UN in South Sudan: The ghosts of Rwanda and Srebrenica

As the last of the reinforcements arrive for the newly mandated UN Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), questions remain over its ability to protect civilians and put South Sudan on a road to peace and stability.

 

South Sudan became independent in 2011, following a referendum held under the conditions of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that brought to an end the 22-year Sudanese civil war. The birth of the new nation was a significant achievement for the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS), which deployed in 2005 to support the implementation of the CPA. However, UNMIS was not very effective at disarming and demobilising the myriad armed groups prior to independence, nor did it make much headway with the transformation of the post-war security sector.

 

Following independence, the UN's role was re-conceived as a peacebuilding endeavour, with the newly-named UNMISS mandated to build the institutional capacity needed to govern the nascent state of South Sudan. Despite early optimism, UNMISS was unable to address the maladies of a bloated security sector, and despite an explicit mandate to 'protect civilians under imminent threat of physical violence', was incapable of responding to brutal attacks on civilians once political violence flared in December 2013. 

 

The violence, sparked by a dispute between President Salva Kiir and his Vice President Riek Machar, led to civil war, with widespread attacks on civilians instigated along ethnic lines. Since December, over 10,000 people have been killed and over 1.5 million displaced. Having opened their gates to fleeing civilians, UN peacekeepers now face the task of looking after over 100,000 civilians seeking refuge in impromptu protection sites inside ten UN bases across the country, a situation that Secretary-General Ban says is taking UNMISS into 'uncharted territory.' 

 

In addition to the direct effects of fighting, South Sudanese are threatened by impending famine, particularly in the conflict-affected states where farmers were unable to plant seeds before the arrival of the rainy season. While the fighting has claimed many victims, these numbers may pale into insignificance against the numbers now likely to starve to death. 

 

In late June 2014, the UN Security Council passed a resolution reconfiguring and re-prioritising UNMISS. Troop strength went from 7000 to 12,500 and the UN police force was strengthened from 900 to 1323, with the addition of several helicopters and fixed wing aircraft. This fortified force is to abandon the previously mandated task of state building and embrace the new priorities of protecting civilians and securing the delivery of humanitarian assistance.

 

Yet UNMISS finds itself between a rock and a hard place. The mission is deployed in the midst of a lethal civil war. As matters now stand, there is no way the Council can extricate the mission without compromising the safety of thousands of UN personnel and hundreds of thousands of civilians. Instead of liquidating a peacebuilding mission, the Security Council has resuscitated the notion of maintaining safe havens protected by peacekeepers.

 

The practice of establishing UN-protected areas is not exactly uncharted territory, as suggested by Ban; it was in fact discredited in the 1990s because of the UN's failure to protect against the Srebrenica massacre of 1993 and the Rwandan genocide of 1994. However, in addition to protection against armed attack, the UN is now also accepting responsibility for protecting South Sudanese against disease and famine. For example, UNMISS has expressed concern about the situation in Bentiu, where 100-200 displaced people continue to arrive daily, many of them malnourished. The UN-protected areas are likely to be in increasing demand as feeding centres regardless of the conflict situation.

 

Serious questions therefore remain about the ability of UNMISS to fulfill its 'close protection' and broader protection mandate.

 

As Secretary-General Ban has said: 'the strengthening of UNMISS's protection capabilities will not happen overnight. Even with additional capabilities, we will not be able to protect every civilian in need in South Sudan.' In addition to risks associated with deteriorating health and sanitation, the task of protecting and feeding more than 100,000 civilians within UN bases presents serious challenges for the Formed Police Units which are for the first time being asked to protect vulnerable populations from external threats as well as hostile elements in the camps.

 

Given these challenges, UNMISS peacekeepers cannot be expected to hold the line indefinitely, so South Sudan's political process needs impetus. Although a cessation of hostilities agreement was signed on 23 January 2014, there has been little tangible progress towards a political settlement that would contain the power struggles and usher in a transitional government.

 

The interests and support of regional powers need to be carefully managed during any diplomatic offensive. The conflict is already regionalised through the presence of Ugandan troops, the central mediating role of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), and the standing-up of an IGAD monitoring and verification mechanism. While the support of regional powers remains essential to settling the conflict, there is also potential for the interests and meddling of those same regional powers to exacerbate the conflict. 

