Assad gov't continues to block Internet in Syria

Night falls on a Syrian rebel-controlled area as damaged buildings are seen on Sa'ar street on Thursday, Nov. 29, 2012, after airstrikes targeted the area last week, killing dozens, in Aleppo, Syria. / AP Photo/Narciso Contreras

Last Updated 1:29 p.m. ET

MASNAA, Lebanon Lebanese security officials said 20 Lebanese gunmen who were fighting alongside rebels in Syria have been killed.

The security officials said Syrian forces ambushed the group Friday as it tried to enter the Syrian town of Tal Kalakh. Syrian state-run media also reported that Lebanese gunmen had been killed, but the SANA report said there 17, not 20, fighters.

Meanwhile on Friday, Syrian rebels battled regime troops south of Damascus, and Internet and most telephone lines were cut for a second day, but the government reopened the road to the capital's airport in a sign the fighting could be calming, activists said.

The general manager of the Syrian Civil Aviation Agency, Ghaidaa Abdul-Latif, said the airport was operating "as usual" on Friday. On Thursday, international flights were canceled because of the violence.

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President Bashar Assad's regime and opposition activists blamed each other for the communications blackout, which is the first to hit the whole country since Syria's 20-month-old uprising began.

Syrian authorities previously have cut Internet and telephones in areas ahead of military operations. On Friday, some land lines were working sporadically.

An Associated Press reporter in the capital said Damascus was largely quiet, although there were sounds of fighting in the suburbs.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the main road to Damascus' airport reopened early Friday afternoon. Intense clashes broke out after midnight in villages and towns near the facility but the area was calm by the late morning, the group said. It said rebels were able to destroy several army vehicles near the airport.

The Observatory, which has a network of activists around Syria, reported fighting in other southern neighborhoods of Damascus, including Qaboun and Hajar Aswad. The Observatory said it was able to contact its sources who used satellite telephones.

Activists say Assad's regime pulled the plug on the Internet on Thursday, perhaps in preparation for a major offensive. Cellphone service also went out in Damascus and parts of central Syria, they said. The government blamed rebel fighters for the outages.

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Thursday's violence appeared to be focused on southern suburbs near the airport, forcing the military to shut the road to the facility. The surrounding districts have been strongholds of rebel support since the uprising began.

Thursday's fighting wounded two Austrian soldiers assigned to the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force in the Golan Heights when their convoy came under fire on the way to the airport, Austria Press Agency said.

The two were transferred to Israel for treatment Friday and their condition is not life-threatening, said David Ratner, a spokesman for Rambam Hospital in Haifa. He said the two soldiers suffered gunshot wounds — one to the chest and the other to the hand.

With pressure building against the regime on several fronts and government forces on their heels in the battle for the northern commercial hub of Aleppo, rebels have recently begun pushing back into Damascus after largely being driven out of the capital following a July offensive. One Damascus resident reported seeing rebel forces near a suburb of the city previously deemed to be safe from fighting.

The Internet outage, confirmed by two U.S.-based companies that monitor online connectivity, is unprecedented in Syria's uprising against Assad, which activists say has killed more than 40,000 people since the revolt began in March 2011.

Regime forces have suffered a string of tactical defeats in recent weeks, losing air bases and other strategic facilities. The government may be trying to blunt additional rebel offensives by hampering communications.

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland on Thursday condemned what she called the regime's "assault" on Syrians' ability to communicate with each other and express themselves. She said the move spoke to a desperate attempt by Assad to cling to power.

Correspondent Margaret Brennan reports that the State Department confirmed that kits the U.S. has provided to the opposition can circumvent those communication outages.

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[sandiegopete]

The United States should stay as far away from Syria as possible. Once Assad is deposed the radical Islamists will take control just as they did in Egypt and an even more brutal regime will exist. It is unbelievable that certain U.S. officials support provideing arms to the radical Islamists who will just turn around and use them against us just as the Libyans and Egyptians have done. You cannot trust radical Islamists.

[joesapper]

No delete button but is there also no escape for those thugs that are the reasons why man is capable of becoming animals .

The gone daffy justice in Libya should be repeated in Syria to all the thugs that have slaughtered women & children .