Assad forces take Aleppo village, reopening supply line

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces seized a village southeast of the city of Aleppo on Friday, reopening a supply line to the country's biggest city where they have been battling rebels for eight months, a monitoring group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the capture of Tel Shghaib marked the last step to creating a land supply route north into Aleppo from Hama province, crucial for Assad's forces who have lost control of part of the main north-south highway.

Rebels say they hold most of the city itself and nearly all the rural hinterland. But they have been unable to achieve a decisive victory and complain that they are outgunned and vulnerable to Assad's air force, artillery and ballistic missiles, which killed dozens of people in Aleppo last week.

The United States pledged direct but non-lethal aid to the rebels at a meeting in Rome on Thursday, disappointing Assad's opponents who had hoped for more tangible military support to tip the balance of forces on the ground.

Activists reported another day of fierce fighting around Aleppo, including the military airport at Nairab, three miles north of Tel Shghaib which Assad's forces retook.

"It's a significant gain for the regime," the British-based Observatory's director Rami Abdelrahman said of the army's push north, which reversed many rebel advances when they moved south into Hama from Aleppo province at the end of last year.

Further east, on the Iraqi frontier, government troops also managed to wrest back control of the Yarubiyah border crossing after insurgents seized it 24 hours earlier, he said.

SYRIA COULD FALL APART

The revolt against Assad, which erupted in March 2011 with mainly peaceful protests, has escalated into civil war between mainly Sunni Muslim forces and troops and militias loyal to Assad, from the minority Alawite community whose faith derives from Shi'ite Islam.

The United Nations says 70,000 people have been killed, nearly a million have fled the country and millions more have been displaced or need aid.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday that Syria, a major Arab state on the fault lines of broader Middle East conflict, would fall apart if the government and rebels keep fighting instead of seeking a negotiated peace.

"This is a very small window of opportunity which we strongly support and encourage them to use that. The opportunity may close soon," Ban said in Geneva.

The government and opposition have both edged away in recent weeks from their previous rejection of dialogue. Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said on Monday the government would even talk to armed rebels and opposition coalition leader Moaz Alkhatib has said he is ready to meet Assad's representatives.

But Syrian officials say any serious talks must be on Syrian soil under state control, and have shown no readiness to discuss Assad's departure - the central demand of the opposition. For rebel fighters, who do not answer to exiled civilian opposition leaders, Assad's exit is a precondition for any negotiations.

"I continue to urge the Syrian parties to find their way to the negotiating table. The horrors of the last months and years prove beyond doubt: the military solution in Syria is leading to the dissolution of Syria," Ban said.

He also called on the U.N. Security Council, paralyzed by a standoff between the United States and European allies on one side, pushing for U.N. action against Assad, and Russia and China, who have backed Assad, to unite and address the crisis.

Moscow criticized Thursday's meeting in Rome of largely anti-Assad Western and Arab states for taking positions and steps which "directly encourage extremists" to topple the government by force.

But the Kremlin also said presidents Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama had told their foreign ministers to keep in close touch and seek new initiatives to end Syria's civil war.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Thursday Washington would provide non-lethal aid including medical supplies and food to rebel fighters, as well as $60 million to help the civilian opposition provide services including security, education and sanitation.

The European Union said it had amended sanctions on Syria to allow the supply of armored vehicles, non-lethal military equipment and technical aid.

The steps still fell well short of what rebels are looking for - more arms, and prompted the opposition to postpone a Saturday meeting where they had been due to choose a prime minister to head the administration of rebel-held territory.

Alkhatib said he was tired of hearing Western concerns over the growing role of Islamists in the Syrian rebel ranks - one of the main obstacles to greater military support, saying it paled into insignificance alongside the prolonged civilian suffering.

"Many sides...focus (more) on the length of the rebel fighter's beard than they do on the blood of the children being killed," he said, standing next to Kerry after their meeting.

(Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Alissa de Carbonnel in Moscow; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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Syrian army clashes with rebels around Aleppo

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian warplanes carried out airstrikes on rebels trying to storm a police academy outside Aleppo on Wednesday, activists said, while jihadi fighters battled government troops along a key supply road leading to the southeastern part of the city, activists said.

The latest fighting came as the new U.S. secretary of state said Washington is looking for more concrete ways to help the rebels in their fight to oust President Bashar Assad.

Aleppo, Syria's largest city and former commercial capital, became a key front in the country's civil war after rebels launched an offensive there in July 2012. In months of bloody street fighting, opposition fighters have slowly expanded the turf under their control, although the combat has left much of the city in ruins.

The police academy has recently emerged as a new front in the fight for the city, which is considered a major prize in the conflict. Activists say the government has turned the facility into a military base, using it to shell opposition areas in the countryside as well as rebel-held neighborhoods inside the city.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said clashes raged Wednesday around the complex.

"The rebels are still trying to storm the school, but they can't because the regime is carrying out airstrikes and bombarding rebel forces," Observatory director Rami Abdul-Rahman said.

He said at least six rebels were killed Wednesday, bringing the three-day death toll to 37 opposition fighters and more than 50 regime troops.

Another key front in the battle for control of Aleppo is the city's international airport. Rebels have been trying for months to seize the facility, and have made headway in recent weeks, overrunning checkpoints and capturing a military base charged with protecting the airport.

