Assad better get the hell out’ – Panetta

US Defense Sec. Leon Panetta has advice for Syria’s President Assad: “If you want to be able to protect yourself and your family, you’d better get the hell out now.” Panetta also warned that the US would not repeat the mistakes it made in Iraq.

“The United States and the international community has made very clear that this is intolerable, and have brought their diplomatic and economic pressure on Syria to stop this kind of violence, to have Assad step down and to transition to a democratic form of government,” he said in an interview with CNN during a visit to Tunisia.

The international community has yet to reach consensus on the ongoing strife in Syria. Russia and China oppose removing Assad, saying his government is supported by a majority of Syrians.

Syria’s government forces should remain intact after embattled President Assad is ousted, said Panetta. Though the Obama administration is resolved against military intervention in the country, Panetta nevertheless drew a comparison with the occupation of Iraq following the 2003 US-led invasion.

"It's very important that we don't make the same mistakes we made in Iraq," he said, referring to the Bush administration’s decision to disband the country’s military in the wake of the invasion. “I think it’s important when Assad leaves, and he will leave, to try to preserve stability in that country.”

The Defense Secretary said that the most effective way to preserve Syrian stability is to “maintain as much of the military and police as you can, along with security forces, and hope that they will transition to a democratic form of government.”

A temporary military regime is a strategy similar to the one employed by Egypt following the ouster of President Mubarak in January last year, where the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF) formed an interim government. But prolonged military rule sparked massive protests amid claims that SCAF was stalling democratic elections in a bid to cling to power.

Government forces will be essential to securing key Syrian military sites, including alleged chemical weapons stashes: “It would be a disaster to have those chemical weapons fall into the wrong hands,” Panetta said.

"The key right now is to continue to bring that pressure on Syria, to provide assistance to the opposition, and to provide whatever kind of humanitarian aid we can to assist the refugees," he told CNN.

Panetta is currently in Tunisia as part of a week-long tour of the Middle East, during which the Syrian conflict will be at the top of his agenda.

This aggressive rhetoric comes as the fighting between government forces and rebels intensifies across Syria. Clashes have wracked the industrial hub of Aleppo for the past week, with rebels vowing to turn the northern city into the “grave of the regime.”

The Obama administration has said that it is providing as much “non-lethal” aid as it can to Syrian rebel forces. Russia has accused the West of fueling the conflict by supporting the opposition, claiming that more should be done to facilitate dialogue between the warring camps.

UN says 200,000 have fled Aleppo

The U.N. said 200,000 Syrians have fled the embattled city of Aleppo, where intense clashes flared again yesterday between regime forces bombarding rebels who have seized large swathes of the city.

Valerie Amos, the top U.N. official for humanitarian affairs, said the 200,000 had fled during 10 days of clashes in Syria’s largest city and commercial hub.

"I am extremely concerned by the impact of shelling and use of tanks and other heavy weapons on people in Aleppo," Amos said in a statement late Sunday. "Many people have sought temporary shelter in schools and other public buildings in safer areas," she added. "They urgently need food, mattresses and blankets, hygiene supplies and drinking water."

Amos said U.N. agencies and the Syrian Red Crescent are working together on supplying those affected by the fighting all over the country with blankets and humanitarian supplies, but many remain out of their reach because of the combat.

"It is not known how many people remain trapped in places where fighting continues today," she warned. Aleppo is Syria’s largest city and commercial hub with about 3 million inhabitants.

Fleeing residents have described to The Associated Press incessant shelling, shortages of food and gasoline and soaring black market prices for everyday staples. They scurry through streets against a backdrop of gunfire and climbed onto any form of transportation available to escape, including trucks, cars and even heavily laden motorcycles.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said late Sunday that the use of heavy weapons, particularly helicopters, is just another nail in President Bashar Assad’s coffin. He spoke during a stopover in Tunisia as he kicked off a Mideast tour expected to focus heavily on the unfolding crisis in Syria.

