Anti-Assad forces take battle to Damascus

Syria’s military deployed armoured vehicles near central Damascus on Monday as troops battled rebels around the capital in what activists said could be a turning point in the 16-month uprising.

Russia, meanwhile, slammed as “blackmail” Western pressure to push for a UN Security Council resolution against Syria’s regime, and said it would be “unrealistic” for its ally President Bashar al-Assad to quit.

“Al-Midan and Tadamon are out of the army’s control,” said Ahmed al-Khatib, spokesman for the Free Syrian Army’s (FSA) military council in Damascus.

“The army has no presence inside either of these neighbourhoods any more, though they are shelling from the outside, and clashes on the edges of the neighbourhoods continue.”

As battles raged around Damascus for a second straight day, troops deployed armoured vehicles near the historic neighbourhood of Al-Midan.

“When there is fighting in the capital for several hours, even days, and troops are unable to control the situation, that proves the regime’s weakness,” Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP.

Online videos showed street battles in the capital, with fighters firing off rocket-propelled grenades from behind sandbags.

An activist on the ground, identifying himself as Abu Musab, said the army was trying to overrun Al-Midan and called the fighting a “turning point” in the revolt against Assad’s autocratic regime.

Activists said the army and FSA rebels had also been locked in fierce clashes since Sunday in the southern Damascus neighbourhood of Tadamon, Kfar Sousa in the west and Jobar in the east.

The Observatory said at least seven people were killed, all but one of them civilians, in the Midan, Tadamun and Aishe districts, in the heaviest clashes in the capital since the March 2011 start of the uprising.

The authorities vowed on Monday they would not surrender the capital. “You will never get Damascus,” read the headline in Al-Watan newspaper, which is close to the regime.