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Syrian Forces Advance in Homs, Reports Say Syrian Forces Strike Rebels in Wide-Ranging Assaults
(about 5 hours later)
BEIRUT, Lebanon — As President Bashar al-Assad of Syria sought to convey the impression of a leader in control after consecutive days of suspected insurgent bombings in his power base, the capital, Damascus, his forces were reported on Thursday to have started a sustained push farther north to crush resistance in the city of Homs. BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian forces carried out what antigovernment activists described as wide-ranging assaults against insurgent enclaves on Thursday, seeking to snap a stalemate in the central city of Homs, attacking rebels ensconced in a seaport near Russia’s naval station and destroying a historic bridge in the contested western city of Deir al-Zour.
Fighting was also reported for the first time in months near the coastal city of Baniyas. The new fighting coincided with what might have been the first armed clash between Syrian insurgent fighters and Turkish border guards, resulting in at least one Turkish death. The circumstances behind the clash, at the Akcakale crossing in Turkey’s Sanliurfa district, were not immediately clear. Turkey, which shares a 550-mile border with Syria, has officially sided with the Syrian opposition in the two-year-old conflict and is home to at least 300,000 Syrian refugees.
A day after Mr. Assad made a rare public appearance on Wednesday, visiting workers at an electric station, opposition activists said the government campaign seemed designed to eject rebel fighters from Homs, part of a series of fierce offensives to retake territory controlled by rebels in Homs and Damascus. The Syrian government attacks on rebel positions, some of which have been held for many months, came one day after President Bashar al-Assad made a rare public appearance in the capital, Damascus, apparently seeking to counter the impression that he had been cowed into hiding by a consecutive rampage of deadly bombings in the most heavily protected central part of the city, which his forces control and which remains his center of power.
The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is based in Britain and draws its information from activists in Syria, said loyalist forces on Thursday had regained control of the strategically placed Wadi Sayeh district in the center of Homs. Opposition activists said the military campaign on Thursday seemed partly designed to eject rebel fighters from Homs, Syria’s third-largest city and long a hotbed of the insurgency, which has defied multiple attempts by Mr. Assad’s forces to crush the resistance there. Rebel fighters have controlled parts of Homs for more than a year and the fighting there has been among the most intense in the conflict, which by United Nations estimates has left more than 70,000 people dead.
The official SANA news agency on Thursday listed several areas farther north in the Aleppo and Idlib areas where it said government forces had moved against insurgents, but it did not refer directly to a major operation under way in Homs, other than to say that loyalists “destroyed an explosive devices warehouse and killed and injured” an unspecified number of rebels there. The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is based in Britain and draws information from activists in Syria, said loyalist forces had regained control of the strategically placed Wadi Sayeh district in the center of Homs.
The insurgents have controlled parts of Homs, Syria’s third biggest city, for more than a year. The fighting there has ranked among the bloodiest since the conflict began about two years ago. The United Nations estimates that more than 70,000 people have been killed. The official SANA news agency on Thursday listed several areas farther north of Homs, around Aleppo and Idlib, where it said government forces had moved against insurgents, but it did not refer directly to a major operation under way in Homs, other than to say that loyalists “destroyed an explosive devices warehouse and killed and injured” an unspecified number of rebels there.
The reported advance in the center of the city came after days of clashes on the outskirts of Damascus and three successive days of explosions in some of the capital’s best-guarded neighborhoods. Opposition activists also reported intense fighting in a neighborhood of the port of Baniyas, on the Mediterranean coast, for the first time since government troops stormed southern areas of the city in May 2011. Opposition activists also reported intense fighting in the Ras Rifa neighborhood of the port of Baniyas, on the Mediterranean coast north of the Tartus naval refueling station, Russia’s last remaining military outpost in the Middle East and an important symbol of the resilient Russian support for Mr. Assad’s government.
The fighting there has been depicted as overwhelmingly sectarian, directed at Syria’s majority Sunni Muslims by representatives of the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam that has provided the bedrock of the Assad dynasty’s power base for four decades. The Syrian Observatory said that government forces shelled Ras Rifa, with smoke seen billowing from the area, and that gunfire could be heard throughout the city as well in the nearby village of Bayda. It was the first time the government side had attacked the Baniyas area since troops stormed parts of the city in May 2011.
According to the Syrian Observatory, revolt in the city dates to the same day in March 2011 that protests first broke out in the southern city of Dara’a. Three weeks later, in April 2011, pro-government militias launched “the first sectarian attack” on a Sunni mosque in the south of the city, the Syrian Observatory said. The fighting there has been depicted as overwhelmingly sectarian, directed at Syria’s majority Sunni Muslims by representatives of the Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam that has provided the bedrock of the Assad family’s power base in Syria for four decades.
Baniyas lies just north of Tartus, where Russia maintains a small naval base. According to the Syrian Observatory, antigovernment sentiment in Baniyas dates to the same day in March 2011 that protests first broke out in the southern city of Dara’a. Three weeks later, in April 2011, pro-government militias launched the first sectarian attack on a Sunni mosque in the south of the city, the Syrian Observatory said.