Syrian state media reported late Sunday that the army had "purged" Aleppo’s southwestern neighborhood of Salaheddine and inflicted "great losses" upon the rebels in one of the first districts they took control of in their bid to seize the city.

Activists, however, disputed these claims and just described another day of fierce shelling of certain areas, backed up by the occasional foray on the ground.

"They have tanks in nearby Hamdaniya and there is fighting, and there have been random bombardments of Salaheddine," said Mohammed Saeed, who is based in the embattled city.

While giving no indication that the Obama administration is contemplating military intervention, Panetta said it is increasingly clear that the Syrian crisis is deepening and that Assad is hastening his own demise.

"If they continue this kind of tragic attack on their own people, ... I think it ultimately will be a nail in Assad’s coffin," Panetta told reporters traveling with him from Washington. "His regime is coming to an end."

The Syrian regime has been plagued by a string of defections, including three high-ranking diplomats and several military commanders. On Monday, a Turkish official said a Syrian brigadier general who was deputy chief of police in the Latakia region had defected.

He was among a group of 12 Syrian officers who crossed into Turkey late Sunday, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters. His defection raised to 28 the number of generals who have left for Turkey since the start of the 17-month-old uprising.

But Syria’s army remains mostly intact and still vastly outguns the rebel forces, who are armed for the most part with assault rifles and machine guns and don’t have the heavy weapons necessary to effectively oppose tanks and helicopter gunships.

The government reinforced its troops outside Aleppo and began an assault over the weekend to retake the city, bombarding rebel neighborhoods and leaving streets littered with rubble and empty apartment blocks with gaping smashed windows, according to videos of the city posted online in recent days.

Syria - We Have To Win This One Or We Are Screwed

The government is using its most trusted (largely Alawite) troops in Aleppo, an indication that most of the regular army is either gone (deserted) or now considered too unreliable to fight. Only about ten percent of the population benefit from the Assad dictatorship and many of these are fleeing the country. The loyalist fraction of the population supplies the manpower for the secret police (about 50,000 full-timers) and the leadership of the armed forces (300,000 troops and 100,000 paramilitary, the majority of them Sunni, led by largely Alawite officers.) For the past year the loyalty of many troops was bought, by making sure the troops were paid on time and that the married ones have access to needed consumer goods. But that is no longer enough, as the troops see rebels gaining control of major highways and border crossings. Turkey recently closed their border to trucks carrying government–bought supplies.

The Alawites are five percent of the population. Sunni Arabs are about 75 percent. Other minorities (Shia, Druze, Christian) will, up to a point, side with the Alawites (a common pattern in the Middle East, where non-Sunni minorities have long been persecuted). In the last few months, more and more of the non-Alawites have joined the rebels, fought alongside them and made it clear that the Alawites were on their own. Even some Alawites have either joined the rebels while others have opened negotiations to determine terms of local surrender. While Assad still has loyalists, their numbers, and reliability are declining. Fewer and fewer Assad supporters see the Assad government surviving this rebellion. A few are willing to fight to the death, most are not.

It's largely class warfare. The Assad family cultivated the middle and upper classes. This kept the economy going, but kept most of the population poor and outsiders in their own country. To move up in Syria you had to prove your loyalty to the Assads. That turned many ambitious non-Alawites into Assad loyalists. Many of these families are now having second thoughts. But in the major cities like Aleppo and Damascus, there are whole neighborhoods full of these relatively well-off Assad supporters. Many of these families will not or cannot flee the country and this is where a lot of the Alawite militias come from. Many of these militiamen have been in the army, and have easy access to weapons. The problems arise when these militias go on the offensive and attack pro-rebel neighborhoods and kill and rape civilians. This exposes their own families to retaliation by the rebels. The Assads know this and ordered the secret police to use available cash and influence to recruit young Alawites for these militias. This was a desperate move, because for the violent Alawite militias, it literally is "victory or death."

