The Latest Casualty In Syria's Civil War: Aleppo's Historic Souk

Syria's civil war continues to rage on and the casualties continue rising. As the tally of those refugees displaced by the war grows to a record level in the 21st century, the body count continues rising as the tally from a Syrian military airstrike on a town near Syria's northern border was 21, including eight children. At the same time, among the latest casualties is Aleppo's historic souk, which was a UNESCO World Heritage Site and dates back to the 14th century.

Heavy shelling rocked Damascus and other towns today, just a day after the closing of the week-long United Nations General Assembly meeting, where world leaders spent countless hours calling for an end to the deadly Syrian crisis and Syria’s foreign minister accused members of trying to impose colonial policies on his country.

Anti-government activists reported shelling in Daraa, Idlib, and the Damascus suburb of Douma today, and at least 17 people were killed this morning as a result of the violence, according to the opposition's Local Coordination Committees of Syria. Fierce fighting in Aleppo, which began in the city's Souk al-Medina over the weekend and continued into yesterday, left the Old City, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, smoldering.

At the close of the General Assembly yesterday, no diplomatic resolution was reached on Syria, despite more than seven days of speeches where “Syria was discussed by one country after another,” reports the Associated Press.

Souks are markets that are at the heart of many cities throughout the Middle East. They are wonderous places to behold as merchants ply their wares in stalls and spices and herbs waft through the air as dry goods and foods are sold. The Aleppo souk was destroyed in the course of heavy fighting between rebel forces and Bashar al Assad's forces. Before it was destroyed, it was considered the world's largest covered souk, and fires destroyed more than 1,500 shops. Activists claim that Assad's forces used incendiary rounds in attacking rebel forces in and around the souk.

The UN General Assembly wrapped up business without taking any action on the situation.

Meanwhile, the authenticity of a video purporting to show rebels holding a kidnapped American journalist Austin Tice has been questioned. It appears that Assad's propagandists may have staged the video to discredit the rebel forces.

Joseph Holliday, a former United States Army intelligence officer who tracks Syrian rebel groups for the Institute for the Study of War in Washington, told The Post that it seemed strange that the armed men around Mr. Tice were wearing what appear to be salwar kameez, traditional clothing worn in Afghanistan, which looked very clean. “It’s like a caricature of a jihadi group,” he said. “My gut instinct is that regime security guys dressed up like a bunch of wahoos and dragged him around and released the video to scare the U.S. and others about the danger of Al Qaeda extremists in Syria. It would fit their narrative perfectly.”

The video came to light the same day that Syria’s foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, scolded other countries who “clearly induce and support terrorism in Syria with money, weapons and foreign fighters,” in an address to the United Nations General Assembly.

At the same time, reports indicate that Hizbullah forces are among those killed in Syria. Their identities were revealed by Lebanese security officials upon the return of their remains to Lebanon for burial. While it isn't clear which side they fought for, Hizbullah has been generally backing Assad's regime and could have been bolstering Assad's loyalist militias.

Another one of Syria's neighbors, Jordan, caught four people trying to enter Syria.

Jordan on Tuesday charged four men with illegally trying to cross into Syria after an exchange of gunfire with Jordanian border guards last week, a military prosecutor said.

The prosecutor said three of the men were in custody following their arrest along an isolated stretch of the northern frontier with Syria.

He said the fourth man escaped after the group had shot at a Jordanian border patrol, wounding one officer. The prosecutor spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss an ongoing investigation.

He said the men were all Jordanian and were armed with automatic rifles and ammunition, and had computers and mobile phones when they were arrested.

Syria has become a honey pot for jihadi groups and others seeking the experience of fighting in yet another conflict in the region.

War Crimes Abound As Syrian Civil War Drags On

It should come as no surprise that war crimes are an ongoing feature of the Syrian civil war. Whether it's the Syrian military operating at the behest of Bashar al-Assad bombarding civilian areas or his loyalist militias engaging in massacres, or rebel forces murdering captured government officials by throwing them off rooftops, war crimes are an ongoing concern and worry for Syrians and the human rights groups tracking such actions.

