Syrian army gains ground around Aleppo, looks to Raqqa

Russia said on Saturday a Syria ceasefire plan was more likely to fail than succeed, as Syrian government forces backed by Russian air strikes took rebel ground near Aleppo and set their sights on the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa province.

International divisions over Syria surfaced anew at a Munich conference where Russia rejected French charges that it was bombing civilians, just a day after world powers agreed on the "cessation of hostilities" due to begin in a week's time.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry reiterated accusations that Russia was hitting "legitimate opposition groups" and civilians with its bombing campaign in Syria and said Moscow must change its targets to respect the ceasefire deal.

The conflict, reshaped by Russia's intervention last September, has gone into an even higher gear since the United Nations sought to revive peace talks. These were suspended earlier this month in Geneva before they got off the ground.

Turkish forces shelled Kurdish YPG militia targets near the northern Syrian town of Azaz on Saturday, Turkey's Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said, demanding that the group withdraw from land it recently captured.

The United States urged both Turkey and the Syrian Kurds to step back and focus instead on tackling the "common threat" of Islamic State militants who control large parts of Syria.

The Syrian army looked poised to advance into the Islamic State-held province of Raqqa for the first time since 2014, apparently to pre-empt any move by Saudi Arabia to send ground forces into Syria to fight the jihadist insurgents.

A Syrian military source said the army captured positions at the provincial border between Hama and Raqqa in the last two days and intends to advance further.

"It is an indication of the direction of coming operations towards Raqqa. In general, the Raqqa front is open ... starting in the direction of the Tabqa area," the source said.

Tabqa is the location of an air base captured by Islamic State two years ago, and the source said the army had moved to within 35 km (20 miles) of the base.

The cessation of hostilities deal agreed by major powers falls short of a formal ceasefire, since it was not signed by the warring parties - the government and rebels seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad in a five-year war that has killed at least 250,000 people.

If its forces retake Aleppo and seal the Turkish border north of the city, Damascus would deal a crushing blow to the insurgents who were on the march until Russia intervened, shoring up Assad's rule and paving the way to the current reversal of rebel fortunes.

Russia has said it will keep bombing Islamic State and the al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front, which in many areas of western Syria fights government forces in close proximity to insurgents deemed moderates by Western states.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, asked at a security conference in Munich on Saturday to assess the chances of the cessation of hostilities deal succeeding, replied: "49 percent."

Asked the same question, his German counterpart Frank-Walter Steinmeier put the odds at 51 percent.

The complex, multi-sided civil war in Syria, raging since 2011, has drawn in most regional and global powers, caused the world's worst humanitarian emergency and attracted recruits to Islamist militancy from around the world.

Assad, backed on the ground by Iranian combatants and Lebanon's Hezbollah in addition to big power ally Russia, is showing no appetite for a negotiated ceasefire. He said this week that the government's goal was to recapture all of Syria, though he said this could take time.

The U.S. government said Assad was "deluded" if he thought there was a military solution to the conflict.

Syrian state television announced the army and allied militia had on Saturday captured the village of al-Tamura overlooking rebel terrain northwest of Aleppo.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported advances in the same area, adding that Russian jets had hit three rebel-held towns near the Turkish border.

Government offensives around Aleppo have sent tens of thousands of people fleeing towards the Turkish border.

ISLAMIC STATE TARGETED

Islamic State, driven by the goal of expanding its "caliphate" rather than reforming Syria - the original goal of the opposition when the conflict began as an unarmed street uprising in 2011 - is being targeted in separate campaigns by a U.S.-led alliance and Assad's government with Russian air support. Regional Kurdish forces supported by Washington are also fighting Islamic State in Raqqa province.

Gulf states that want Assad gone from power have said they would be willing to send in troops as part of any U.S.-led ground attack against Islamic State. U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Friday he expected Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to send commandos to help recapture Raqqa.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was reported as saying Saudi Arabia will send aircraft to Turkey's Incirlik air base to support the air campaign against Islamic State in Syria.