 

The UN Security Council and some of it more powerful members, though at the moment seized with other pressing issues of global and regional security, need to bring much more pressure to bear instead of abdicating their responsibility to IGAD and the African Union in the hope that they will find 'African solutions to African problems'. If the UN is to support the transition to peace, then the Security Council, the Secretariat, and UNMISS leadership need to help shape a transitional strategy that results in a stable settlement and ends the de facto impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators of the worst atrocities. 

The Deathwatch Phase

The Syrian rebellion is now in its deathwatch phase. The government is doomed and its forces grow weaker every day. It’s only a matter of time before the government losses control of the entire country and surviving officials flee for sanctuary. Allies (Iran, Russia, China) have been quietly offering refuge to Assad and his senior aides. President Basher Assad keeps making public announcements that he has no intention of leaving. The same can’t be said about the several thousand senior officials he depends on to control the country. Many of these people have committed known criminal acts over the decades and have to fear rebel retribution if they are still in Syria when the rebels win. Many of these officials have already sent their families into exile and when these army and government leaders join their families in large numbers, you’ll know it’s the end. That is expected to happen within the next few months or weeks.

At the moment, the government is calling more and more of its most reliable troops back to Damascus to defend the capital. Despite weeks of government air and ground attacks, rebel gunmen and Islamic terrorists continue to operate inside Damascus. You can hear the gunfire and explosions from downtown where the ministries and major business headquarters are located. The second largest city (after Damascus), Aleppo, is almost completely under rebel control. That includes dozens of military bases and most of the weapons and munitions stored there. The government troops have died, been captured, deserted, or, most frequently, been moved to another part of the country.

The big fear in the West is that Assad may turn his chemical weapons (especially the nerve gas) over to Hezbollah or these weapons may be seized by rebel groups that are also Islamic terrorists intent on attacking the West and Israel. Hezbollah, as a creation of Iran (in the 1980s), could have gotten nerve gas from Iran at any time since then. But that stuff, if used, could be traced back to Iran with dire consequences for Iran. The Syrian stuff, created by a Syrian dictator recently removed from power, would be another matter. In any event, this is not a huge deal as nerve gas is vastly overrated as a terrorist (or military) weapon.

A more immediate problem for the victorious rebels is getting the economy going again. Many key officials (business owners and government officials) who took care of that will be gone after the rebel victory. As was discovered in Libya, putting the economy and government back together is not easy. The same can be said about restoring law and order. As in Libya, Syria will have dozens of major militias, and hundreds of smaller ones, all making demands on the new government and threatening violence if they don’t get their way. Rebel leaders, while still on speaking terms with each other, are already trying to work out the rules for a post-Assad Syria. 

Rebels have captured most of Morek, a town that controls the main road between Damascus and Aleppo (and the Turkish border). Some of the towns in this area are Christian and Alawite, and the government is offering weapons to the residents if they will form pro-government militias. This will complicate the security once the rebels win because these minorities long supported the Assads and benefitted from that. Many of the majority Sunnis will be looking for revenge once Assad is gone.

December 20, 2012: The UN admitted what it had long denied, that the Syrian revolution was an uprising of a largely Sunni population against a Shia (Alawite) minority and several other minorities. The UN also announced sanctions against two more Iranian transportations companies for moving weapons to Syria despite UN sanctions.

December 19, 2012: Rebels have captured most of the key towns in the central Syrian province of Hama. This sort of thing means the rebels control key roads, cutting government forces off from each other and cutting some military bases from supply. These troops begin running out of food and other essential items and their bases become easier to capture.

The UN is seeking $1.5 billion from donor countries. A third would go to about 20 percent of the population inside Syria who are refugees or cut off from food supplies. The rest of the money would go to help over 500,000 Syrian refugees in neighboring countries. About 40 percent of the refuges are in Turkey with the rest in Lebanon, Jordan, and Iraq.

December 18, 2012: About half the 112,000 Palestinians in a refugee camp (Yarmouk, actually a large town) south of Damascus have fled to avoid fighting and air force bombings. The Palestinian leadership is split between rebel and government supporters and the pro-government groups have been losing the battle. As of today, the rebels appear to control all of Yarmouk.

December 17, 2012: Rebels kidnapped two Russians and an Italian on a highway near the port city of Latakia. The rebels (who may be criminals pretending to be rebels) are demanding $700,000 ransom for the release of the three men.

Russia has sent four warships (two amphibious ships, a frigate, and a supply ship) to Syria, apparently to evacuate Russian citizens. The ships are apparently heading for Tartus, the major Syrian port.

