Syrian jets bomb rebel-held positions outside Damascus

DAMASCUS Syrian military jets attacked suspected rebel positions in the north Tuesday. Human rights activists say dozens have been killed or wounded.

CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer said heavy shelling could be heard of the suburbs of Damascus - semi-rural neighborhoods a couple of miles outside the capital - where armed opposition fighters are in control.

It is just one of many fronts in a widening and chaotic war. With fears that the civil war may spill over the border, Turkey is now asking NATO for Patriot missiles to defend its territory.

The armed opposition fighters have staged hit-and-run attacks across the country. In the past few days they've seized five military bases.

Their own video, which is impossible to verify independently, shows them taking away crates of heavy weapons, which should improve their advantage on the battlefield.

But they are not holding these positions because they are being hit hard by the Syrian air force using air-launched missiles.

Palmer reports that, in fact, those warplanes are being heard in the air overhead, and activists say there's been fighting inside the city itself and on the airport road.

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President Bashar Assad's regime has been launching intense air raids on rebels in recent months, mostly in Idlib, the nearby province of Aleppo, Deir el-Zour to the east and suburbs of the capital Damascus.

The most recent air raids have killed hundreds of people, including eight children on Sunday in the village of Deir al-Asafir near the capital Damascus.

A Syrian child stands by tents at a refugee camp in Qah, near the northwest Syrian city of Idlib, November 24, 2012.

/ FRANCISCO LEONG/AFP/Getty Images

Two activist groups -- the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees -- say Syrian warplanes bombed an olive press factory west of the city of Idlib on Tuesday, in the country's north, killing and wounding dozens, including farmers who were waiting to convert their olives to oil, activists said.

The LCC says at least 20 people were killed and many others wounded in the raid, while the Observatory said "tens were killed or wounded."

Fadi al-Yassin, an activist based in Idlib, told The Associated Press by telephone that dozens of people had gathered to have their olives pressed when the warplanes struck, causing a large number of casualties.

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[judymar14]

It is sad so many are being killed for nothing. They will end up with another despot, anyway. One only has to look at the riots in Egypt. The people think they want freedom from being ruled by dictators, but they know nothing else.