Assad urges on army as battle for Aleppo intensifies with use of warplanes

Syrian President Bashar Assad, left, meets Fahd Jassem al-Freij, Syria's new Defense Minister, in Damascus, Syria, July 19, 2012. / File,AP Photo/SANA

(AP) BEIRUT - Syrian President Bashar Assad urged his armed forces Wednesday to step up the fight against rebels as the U.N. reported a significant escalation in the civil war with the military using warplanes to fire on opposition fighters in the battle for Aleppo.

Sausan Ghosheh, the spokeswoman for the U.N. mission in Syria, said that international observers had witnessed warplanes firing in Syria's largest city, where intense fighting has been raging for 12 days. She said the situation in Aleppo was dire, with "heavy use of heavy weapons" including tanks, which the rebels now possess as well.

"Yesterday, for the first time, our observers saw firing from a fighter aircraft. We also now have confirmation that the opposition is in a position of having heavy weapons, including tanks," she said. "There is a shortage of food, fuel, water and gas."

Aleppo has been wracked by violence since rebels attempted to take it over and succeeded in holding several neighborhoods despite daily assaults by regime tanks, helicopters and warplanes.

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Assad pushed his armed forces to redouble their efforts in the fight in his speech, which was not televised but only appeared in the army's magazine.

"Today you are invited to increase your readiness and willingness for the armed forces to be the shield, wall and fortress of our nation," he said.

The regime has characterized the rebellion as the work of foreign terrorists, and Assad claimed "internal agents" are collaborating with them.

"Our battle is against a multi-faceted enemy with clear goals. This battle will determine the destiny of our people and the nation's past, present and future," he said.

Assad has not spoken in public since a bomb on July 18 killed four of his top security officials during a rebel assault on Damascus.

Syria's powerful military, which has largely held together over the course of the uprising, is vital to keeping Assad in power. The pace of defections has been rising recently, however. Neighboring Turkey reports that 28 generals have already crossed the border.

In recent weeks, the military has unleashed heavy weapons against the increasingly bold rebels who have brought the fight to the country's two largest cities. The military managed to drive the rebels out of the capital Damascus a week after their assault with fierce bombardments of neighborhoods followed by house-to-house searches.

Minor clashes with the rebels around Damascus continue, however, and in the early hours of the morning Wednesday residents of the Christian neighborhood of Bab Touma in Damascus' old city reported a half-hour gun battle.

[audemus]

It's funny how these guys who urge their armies on to victory never actually do any of the fighting themselves...

[Nikos_Retsos]

Bashar Assad is correct on his statement that "This battle will determine the destiny of our people and the nation's past, present and future" (Paragraph 8, this article). But he has been on the "wrong side of destiny" of the Syrian people for the 40 years of the Assad dynasty, and the Syrian people -awakened by the Arabs Springs elsewhere in the Arab world- are determined to change that repressive "destiny!"

Yes, Mr. Assad, this battle will determine "the destiny of the Syrian people," because "the present [fight]" is about wiping out the rule of the self-appointed Assad dynasty, and then giving Syrians "a future" based on the "people's will" through elections. Despotic rulers on inherited thrones (you), as scions of of military juntas leaders (your father Hafez), have been the targets of all Arab Springs, and you, too, are on the way to meet the fate of either Ben Ali, Hosni Mubarak, or Muammar Gaddafi.

The current battle in Syria, therefore, is the laundering the 40-years of the Assad family's rule, and when the machine cycle [battle] is over, Syria will be clean of the repressive Assad dynasty! The "if" is not in doubt anymore, and the "when" seems to be the only game played in Aleppo now! Nikos Retsos, retired professor, Chicago