A Syrian official told a Lebanese newspaper that he believed neither side could win. Government allies like Iran and Russia now believe the government will eventually lose. Iran is calling for a cease fire and negotiations but few of the rebel militias are interested in that. The rebels sense victory and don’t want to talk.

December 16, 2012: Trying to support pro-government Palestinian militias, air force planes bombed the Palestinian town (“refugee camp”) Yarmouk (south of Damascus).

December 15, 2012: Iranian military leaders protested the arrival of NATO Patriot missile batteries in Turkey. This is more media theater by the Iranians who are taking a big hit in the media because of Iranian support for the Assad government in Syria.

December 13, 2012: An American network (NBC) news reporter and three colleagues were kidnapped by a pro-government militia near the Turkish border. NBC and the other major media organizations agreed to keep quiet about the kidnapping, as this made it easier to negotiate with the kidnappers (who raise the price, and make more threats, the more publicity the event gets). Some web sites and pro-government foreign (Chinese and Russian) news organizations reported the kidnapping, but most Westerners were unaware of it. Rebel groups began looking for the captives and found them on the 17^th. The four escaped during the rebel attack on the kidnappers and got back into Turkey.

December 12, 2012:  The government fired six SCUD ballistic missiles at the Sheikh Suleiman military base outside Aleppo. SCUDs continued to be launched, one or two every few days. The warheads were apparently just explosives (Syrian SCUDS are also able to carry a chemical weapons warhead). Each missile is the equivalent of a half-ton bomb dropped from an aircraft. The base is spread out over 200 hectares (500 acres). SCUD is a Russian designed missile based on the German V-2 of World War II. In effect, SCUD is a perfected V-2 but still takes several hours to fuel and make ready for firing. The Syrian SCUDs are not particularly accurate, they are able to hit within a kilometer wide circle, at best. The Syrians are firing SCUDs (of which they have several hundred) because they fear the missiles might get captured, and the air force is running short of munitions and fuel for aircraft missions.

Syria - The Blame Game

Unable to halt, much less reverse, the rebel advances, the government has apparently ordered its air force to make maximum attacks on civilians who are supporting the rebels. The idea is that the civilians will cease sheltering and supplying the rebels in order to avoid more of this. On the 29^th, the air force made its biggest daily effort ever, carrying out 60 attacks in 24 hours. Before that, the number of daily attacks had averaged 20 a day for and had stayed at that level for months.

The aircraft are using dumb bombs, so they are only effective against large targets, like residential neighborhoods or villages. Because the rebels now have portable anti-aircraft missiles, warplanes have to bomb from high altitude (over 6,000 meters/20,000 feet). That reduces accuracy even more. Each of these attacks causes, on average, more than 20 casualties. Few of the victims are armed rebels and most of the attacks are occurring in areas where there are no government ground troops nearby. This strategy is not working, which the government already knew, from areas where civilians had been bombed for weeks and continued to hate the Assad dictatorship. The air raids drive people out of their homes and some flee the country. But there’s not enough of that to allow government troops to retake lost ground. The government is desperate and unwilling to surrender control of the country. 

The heavier air force effort has been going on for a week now and the warplanes are wearing out. Even transport helicopters are being used. These cannot use aircraft bombs so they drop improvised weapons (barrels full of explosives and scrap metal, or oil.) Many of these improvised bombs don’t explode and the scattered fragments tell the tale.

Iran has sent in dozens of small UAVs, which are being used to spot targets for artillery and air strikes. This has made it more difficult for the rebels, who cannot move around as freely as they used to. The army also has problems getting around, mainly because the rebels control sections of the highway from Damascus (where the largest military bases, and supply stockpiles are) and Aleppo (the second largest city, with a population of 2.5 million). In particular the rebels took control of Maaret al Numan, in early October. This town is on the highway and the army has failed in at least three major attacks to get the rebels out. As long as the rebels block the highway, government troops in the northwest are facing a growing shortage of food, fuel, ammo and reinforcements. These shortages hurt morale and encourage more soldiers to desert. Those who remain begin to think surrender isn’t such a bad idea. Even some of the officers and NCOs are losing heart, and Basher Assad knows it.

In addition to the main highways, the rebels are increasing pressure on air bases and the artillery units pounding rebel positions. The government now finds that it has to use more of its dwindling manpower to guard the bases and artillery units. Moving artillery has now become a major operation because rebels try to ambush the artillery battalions on the road.

