Unrest shakes Aleppo as rebels claim US ceasefire plan ‘dead end’

BEIRUT // Heavy clashes and a regime barrel bomb attack shook the Syrian city of Aleppo on Thursday, a day after rebels tried to seize an intelligence headquarters in a forceful rejection of UN ceasefire efforts.

The fresh violence came during a visit to Aleppo by a delegation sent by UN envoy Staffan de Mistura, who is seeking to “freeze” fighting in the devastated northern city.

The attack on the air force intelligence offices killed at least 34 people – 20 members of regime security forces and 14 rebels. It was the worst unrest in Aleppo since the opposition rejected the peace plan on earlier this week.

Samir Nashar, a member of the opposition National Coalition who is in contact with groups who attacked the regime building, said the assault “sends a clear message to the regime and to de Mistura” that the rebels reject his initiative.

“De Mistura is at an impasse and is facing a dead end,” Mr Nashar said.

The attack was followed on Thursday by heavy clashes between Syrian regime forces and rebels near the intelligence offices on Aleppo’s western edge, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

A Syrian military source said the army had launched an attack “against [rebel] gunmen positions, killing and wounding many of them” in the area.

Regime forces also struck rebel-held territory in the east of the city, the Observatory said, killing at least 18 civilians in a single barrel bomb attack.

This followed rebel shelling on regime neighbourhoods on Wednesday that killed nine civilians, including three children and two women.

Fighting in Aleppo erupted in mid-2012, and control of the city – once Syria’s commercial hub – has since been divided between rebels on the eastern side and the regime in the west.

Mr de Mistura has made the plan for a temporary ceasefire in Aleppo the centrepiece of his efforts to bring any kind of halt to the conflict in Syria, where more than 220,000 people have been killed since it erupted in March 2011.

He held talks in Damascus on Saturday to try to finalise a deal and then sent the delegation to Aleppo to meet the opposition.

But Mr Nashar said rebels had no intention of holding talks with delegation members.

“De Mistura’s initiative does not address even the minimum of rebel demands,” Mr Nashar said.

The rebels have refused to consider the proposal unless it forms the basis for a “comprehensive solution” to the conflict through the departure of president Bashar Al Assad.

Mr Nashar said opposition forces are “suspicious” of the UN envoy’s intentions and see his efforts as “trying to find an opportunity for the regime to breathe in the north”.

Mr de Mistura has particularly angered opposition groups by describing Mr Assad as “part of the solution” to the Syrian conflict.

Speaking in Saudi Arabia on Thursday, US secretary of state John Kerry said military pressure may be needed to oust Mr Al Assad.

“He’s lost any semblance of legitimacy ... Ultimately a combination of diplomacy and pressure will be needed to bring about a political transition. Military pressure particularly may be necessary given president Assad’s reluctance to negotiate seriously,” Mr Kerry said.

Rebels have also demanded the regime cease barrel bomb attacks.

Rights groups have criticised the bombs – crude devices made of barrels packed with explosives and usually dropped from helicopters – as indiscriminate, citing the large number of civilians killed by them.

Mr Assad has denied the army uses the makeshift bombs.

Elsewhere in Syria, seven civilians were killed in a regime airstrike near a school in the northern province of Idlib, the Observatory said.

Syria’s conflict began as a popular uprising but evolved into a multi-front civil war that has divided the country into a patchwork of fiefdoms controlled by different factions, including the extremist ISIL group.

* Agence France-Presse