Syria braces for all-out war in Aleppo

Violence raged in Syria’s second city Aleppo for the sixth consecutive day as troops battled rebel fighters, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The monitoring group reported at least 32 people killed in violence on Wednesday, the majority of them civilians, a day after 158 people died across the country.

The Britain-based watchdog also reported clashes in the district of Al-Hajar al-Aswad in Damascus, one of the last remaining rebel bastions in the capital, 10 days after fighting broke out there.

Regime forces used helicopter gunships and heavy machinegun fire to pound the embattled southern neighbourhood, as they tried to “reclaim” it, the Observatory said.

In Aleppo, clashes raged in the central Al-Jamaliya neighbourhood, close to the local headquarters of the ruling Baath party. In Kalasseh, in the south of the city, rebels set fire to a police station, the Observatory said.

Fighter jets overflew the city, breaking the sound barrier but not carrying out bombing raids, Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

In the province of Aleppo, regime forces pounded the rebel-held town of Al-Bab, killing one civilian.

Elsewhere in the country, security forces continued to fight with prisoners at the central prison in Homs, after a mutiny that saw detainees take over a wing.

The Observatory said security service agents and regular troops took part in the operation, which left several “dead and wounded.”The mutiny broke out last week, and was followed by a similar rebellion in Aleppo’s central prison.

Also in the central city of Homs — a symbol of Syria’s 16-month uprising — a rebel fighter was shot dead by a sniper in the Al-Qarabis district, the Observatory said, adding that regime forces were firing an average of “three shells every 15 minutes.”

Amateur video posted on YouTube by activists showed several people taking refuge underground in Boueida, in Homs province. They said they were sheltering from shells launched by pro-government militiamen.

In the northeastern province of Hasakeh, an attack on a village by government forces killed at least 10 civilians, the Observatory said.

In the northwestern province of Idlib, six civilians — including a woman and a child — were killed by shelling and gunfire in Kfar Roma.

And in Hama province, 16 people were killed in an army assault on the village of Sharia, while two children were killed in dawn shelling of the town of Karnaz.

In Qalaat al-Madiq in the same province, a couple and their two children were killed as they tried to flee shelling in their village.

A video distributed by the Observatory showed grisly footage of the bodies of the family members, shrapnel tearing open the faces of the children and ripping open the head of their father.

The group put the updated toll for violence across the country on Tuesday at 158 dead — 114 civilians, 31 Syrian soldiers and 13 rebel fighters.