"Saudi Arabia is now sending planes to Turkey, to Incirlik. They came and carried out inspections at the base," Cavusoglu told the Yeni Safak newspaper, adding it was unclear how many planes would come and that the Saudis might also send soldiers.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on Saturday in Munich there was no need to scare anyone with a ground operation in Syria.

Two Syrian rebel commanders told Reuters on Friday insurgents had been sent "excellent quantities" of Grad rockets with a range of 20 km (12 miles) by foreign backers in recent days to help confront the Russian-backed offensive in Aleppo.

Foreign opponents of Assad including Saudi Arabia and Turkey have been supplying vetted rebel groups with weapons via a Turkey-based operations centre.

Some of these groups have received military training overseen by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The vetted groups have been a regular target of the Russian air strikes.

Syria army warns civilians to leave Qusayr: military

Syria's army has warned citizens to evacuate the town of Qusayr ahead of an attack, a military source said on Friday, but an activist denied that and said there was no safe route out.

"Leaflets were dropped over Qusayr asking civilians to leave the city, with a map of a safe route by which to evacuate, because the attack against the city is coming soon if the rebels do not surrender," the source told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Activist Hadi al-Abdullah, who spoke to AFP over the Internet, denied the claim

"I am in the town of Qusayr, and this morning I visited two villages nearby, and I can assure you no leaflets were dropped anywhere near here," he said.

"What is more worrying than that is that there is no safe exit for civilians. All of us here in Qusayr have been condemned by the regime to a slow death," added Abdullah, a spokesman for the Syrian Revolution General Commission, a network of anti-regime activists.

"Every time civilians try to leave the town, they are shot or shelled at the town's edges by tanks or snipers. We are trapped civilians, activists and fighters together."

Troops backed by fighters from the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah have advanced throughout the area around Qusayr, which fell to the rebels more than a year ago.

Activists said Qusayr is surrounded by government forces on three sides, and that approximately 25,000 residents are believed to still be in the city.

The area has been a strategic boon to the rebels, who used it as a base from which to block the main road from Damascus to the coast, impeding military movement and supply chains.

It is also important because of its proximity to Lebanon.

The regime has made recapturing it a key objective. President Bashar al-Assad reportedly said last month that fighting in the area was the "main battle" his troops were waging.

Activists say regime forces there are backed by fighters from Hezbollah, as well as members of the National Defence Force, a pro-regime militia.

Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog said at least 72 people were killed throughout the country in violence on Thursday, including 33 rebels, 21 civilians and 18 soldiers.

Symptoms of chemical gas occur in some Syrian soldier

A Syrian pro-government newspaper reported Sunday that many soldiers battling rebels in a restive neighborhood of the capital Damascus have shown symptoms of exposure to chemical gas.

Citing a "well-informed" medical source, al-Watan said that many soldiers were sent earlier this week to the Hamish military hospital in Damascus, showing symptoms of inhaling chemical gas after the rebels fired a bombshell at the troops in the Brzeh neighborhood of the capital.

It said the symptoms include suffocation and nausea, as well as the trickling of a kind of white liquid from the victims' noses and mouths.

Stressing no official comments have been made about the incident, the paper said that the competent authorities started an investigation into the type of the gas.

Talks about Syria's chemical weapons have flared up recently as the White House stated that the Syrian troops may have used chemical weapons, mostly agent sarin, in its fight against the rebels.

The Syrian government has dismissed such claims and accused Washington and its western allies of stirring accusations against Syria in order to set the stage of a possible repetition of the Iraqi scenario.

Watan commented that the United States was attempting to pressure the Syrian administration after sweeping victories and advancement of the Syrian army against the rebels on several fronts, most importantly in the outskirts of Damascus.

Last December, Syria warned that rebels could use chemical weapons in their fight against President Bashar al-Assad's forces, but insisted the government will never unleash such arms on its own people.

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.