the lesser of two evils is not a good thing but sometimes its a choice one has to make!--Tyr
An image grab taken from a video uploaded on YouTube on Sunday shows smoke billowing a neighborhood in Damascus.
By NBC News staff and wire services
Helicopter gunships bombarded several districts of Syria's capital in an effort to drive out insurgents, as rebels battled President Bashar Assad's forces near the main intelligence base in the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday, witnesses said.
"Helicopters are fiercely shelling the northern quarter of Barzeh with rockets and machine guns," an NBC News contact in Damascus said. "They're flying over my head. The shelling is the first of [its] kind ever witnessed in Damascus."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Residents and opposition activists told Reuters that Syria's elite Fourth Division troops were besieging the northern neighborhood of Barzeh, one of three northern areas hit by helicopter fire. Rebels were also driven from Mezze, the diplomatic district of Damascus, they said.
The eye-witness report came even as Syrian state television quoted a media source denying that helicopters had fired on the capital. "The situation in Damascus is normal, but the security forces are pursuing the remnants of the terrorists in some streets," it said.
The fourth division is run by Assad's younger brother, Maher Assad, 41, who is widely seen as the muscle maintaining the Assad family's four decades of Alawite minority rule.
UN extends Syria observer mission as fighting continues
His role has become more crucial since Assad's defense and intelligence ministers, a top general and his powerful brother-in-law were killed by the bomb on Wednesday, part of a "Damascus volcano" by rebels seeking to turn the tables in a revolt inspired by Arab Spring uprisings in Tunisia, Libya and Egypt.
Assad has not spoken in public since the bombing. Diplomats and opposition sources said government forces were focusing on strategic centers, with one Western diplomat comparing Assad to a doctor "abandoning the patient's limbs to save the organs."
London School of Economics Professor Fawaz Gerges discusses what we know about the bomber who killed seven, including five Israeli tourists and himself, then analyzes whether the fall of Syria's President Assad is close.
Fighting also raged in parts of Aleppo -- the country's main commercial and industrial hub -- and in Deir al-Zor on the Euprhates river, the largest city in the east.
Death toll hits 19,000
The news of the worsening violence came as an activist group said the death toll had hit more than 19,000 since anti-Assad protests slid into violent clashes in March 2011.
Good. Better the dictator stays in power than the Islamist takeover that is planned and being fought for now.
We win, if a dictator stays in power because the Islamists are worse when they gain control. And that is what the fighting is truly about IMHO. Having to choose the lesser of two evils is not a good thing but sometimes its a choice one has to make!--Tyr