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Syrian Regime Continues Aleppo Offensive |
30 July 2012The United Nations says about 200,000 civilians have fled fighting in Syria's most populous city of Aleppo and that many more remained trapped, as a government offensive against rebels continued.
Government forces say they have recaptured Aleppo's southwest district of Salaheddine.
Reuters reports that rebels still control large swathes of Aleppo -- a city of about 2.5 million people -- and that President Bashar al-Assad's regime is using helicopter gunships to strafe rebel positions there.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said during a surprise visit to Iran on July 29 that rebel forces "will definitely be defeated" in Aleppo.
Meanwhile, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has warned the Syrian regime that the assault on its own population in Aleppo would be "a nail in Assad's coffin."
Speaking to reporters aboard a military flight to Tunisia, Panetta called the Syrian government offensive in Aleppo "another tragic example of the kind of indiscriminate violence that the Assad regime has committed against its own people."
The past two weeks have seen Assad's forces struggle as never before to maintain control of the country after major rebel advances into Damascus and Aleppo and a July 18 explosion that killed four top security officials.
Government forces have since retaken the neighborhoods of Damascus from rebel fighters.
With reporting by Reuters, AP and AFP |
30 July 2012
RFERL.org
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