South of Damascus, in the largest Syrian refugee camps (Yarmouk, population 150,000, about 30 percent of the Palestinians in Syria) fighting continued between Palestinians loyal to the camp leadership (a Palestinian terrorist organization, which has long enjoyed the support of the Assads) and Palestinians who support the rebels. Palestinians realize that if the rebels win, and it looks like they will, they will be driven out unless pro-rebel Palestinians take control of Palestinian refugee camps (which are actually separate towns or neighborhoods occupied and run by Palestinians.) Hamas, the Palestinian terror group that controls Gaza, had long received support from the Assads. But under pressure from major donors (oil-rich Sunni Arabs) to oppose the Iran-backed Assads., Hamas has switched sides. Earlier this year Hamas moved its headquarters out of Syria and openly denounced the Assaads. Hamas apparently also told the Syrian Palestinians to oppose Assad if they wanted Hamas and other Arab states to persuade the new rebel government to allow “loyal” Palestinians to remain and avoid retribution. Palestinians are 1.7 percent of the population.

Despite the success of the rebels on the battlefield, the U.S. has openly called for a new rebel leadership group. The Americans believe that the SNC (Syrian National Council) has been unable to effectively unite all the anti-government factions. In particular the United States wants a rebel leadership that does not include Islamic terrorist groups in the rebel coalition. The rebels believe they cannot do that, because the Islamic rebels are the most fanatic fighters and provide most of the manpower and expertise for suicide attacks. These terrorist attacks are a major combat advantage for the rebels. At present the rebels believe they are getting more battlefield assistance from the Islamic terrorists than from the Americans. Western countries want to intervene, but are reluctant to do so without UN approval, and that is being withheld because of the Russian and Chinese vetoes in the UN Security Council. Many Turks want to intervene, but most don’t.  The U.S. has said that it would intervene if the Syrians used chemical weapons. Arabs are beginning to blame the West of deliberately not intervening (as they did in Libya) in order to get more Arabs killed.

November 1, 2012: In Damascus, three bombs went off in a pro-Assad residential neighborhood. One person was killed and two wounded. Most of the residents were shaken by the ability of the rebels to get into their well-guarded neighborhood.

October 30, 2012: For the first tine, warplanes bombed rebel targets inside Damascus, the capital and home of the most dedicated Assad supporters. Elsewhere in Damascus rebels ambushed and killed a senior air force general.

October 29, 2012: The four-day ceasefire ended, without much cessation of fire. Over 500 people died during the ceasefire, mainly because some rebel factions did not agree to the ceasefire and kept attacking. Government forces responded with more artillery fire and air raids. In Damascus two car bombs went off killing at least twelve people. Several Syrian artillery shells again fell on the Turkish side of the border. Nearby Turkish artillery returned fore,

October 27, 2012: In Aleppo a fighting broke out between rebels and 200 Kurdish gunmen who arrived in a Kurdish neighborhood to, as they put it, celebrate an upcoming religious holiday. Some thing went wrong and 22 people were killed and 180 rebels surrendered. The Kurds have so far remained neutral in the civil war, and if they joined the government it would be a serious defeat for the rebels. There are believed to be 100,000 armed Kurds in Syria, but they are also split into many factions,

October 26, 2012: After much effort by the UN, the government and the rebels agreed to a four-day truce (coinciding with a major Moslem holiday).

October 25, 2012: Saudi Arabia expelled three Syrian diplomats for unspecified, but apparently inappropriate actions.

In Damascus, artillery fired into a pro-rebel neighborhood.

Putin slams dictation to Russia on arms trade

Russia's President Vladimir Putin yesterday defended its arms trade against criticisms over its dealings with Syria, insisting only the United Nations could dictate restrictions on arms sales.

Putin defended Russia's right to trade weapons with whomever it wanted, without mentioning Syria but in an apparent reaction to recent attacks from the West over supplies to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

"We operate on the premise that the only basis for limiting weapons supplies to any country is UN Security Council sanctions," Putin said as he opened a government meeting on military-technical cooperation.

"In all other cases, no one can on any pretext dictate to Russia or any other state with whom and how it should trade," he said, according to a transcript on the Kremlin website.