The government is desperate to hold onto the airport, which it has used in the past to fly in supplies to its troops bogged down in the city. However, the fighting has forced the government to close the airport to flights and try to send supplies and reinforcements overland.

Most of those reinforcements, including dozens of vehicles and thousands of troops, are now stuck in the city of Safira, southeast of Aleppo, according to Abdul-Rahman. Fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamic extremist rebel group that the U.S. has designated a terrorist organization, have cut the road leading from Safira to the airport, and for weeks have battled troops along the road, preventing them from pushing north to the city to link up with government troops there.

The Observatory reported fierce clashes north of Safira on Wednesday, with both sides shelling each other with mortars and artillery.

The rebels have notched a number of strategic victories in recent weeks that appear to mark a shift in momentum in the nearly 2-year-old conflict, which the U.N. says has killed some 70,000 people. Already in control of much of the countryside in the northeast, the rebels have captured the nation's largest hydroelectric dam, a major oil field and two army bases.

They have also been peppering the center of Damascus with mortar shells as part of their effort to bring the fighting from the capital's rebel-held suburbs into the center of the city. On Wednesday, the Observatory said several mortar shells exploded near the military judiciary and the literature department of Damascus University.

Part of the rebel strategy appears to be to try to shatter the sense of normal life that Assad's regime has desperately tried to maintain in the capital, which has been insulated from much of the violence ravaging the rest of the country.

In Paris, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Washington is looking for more tangible ways to support Syria's rebels and bolster the Western-backed political opposition that would "accelerate the political transition that the Syrian people want and deserve."

So far, the U.S. has largely limited its assistance to funding for communications and other logistical equipment. A decision on whether to vastly increase the size and scope of aid — including pre-packaged meals and medical supplies — is expected by Thursday when Kerry will attend an international conference on Syria in Rome, officials in the U.S. and Europe said.

The Obama administration has not sent military equipment to the rebels, in part out of fears it could fall into the hands of Islamic militants who could use it for terrorist attacks.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the shift in strategy has not yet been finalized and still needs to be coordinated with European nations.

The civil war has forced hundreds of thousands of Syrians to flee their homes and seek shelter elsewhere inside the country or abroad.

Anmar Hmoud, a government spokesman for Syrian refugee affairs, said Wednesday new surge has seen around 3,000 refugees a day escaping across the border into the kingdom as fighting intensifies in southern Syria. The influx has pushed the total number in Jordan to nearly 420,000.

The U.N. says there are nearly 925,000 displaced Syrians scattered throughout the region.

Syria's state news agency said the Interior Ministry on Wednesday extended the validity of passports from six to 10 years, starting from January 2013. Syrians outside the country holding expired passports will be able to renew their documents for two years, SANA said.

The move appeared to meet a demand of Syria's exiled opposition leaders, who have pressed the government to renew passports of the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who have sought refuge abroad and now find their papers no longer valid, potentially trapping them outside the country.

The opposition is certain to monitor whether the order is indeed implemented at the embassy level, or whether it remains on paper only.

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Associated Press writers Dale Gavlak in Amman, Jordan, and Matthew Lee in Paris contributed.

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Syrian forces clash with rebels around Aleppo

BEIRUT (AP) — Anti-regime activists say Syrian rebels are clashing with government forces on two sides of the northern city of Aleppo as well as near its historic mosque.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says at least six rebels were killed in fighting Wednesday near a police academy west of the city and clashes also raged on a key supply road leading to the southeast part of the city.

The Observatory also says rebel and regime forces controlled different parts of the 12th century Umayyad Mosque in Aleppo's walled city.

Syria's largest city, Aleppo, has been a key battleground in the civil war since rebels entered the city in July 2012.

The U.N. says more than 70,000 people have been killed since Syria's civil war started in March 2011.

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Syria rebels fight for police academy near Aleppo

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian activists say rebel fighters have launched a fresh offensive on a government complex near the embattled northern city of Aleppo.

The director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdul-Rahman, says the complex includes a police academy and several smaller army outposts in charge of protecting it west of the city.

Rebels have been trying to storm the strategic installation for months. They were shelling the facility with tanks on Sunday, but remain outgunned by the regime which has responded with airstrikes, Abdul-Rahman said.

The rebels control large swaths of land outside Aleppo and whole neighborhoods inside the city, which has been a major battlefield in civil war since July.

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Rockets hit Aleppo, killing at least 29: monitor

BEIRUT (Reuters) - Rockets struck eastern districts of Aleppo, Syria's biggest city, on Friday, killing at least 29 people and trapping a family of 10 in the ruins of their home, activists in the city said.

"There are families buried under the rubble," said an activist called Baraa al-Youssef, speaking by Skype after visiting the scene in his Ard al-Hamra neighborhood.

"Nothing can describe it, it's a horrible sight."

Video footage posted by several activists showed a burning building and people carrying the wounded to cars to be ferried to hospital. It was hard to gauge the scale of the damage in the night-time footage but rubble was clearly visible on the ground.

Rami Abdulrahman of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three explosions shook Aleppo and reported at least 29 people had been killed. Another 150 were wounded, he said, and the final death toll was likely to be higher.

Youssef said 30 houses were destroyed by a single rocket.

On Tuesday activists said at least 20 people were killed when a large missile of the same type as Russian-made Scuds hit the rebel-held district of Jabal Badro.

(Reporting by Mariam Karouny and Dominic Evans; Editing by Stephen Powell)

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