The growing number of defectors who were Assad supporters brings with them a steady stream of fresh information on what the Assads are up to. For example, the Assads are deliberately playing the religion card and depending more and more on Alawite militias for reliable gunmen. The other minorities are abandoning the Alawites and seeking to join the rebels or at least arrange some kind of neutrality. While the Alawites have lots of weapons, they are still only five percent of the population and not really united on this "fight to the death" strategy the Assads seem to have adopted.

Army deserters have been treated harshly (often executed immediately) if caught. As a result of this most army units were confined to their bases, with the more trusted troops guarding the rest. That system gradually failed and Sunni majority army units just melted away. There are less than 100,000 reliable soldiers and secret police. But over 20,000 armed militia have been raised from loyal (especially Alawite) populations. These gunmen are less disciplined and more prone to harsh treatment of rebel civilians. The militias are local forces defending their homes and families. Increasingly, the Alawite militias are organizing departures from Syria, or negotiations with local rebels about what it would cost to survive a rebel victory.

In 16 months, the Syrian rebellion has left over 20,000 dead. The fighting in Aleppo has caused over a thousand casualties in the last week, most of them civilians wounded by days of artillery bombardment. The Assad forces use their artillery to intimidate the rebels, and then send in the few loyal infantry they have. In the last two weeks, over 3,000 have died, mainly due to heavy fighting in Damascus, Aleppo and several other cities. The large urban areas are where Assad supporters live and now they are being forced to defend their own homes. In all of June, about 3,000 died and it looks like July's death toll may be twice that. Meanwhile over 400,000 (out of 22 million) have fled the country. Over ten percent of the population is going hungry and the Assads have been to denying food to pro-rebel parts of the country. This makes it much easier for the rebels to recruit.

Rebels are receiving a steady supply of weapons via Jordan, Iraq, Turkey and even Lebanon (where the non-Shia majority in the north back the Syrian rebels). A growing number of weapons are being captured from the army, or brought in by deserting soldiers. The Arab Gulf states are the major suppliers of cash and weapons. Iraqi Sunnis are sending in weapons and volunteers while the Turks have allowed rebel bases and training camps to be established in Turkey. To defend those facilities from Syrian attack, Turkey has moved more troops and anti-aircraft weapons to the Syrian border.

American officials are discussing with their Israeli and Turkish counterparts how to deal with the collapse of the Assad government. Turkey in particular is concerned with the flood of Assad loyalists seeking to flee. Iraq and Jordan have mostly Sunni Syrians on their border, and not much fighting. Lebanon is heavily influenced by the Iran-backed Hezbollah militia, which would accept Assad loyalists as refugees. The Gulf Arab states have been handling a lot of the relief work, and military aid for the rebels, and are expected to help finance reconstruction. All these parties, with the exception of Hezbollah, want to prevent Islamic radical groups from gaining any power in post-Assad Syria. There is also fear that many rebel factions will begin fighting each other after the Assads are gone. Faction leaders in Turkey have been having a hard time agreeing on who will get what in post-Assad Syria. No one wants another civil war but the rhetoric is pointing in that direction.

July 28, 2012: Syrian forces made their first ground assault on Aleppo and were largely repulsed by the rebels. This assault came after several days of heavy shelling of rebel neighborhoods. The assault left nearly 200 soldiers, rebels and civilians dead.  The rebels continue to hold nearly half the city and are recruiting more men locally every day.

The state controlled media is calling the effort to recapture Aleppo the "mother of all battles," a phrase that usually means; "we have to win this one or we are screwed." Meanwhile, fighting still continues in Damascus. Foreigners can hear gunfire at night and even occasionally during the day.