On Wednesday, Syrian state television and the SANA news agency said that Mr. Assad had mingled with workers at the Umayyad Electrical Station and had congratulated them on the occasion of international Labor Day. Photographs depicted Mr. Assad dressed in a dark suit as workers showed him the station. The Local Coordination Committees, an anti-Assad network of activists inside Syria, reported that a number of houses were set afire in Baniyas. It also reported, without attribution, mass arrests and summary executions by pro-government forces in Bayda, with “dozens of martyrs, including women by gunfire, knives and then burning the dead.” It was impossible to corroborate the accounts.
“They want us to be afraid,” Mr. Assad said in one television clip. “Well, we won’t be afraid.” As he spoke, loyalists in the background chanted, “May God protect you.” In Deir al-Zour, a western Syrian city that has been a recurrent battleground in the conflict, the Syrian Observatory reported that government forces shelled rebel positions and destroyed part of the Muaalak Bridge over the Euphrates River. The suspension bridge, built in the 1920s during French occupation, is a replica of a bridge in southern France and was regarded as an important piece of Syrian history. Activist videos uploaded on YouTube showed the remnants of the bridge, its pillars seemingly intact but the suspension gone.
Mr. Assad is not often seen outside the heavily guarded presidential palace these days. His appearance followed an assassination attempt in the form of a car bombing on Monday aimed at his prime minister and a bombing on Tuesday that killed at least 13 people outside a former Interior Ministry building. Turkish-Syrian relations have become especially estranged over the Syrian conflict, punctuated by occasional Syrian artillery shelling or warplane sorties on the Syrian side of the border and Turkish warnings of military reprisals. But there had never been an armed clash between Turkish border guards and nongovernment Syrian fighters until Thursday.
His visit to the power station coincided with a new set of explosions in central Damascus. The Syrian Observatory said that rockets had hit the neighborhood of Bab Mesalla, an area of shops and a transportation hub, and that a bomb had detonated near the police headquarters on nearby Khalid bin Walid Street, a site of previous bomb attacks. Officials in Turkey said they were investigating the cause of the clash at Akcakale, with some calling it an irresponsible display of recklessness by a few members of the Free Syrian Army, the main group of the Syrian armed resistance, who had wanted to cross into Turkey and had refused to show passports or submit to body searches.
SANA later confirmed the attacks, saying at least two people had been killed and 28 had been wounded. It attributed the attacks to terrorists, the Assad government’s blanket description for armed opponents. Abdulhakim Ayhan, the mayor of Akcakale, said in a telephone interview, “Members of the Free Syrian Army and a large Syrian crowd first attacked our officials with bars and stones before random gunshots were heard.”
The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, the main anti-Assad political organization, said in a statement on Wednesday that it condemned such indiscriminate attacks and that the “the bombing of civilian areas is unacceptable, regardless of the circumstances.” But the organization also implied that Mr. Assad’s government had ordered the attacks to smear its enemies, asserting that “such bombings have become a trademark of the regime.” Other Turkish officials said the gunmen might have been smugglers. Attempts to reach representatives of the Free Syrian Army for comment were not immediately successful.
Evidence that Mr. Assad has used some of his military’s stockpile of chemical munitions in the conflict has raised the prospect of an American military intervention in the conflict because President Obama has called the use of such weapons a “red line.” While Mr. Obama has said that the evidence is incomplete and that more verifiable facts are required, he is considering providing lethal military aid to the insurgency, administration officials in Washington said on Tuesday. Mayor Ayhan said three police officers, two military employees and three Turkish civilians were wounded. One of the police officers died at a hospital, Turkish media reported.
Britain, France and Israel have accused the Syrian authorities of using chemical munitions in the civil war, and a forensics panel authorized by the United Nations has been waiting to enter Syria to conduct tests. The Syrian government has accused insurgents of deploying chemical weapons outside Aleppo on March 19, but it has blocked the United Nations panel because of a dispute about the scope of its inquiry.

Hania Mourtada reported from Beirut, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Hwaida Saad contributed reporting from Beirut, Alan Cowell from Paris and Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul.

On Wednesday, officials in Turkey said they were testing blood samples taken from Syrians who had been transported over the border in recent days suffering breathing difficulties, to determine whether chemical weapons had been used on them. Reuters quoted the mayor of Reyhanli, a Turkish town where the Syrians were hospitalized, next to the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, as saying, “There is a possibility that the weapons were used, and we have to act with caution in case.” There was no further word on the condition of the hospitalized Syrians, who were all from northern Syria, Reuters said.
SANA, the official news agency, sought to counter the accusation that Syrian forces used chemical weapons, accusing insurgents of throwing an “unknown powder” in the faces of civilians in the northern Idlib area, provoking respiratory problems and shivering. The rebels “then took the injured citizens to Turkish hospitals to accuse the Syrian armed forces of using chemical weapons,” SANA said.

Hwaida Saad reported from Beirut, Rick Gladstone from New York, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Hania Mourtada contributed reporting from Beirut.