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Clashes Erupt in Damascus as Prospects for Syrian Talks Dim
Fighting Expands in Damascus
(about 7 hours later)
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian insurgents attacked military checkpoints and other targets in parts of central Damascus on Wednesday, antigovernment activist groups reported, shattering a lull in the fighting as prospects for any talks between the antagonists appeared to dim.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Clashes between Syrian insurgents and loyalist troops in Damascus raged for a second day on Thursday and spread to the suburbs and other areas, activist groups reported. They said fighting also erupted in the large Palestinian refugee neighborhood of Yarmouk on the capital’s southern outskirts, which has been drawn into the civil war at least twice in the past few months.
In a day of conflicting reports about the severity of the clashes, residents spoke of heavy bombardments of rebel positions by government tank cannons, the thud of mortar fire, roads closed and snipers on rooftops as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad deployed in strength, particularly to protect neighborhoods where wealthy Syrians and diplomats live. Some said the fighting was the most intense in the city since July.
The expanded mayhem, described as some of the worst fighting to afflict Damascus in months, offered further indication that any hope for a diplomatic resolution to the nearly two-year-old conflict has all but evaporated. Those hopes were resurrected last week when the leader of Syria’s largest political opposition group suggested holding talks with President Bashar al-Assad’s government.
A 50-year-old resident of the upscale Abu Roumana district, who identified himself as Abu Mohammad, said he could hear the sound of fighting nearby. “It is very close and I feel it is next to my house,” he said. If government were unable to contain rebels in heavily guarded neighborhoods like his, he said, “what about other districts and suburbs?”
Syria’s official news agency, SANA, characterized the clashes on Thursday as terrorist assaults. It said that government forces in at least a dozen suburbs had vanquished or killed many attackers, including some who were disguised as women and others who were caught with antiaircraft weapons. But the scope of the clashes described in the SANA report seemed to corroborate that the fighting had intensified close to the center of government power in Syria, forcing the military to go back into areas it had repeatedly sought to secure.
The outbreak came a week after the opposition coalition’s top political leader first proposed the surprise idea of a dialogue with Mr. Assad’s government aimed at ending the civil war. Frustrated by the government’s failure to respond definitively, the opposition leader, Sheik Ahmad Moaz al-Khatib, gave it a Sunday deadline.
Among the affected suburbs, for example, was Daraya, famous as an early hotbed of protest against the government and the site of one of the war’s deadliest episodes back in August, when the Syrian military stormed Daraya in what it called a “cleansing” operation that left hundreds dead.
Some antigovernment activists described the resumption of fighting, which had lapsed for the past few weeks, as part of a renewed effort by rebels to seize control of central Damascus, the Syrian capital, although that depiction seemed highly exaggerated. Witness accounts said many people were going about their business, while others noted that previous rebel claims of territorial gains in Damascus had almost always turned out to be embellished or unfounded.
The Local Coordination Committees, an anti-Assad network inside Syria, reported what it described as fierce clashes between government forces and fighters of the Free Syrian Army at an entrance to Yarmouk, a longtime Palestinian refugee encampment south of Damascus that is politically delicate. Both Mr. Assad and his opponents have sought the allegiance of the tens of thousands of Palestinians in Syria who were displaced decades ago by the Arab-Israeli conflict. Yarmouk was convulsed by fighting in December, when insurgents temporarily seized control, and again in early January.
A 35-year-old rebel fighter who identified himself only as Tarqi said overcast weather had sheltered the insurgents from aerial bombardment. “We got orders today to open all fronts in and around Damascus, to get into it from the northeast, east and south sides,” he said. The rebel strategy, he said, was to “fight the Assad forces on all sides and control more districts closer to the heart of Damascus.” Those claims could not be independently verified.
Anti-Assad activist groups also reported a major explosion near the city of Hama that killed at least 20 government defense workers on Wednesday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group with a network of contacts in Syria, said the victims, including 10 women, had been on a bus heading home from defense factories in the suburbs.
Representatives of the Military Council of Damascus, an insurgent group, said that at least 33 members of Mr. Assad’s security forces in Damascus had surrendered, while others had fled central Al Abasiyeen Square, and that other government forces had erected roadblocks on all access streets to the area to thwart the movement of rebel fighters.
Residents of central Damascus spoke of heavy bombardments of rebel positions by government self-propelled artillery, along with mortar fire, roadblocks and snipers on rooftops. They said that forces loyal to Mr. Assad had been deployed in strength, particularly to protect neighborhoods where wealthy Syrians and diplomats live. Some said the fighting was the most intense in the city since July.