Russia announced that if its navy personnel in their naval base at Tartus were attacked by Syrian rebels, Russia would shut down their base and withdraw from Syria. Senior Russian officials seem to feel that the Assad government is crumbling and will not last much longer. This announcement is a signal to the rebels that Russia will not fight for the Assads, and that Russia wants to be on friendly terms with the post-Assad government.

Rebels rescued two Western journalists who went missing after crossing the Turkish border on the 19th. The two had wandered into the camp of about 40 foreign Islamic radicals, who accused the Westerners of being "CIA spies". The two journalists were put under guard and the Islamic radicals sought to obtain a ransom for their release. When the Syrian rebels found out about this, they went looking for the captives and found them today. The rebels did not have to fight the Islamic radicals, and could be heard berating the radicals, who backed off and allowed their captives to go free. There are believed to be at least several hundred foreign Islamic radicals, some of them al Qaeda, in the country (plus several thousand local ones). The rebels tolerate them, but have cracked down on stuff like kidnapping foreigners or trying to enforce Islamic lifestyle rules (women must be covered, men must grow beards) on civilians.

Although the government has threatened to use its chemical weapons (which it never officially admitted to having before) against any foreign troops entering Syria, some of those same chemical bombs and shells are being moved to camps less likely to fall into the hands of the rebels. But the thousands of tons of chemical weapons will eventually be seized by the rebels. There will be pressure to destroy the chemical weapons, something the United States and Russia have done with their own stocks.

July 26, 2012: Turkey has closed its Syrian border to commercial traffic, but not to Syrian refugees or rebels.

July 25, 2012: Several thousand troops left their bases in the northwest, abandoning the area to the rebels, and headed for Aleppo.

July 24, 2012: The army has driven rebel groups out of most of Damascus, but the rebels either retreated to the countryside or hid their guns and blended in with local civilians (who are pro-rebel). The rebels are apparently planning another major uprising in Damascus.

A senior Iranian general threatened Turkey, and other nations supporting the Syrian rebels, with retaliation. This had little effect, as Iran has long supported the Assads and is hated by most Arabs (and many Turks) for this. Iran has to worry about payback. Iran appears resigned to losing Syria and its operatives inside Syria are scrambling to see what can be salvaged from this mess.

July 23, 2012: Rebels captured the Syrian Army Infantry School, which is located outside Aleppo and contains large quantities of weapons and military equipment. Much of this stuff was soon moved into pro-rebel neighborhoods in Aleppo.

July 21, 2012: More troops are being moved to Aleppo, where rebels have seized control of nearly half the city. Artillery is beginning to shell pro-rebel neighborhoods.

Top Syrian diplomat in London quits over atrocities

Syria's top diplomat in London resigned today in protest against the "violent and oppressive" acts of President Bashar al-Assad's regime, the British Foreign Office said.

The Foreign Office said in a statement that charge d'affaires Khaled al-Ayoubi had informed it today that he had "left his post", describing it as a blow to the Syrian government.

"Mr al-Ayoubi has told us that he is no longer willing to represent a regime that has committed such violent and oppressive acts against its own people, and is therefore unable to continue in his position," it said.

Britain expelled the previous Syrian charge d'affaires, Ghassan Dalla, and two other diplomats in May. Syria had earlier withdrawn its ambassador from London.

"Mr al-Ayoubi was the most senior Syrian diplomat serving in London. His departure is another blow to the Assad regime," the Foreign Office said.

"It illustrates the revulsion and despair the regime's actions are provoking amongst Syrians from all walks of life, inside the country and abroad." It added: "We urge others around Bashar al-Assad to follow Mr al-Ayoubi's example; to disassociate themselves from the crimes being committed against the Syrian people and to support a peaceful and free future for Syria."

The move comes after a series of defections by senior Syrian officials in recent weeks, including diplomats in several countries and top army officers.

Syrian helicopter gunships strafe Aleppo rebels

Regime forces on Monday strafed rebel-held districts in Aleppo with helicopter gunships and pounded them with shelling on the third day of a pitched battle for Syria's commercial capital.