This week Turkey accused Russia of delivering "war equipment" to the Syrian government on board a Syrian plane, after the Turkish authorities forced the plane to land last week and seized the suspect cargo.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the cargo contained radar equipment and was being delivered legally, demanding that it be returned to its rightful owners.

However the incident led the US State Department to label Russia's Syria policy as "morally bankrupt".

Putin stood by Russia's current military-technical cooperation with Syria, which falls outside of UN sanctions.

"One-sided or collective bans and restrictions outside the framework of the UN Security Council, especially ones that are politically motivated, are not norms of international law," he said.

"We intend to continue to develop such cooperation and carry out absolutely all the obligations we take on." Russia has infuriated Turkey and its Western allies by refusing to halt military cooperation with Syria, an ally dating back to Soviet times, despite the raging conflict in which activists say more than 32,000 people have died since March 2011.

Moscow has defiantly refused to take sides against Assad, and has slammed the West and Turkey for making clear their support for the rebels battling his regime.

Syria - Slip Sliding Away

The rebels continue to make gains. In the last week the highway from Damascus (the capital) to Aleppo was cut and rebel fighters were showing up in more towns and city neighborhoods. Nearly 400,000 Syrians have fled the country (most to avoid the violence, a growing number of Assad supporters are going into exile). A growing number of Syrian soldiers are fleeing across the border just to avoid getting killed or captured. Over ten percent of the 22 million population have been exposed to some of the violence, and nearly all Syrians are suffering from shortages.

The rebels are seizing control of sections of highway in part to prevent military camps or units from being supplied and to make it easier for pro-rebel civilians (that includes over 85 percent of the population) to get food and other items. Troops that are left without regular supplies of food, ammo and medical gear suffer from poor morale. This increases desertions and defections. Thus as the rebels grow more numerous (even if many new recruits have few weapons and little ammunition) the government security forces continue to shrink. The rebels are making a point of releasing nearly all the lower ranking soldiers and police they capture, and only keeping most of the officers and senior NCOs. This has encouraged more surrenders. Deaths from combat and continued shelling of residential areas (by the government) are killing about a thousand people a week and wounding 3-4 times more.

The security forces are being forced to withdraw from more areas they long occupied because they have not got enough troops to patrol and control. Losses (mostly from desertions and capture) mean that more emphasis is placed on controlling cities and the major bases that surround them. Holding the cities means eventually having to deal with serious food shortages. It’s the lack of supplies more than anything else that is going to defeat the government. Turkey has banned truck traffic into Syria and the rebels control more and more of the roads entering the country. There are not enough police and troops to hold the border areas, roads and cities.

Turkish, American and Western leaders in general are becoming more vocal in condemning the UN, and especially Russia and China (whose vetoes are the main cause of UN inaction) for not doing anything to halt the fighting in Syria, or help ease the suffering of the many civilians there. Russia is now being called “morally bankrupt” but replies that it is simply fighting Islamic terrorism by supporting the Assad dictatorship. Russian media is full of stories about Islamic terror groups fighting alongside the Syrian rebels and how these terrorists are being supported by the United States and other Western nations. These Russian attitudes will harm Russian diplomacy in the Arab world for a long time. China, on the other hand, has simply kept quiet about its support for Russia in opposing UN action.

Alawites, worried about what will happen to them if the rebels win, are switching sides. While Alawites are about ten percent of the population, they received a disproportionate amount of benefits from the Alawite run dictatorship. Not all Alawites did well from this policy, but even some of those who did (like senior army officers) are defecting. Some are allowing the defections to be publicized, which puts family members at risk of retaliation by the government. The defectors are taking the long view, seeing connections with the rebels the only way to avoid getting chased out of Syria.

The increased security on the Turkish border is causing more gun battles and alerts because of the smuggler traffic. This illicit trade goes both ways. Cigarettes are much cheaper in Syria, so smugglers take them into Turkey on a regular basis. Now weapons and military equipment is being smuggled in (in addition to the items the Turks are allowing in) along with consumer goods and even food (because commercial traffic has largely been disrupted. Normally, the smugglers don’t fire on the border guards, but there have been more incidents of that lately. One reason may be the sharp increase in smuggling out antiquities. Syria has long been a source of valuable ancient artifacts and the loss of government control over much of the country has led to artifacts being taken without government permission and smuggled out to be sold on the international black market. This sort of thing could be worth millions of dollars a month to gangs that are grabbing the artifacts and smuggling them out. Some government officials are probably involved, but most of it appears to be the usual criminal organizations taking advantage of a rare opportunity.