Salam Mohammed, an activist in Damascus, described Al Abasiyeen Square as “on fire,” and a video clip uploaded on YouTube showed a thick column of black smoke spiraling over the area while the sound of shelling could be heard. A voice said the shelling had started a fire. The Local Coordination Committees, an anti-Assad activist network in Syria, reported gunfire in nearby streets.
A 50-year-old resident of the affluent Abu Roumana district, who identified himself as Abu Mohammad, said he could hear fighting nearby. “It is very close, and I feel it is next to my house,” he said. If the government cannot contain rebels in heavily guarded neighborhoods like his, he said, “what about other districts and suburbs?”
Firas al-Horani, a military council spokesman, said fighters of the Free Syrian Army, the main armed opposition group, were in control of the square. He also said, “The capital, Damascus, is in a state of paralysis at the moment, and clashes are in full force in the streets.”
The Syrian conflict has left at least 60,000 people dead, displaced about two million people inside the country and sent 700,000 fleeing to neighboring nations, the United Nations has said in dire warnings in recent weeks about the worsening crisis. Doctors Without Borders, the French medical aid organization, added to the concerns on Thursday with a report that the refugee crisis was especially severe in Lebanon, where 220,000 Syrians have fled. The organization said that many refugees there could not get health care or adequate shelter, and that they subsist in “farms, garages, unfinished buildings and old schools.”
It was impossible to confirm Mr. Horani’s assertions or the extent of the fighting because of Syrian government restrictions on foreign news organizations. But Syria’s state-run news media said insurgent claims of combat success in Damascus were false. “Those are miserable attempts to raise the morale of terrorists who are fleeing our valiant armed forces,” said SANA, the official news agency.
Hania
Mourtada reported from Beirut, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by an employee of The New York Times from Damascus, Syria; Hwaida Saad from Beirut; Hala Droubi from Dubai, United Arab Emirates; and Alan Cowell from Paris.
Deadly violence was also reported in Palmyra, a town in Homs Province that is the site of a notorious prison where Mr. Assad’s father, Hafez al-Assad, ordered the summary execution of about 1,000 prisoners during an uprising against his family’s grip on power in the 1980s.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group based in Britain with a network of contacts inside Syria, said two booby-trapped cars exploded near the military intelligence and state security branches, killing at least 12 members of the security forces and wounding more than 20. The observatory said government forces were deployed throughout Palmyra afterward, engaging in gun battles with insurgents that left at least eight civilians wounded in the cross-fire.
SANA also reported an attack but said it was caused by two suicide bombers in a residential part of the town, killing an unspecified number of civilians.
The new mayhem came as discord appeared to grow within the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, the umbrella anti-Assad group, over a proposal made on Jan. 30 by Sheik Khatib, its leader, to engage in talks with Mr. Assad’s government aimed at ending the nearly two-year-old conflict, which has left more than 60,000 people dead.
Although Sheik Khatib’s proposal included a number of conditions, including the release of prisoners, it broke a longstanding principle that Mr. Assad must relinquish power before any talks can begin.
Many of Sheik Khatib’s colleagues grudgingly agreed to go along with the proposal after it had been made, but critical voices have been rising, especially among the coalition’s more militant elements, who have never trusted Mr. Assad and have concluded that any negotiation is a waste of time.
In what appeared to be an acknowledgment of the discord, Sheik Khatib said in an interview with the BBC’s Arabic service from his headquarters in Cairo on Wednesday that his own patience with the Syrian government was running out. Sheik Khatib gave the government until Sunday to release prisoners, especially women, or “the initiative will be broken.”
In a new video uploaded on YouTube, a cleric from the Nusra Front, an anti-Assad Islamist militant group that the Obama administration has classified as a terrorist organization, said that brute force against Mr. Assad and his disciples was the only solution.
“We will cut their heads, we swear to kill them all, and they will see our worst war,” said the cleric, who spoke in Libyan-accented Arabic at a mosque in the contested northern city of Aleppo, holding a sword in his right hand. “No for the negotiations, no for the talks, no retreat in a jihad for God’s sake.”
Hania Mourtada reported from Beirut, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Reporting was contributed by an employee of The New York Times from Damascus, Hwaida Saad from Beirut; Hala Droubi from Dubai, United Arab Emirates; and Karam Shoumali from Antakya, Turkey.