The fighting has sent some 200,000 civilians fleeing the northern city, according to the UN, which warned of a looming humanitarian catastrophe, while France said it would call an urgent UN Security Council meeting on Syria.

The head of the UN observer mission inside Syria said he was deeply concerned by the violence from both sides in Aleppo. He said he himself had also seen heavy shelling of Homs, Syria's third largest city, during a field visit Sunday.

The army's offensive in Aleppo was focused on Salaheddin district in the southwest, a stronghold of the rebel Free Syrian Army, made up of deserters and armed civilians, said the Syrian Revolution General Commission.

Colonel Abdel Jabbar al-Oqaidi, head of the FSA military council for the city, said that "several quarters of Aleppo are being bombed with MiG (fighter jets) and helicopters." Just outside of Aleppo, rebels seized a strategic checkpoint after a 10-hour battle, an AFP correspondent reported.

"The Anadan checkpoint... was taken this morning at 5:00 (0200 GMT) after 10 hours of fighting," said General Ferzat Abdel Nasser, a rebel officer who deserted the Syrian army a month ago.

By securing the checkpoint, about five kilometres (3.8 miles) northwest of Aleppo, the rebels now control a direct route between the Turkish border and the commercial capital.

The AFP correspondent said that the rebels captured seven tanks and armoured vehicles, and destroyed an eighth vehicle.

General Abdel Nasser told AFP that six soldiers were killed and 25 taken prisoner, adding that four of his own men died.

The Syrian army claimed to have overrun part of Salaheddin during the night, but the advance was denied by the FSA's Colonel Oqaidi.

"The Syrian army took control of part of Salaheddin district and continues its offensive," a security source in Damascus told AFP.

However, Oqaidi insisted government troops had "not progressed one metre (yard)." Since the launch on Saturday of the regime assault on Aleppo, the FSA "has already repelled three offensives" against Salaheddin, he said, adding that the rebels controlled "between 35 to 40 percent of Aleppo." UN mission chief Lieutenant General Babacar Gaye said he was "deeply concerned about the ongoing violence from both sides in Aleppo." "My observers there have reported an upsurge in the violence, with helicopters, tanks and artillery being used," the Senegalese general said.

"It is imperative that both sides respect international humanitarian law and protect civilians." Gaye said that during his trip to Homs province on Sunday -- his first field visit since taking over the UN mission earlier this month -- he had seen shelling in Homs and extensive damage in the battleground town of Rastan.

"There were damaged tanks left on the side of the streets, public infrastructure, such as bridges, was destroyed, and homes on the main roads inside the town were largely damaged," he said.

200,000 flee

Monday's violence followed a bloody day in which 125 were killed across Syria -- 46 civilians, 45 soldiers and 34 rebels -- according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said in a statement that an estimated 200,000 people had fled from Aleppo in two days and an unknown number were still trapped in the city.

Amos said that many people in Aleppo had sought shelter in schools and other public buildings. "They urgently need food, mattresses and blankets, hygiene supplies and drinking water," she said.

US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that the assault on his own population in Aleppo would be a nail in his coffin.

"It's pretty clear that Aleppo is another tragic example of the kind of indiscriminate violence that the Assad regime has committed against its own people," Panetta told reporters on a military plane en route to Tunisia.

"And in many ways, if they continue this kind of tragic attack on their own people in Aleppo, I think ultimately it will be a nail in Assad's coffin," he said.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in Paris on Monday that France, which is taking over the UN Security Council's rotating presidency in August, will call an emergency ministerial meeting on Syria.

Fabius told French radio station RTL he would chair the meeting himself and that it had to be held urgently to stop Assad's regime carrying out massacres in Syria.

More than 20,000 people have been killed in Syria since the anti-Assad revolt began in March 2011, according to the Observatory. There is no way to independently verify this figure, while the UN has stopped keeping count.