Saudi Arabia and other Arab Gulf states are supplying most of the weapons for the Syrian rebels. The U.S. is having a hard time getting information on which rebel factions are getting what. This leads some American intelligence experts to suspect that the Gulf Arabs are supplying a lot of weapons to radical factions (like al Qaeda) within the rebel military coalition.

Syria is being accused of using cluster bombs, which have been banned in most nations because of many complaints that too many of the small bomblets do not explode when they are supposed to and lay on the ground where children (or even adults) later disturb the explosive devices and cause a detonation. Syria is supposedly using Russian cluster bombs, which have a reputation for a high number (over ten percent) of the hundreds of bomblets in a single cluster bomb not going off when they should. If the Syrians are using cluster bombs, they have to warn their own troops to be careful when entering areas where these bombs were dropped.

October 14, 2012:  Turkey banned all Syrian aircraft from Turkish air space. This mutual ban comes after Turkey forced a Syrian airliner, coming from Russia, down for an inspection. Weapons and other military cargo were found.

In the capital, a suicide car bomb went off in a wealthy neighborhood, where many government officials live. There were no injuries (except for the dead driver), but this sort of thing sends a message. Later in the day another car bomb went off, in the same neighborhood, wounding a pro-government journalist. Elsewhere in the city yet another bomb wounded a pro-government lawyer. All these bombs exploding in the capital, especially in areas where the government is strongest (or lives with their families) is bad for morale among the leading families.

October 13, 2012: Syria banned all Turkish aircraft from Syrian air space. Rebels claim to have shot down a government warplane over Aleppo.

October 11, 2012: Rebels cut the highway from Damascus to Aleppo. Subsequent efforts by the army to regain control of the highway failed.

October 10, 2012: Turkey forced a Syrian airliner, coming from Russia, down for an inspection. Weapons and other military cargo were found although Syria and Russia denied that this was the case.

October 9, 2012: For six days now, shells from Syria have landed in Turkey. In response, the Turks have fired back

October 8, 2012: Suicide bombers attacked an air force intelligence compound outside Damascus. There were casualties.

October 7, 2012: In the capital, a suicide car bomb went off near a police headquarters.

106 soldiers killed as Syrian rebels go on attack: watchdog

A Syrian opposition fighter stands near a post in the northern city of Aleppo on October 11, 2012. Rebels cut off the highway linking Damascus with Syria's second city Aleppo, choking the flow of troops to battlefields in the north.

Syrian rebels killed 14 soldiers in an attack on an army post in Daraa province on Friday, a watchdog said, a day after the army suffered 92 losses, the highest daily total of the 19-month conflict.

Six rebels were also killed in Friday's attack on the army checkpoint at Khirbata in the southern province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that fighting also raged in the northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo.

The Britain-based watchdog said Thursday had marked one of the deadliest days of fighting since an anti-regime revolt erupted in March last year, with at least 240 people killed across the country, including the 92 soldiers, 67 rebel fighters and 81 civilians.

Of the soldiers killed on Thursday, 36 died in fighting in Idlib province, where much of the fiercest clashes have taken place over the past three months.

Regime war planes Friday attacked two buildings in the Idlib town of Maaret al-Numan, where intense fighting has raged since rebels overran it on Tuesday after a fierce 48-hour gunbattle, the Observatory said.

An AFP reporter said that the rebels, by gaining control of a stretch of highway near Maaret al-Numan, were on Thursday able to cut off the route linking Damascus to Aleppo, choking the flow of troops to battlefields in the north.

In Aleppo province, rebels attacked a large air defence battalion on the highway connecting Aleppo to Raqa province, further to the east, near to the Kweris military airport, according to the Observatory.

"The rebels attacked the air force battalion after midnight and the clashes went on until dawn, but the rebels definitely did not gain control of the post," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP by phone.

Rebels suffered a number of casualties, but immediate figures were not available. Military airports have been a key target for the rebels as the army has increasingly deployed war planes and helicopter gunships to launch devastating strikes.

In Aleppo city, regime forces pounded the districts of Haidariyeh in the northeast and Sukari and Fardoss in the southwest at dawn, as fierce fighting broke out in Sakhur, Suleiman al-Halabi and Sheikh Khodr in the northeast.

More than 32,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict, according to the Observatory, which compiles its data from a network of activists, medics and lawyers on the ground.