The only difference between the sides is the scope of the war crimes and human rights violations; the rebels have done it to a lesser degree than Assad's goon squads:

Syrian government forces and allied shabbiha militia have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and torture in what appears to be state-directed policy, UN human rights investigators said on Wednesday.

Syrian rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad have also committed war crimes but these "did not reach the gravity, frequency and scale" of those carried out by the army and security forces, they said.

"The commission found reasonable grounds to believe that government forces and the shabbiha had committed the crimes against humanity of murder and of torture, war crimes and gross violations of international human rights law and international humanitarian law, including unlawful killing, torture, arbitrary arrest and detention, sexual violence, indiscriminate attack, pillaging and destruction of property," said the 102-page report by the independent investigators led by Paulo Pinheiro.

Both government forces and armed insurgents had violated rights of children during the 17-month-old conflict, it said.

Airstrikes continue to take their toll on the Syrian people.

Meanwhile, the violence continues to spill over into Lebanon while Israel, Iraq, and Turkey are all warily watching the situation. The violence in Lebanon includes a series of abductions as retaliation for relatives being captured or killed inside Syria.

At the same time, the Pentagon is warning that Iran is training militias to fight in support of Assad inside Syria.

Sitting alongside Panetta at a Pentagon news conference Tuesday, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the militia, which is generally made up of Syrian Shiite forces, is being used to take the pressure off the Syrian regime forces.

“Any army would be taxed with that kind of pace,” Dempsey said. “They are having resupply problems, they are having morale problems, they are having the kind of wear and tear that would come of being in a fight for as long as they have.”

Dempsey also said that it appears Syrian rebels were able to shoot down a Syrian warplane but said he has seen no indication that they are armed with heavy weapons or surface-to-air missiles, at least not yet.

He says the MiG fighter could have been shot down with small arms fire. Syria has blamed the crash on a technical malfunction, but Dempsey said the cause “didn’t appear to be mechanical.”

The Syrian civil war has aspects of a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar among others. Iran, both directly and indirectly, is supporting Assad's regime while Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Qatar are supporting the rebel forces hoping to topple Assad's regime. Russia is also trying to stave off NATO or UN military action to bring the conflict to a close, which has the effect of supporting Assad and his odious regime. That compares with France and the US, which are leading efforts to bring sanctions and other actions to bear against Assad. The other actions include covert support for the rebel forces, including communications gear and logistical support at the US base at Incerlik in Turkey.

Is Assad's Regime On Verge of Collapsing?

According to the recently defected former Prime Minister Riyad Hijab, Bashar al-Assad's regime controls no more than 30% of the country and it's on the verge of collapsing.

“Based on my experience and my position, the regime is falling apart morally, materially, economically,” the former official, Riyad Farid Hijab, said at a news conference in Amman, Jordan. “Its military is rusting, and it only controls 30 percent of Syria’s territory.”

He added that many high-level civilian and military officials in Syria — “leaders with dignity” — were waiting to defect. Mr. Hijab said he fled the Syrian capital, Damascus, because the government threatened his family and had no reasonable means to end the violence. He also urged the opposition to unify and to move ahead with plans for a transitional government and “a civilian democratic state that preserves the right, justice and dignity of all Syrians.”

But he said he had no interest in a formal position. “I have sacrificed myself in the campaign of righteousness,” he said. “I don’t want to satisfy anyone but God.”

Mr. Hijab’s claims about the weakness of the Assad government could not be independently verified, and he gave few details to support his harsh assessment. A Sunni technocrat from the eastern city of Deir al-Zour — which has been enduring shelling and fighting for weeks — Mr. Hijab was not a member of Mr. Assad’s inner circle, and he was appointed to the position of prime minister only in June.

There's no way to know for sure just how secure Assad's regime is, but there have been indications that Assad's lost control of vast swaths of the country. His security forces have been hard pressed to retain control of Syria's two biggest cities - Damascus and Aleppo. Rebels managed to assassinate key security members in a bombing several weeks ago. There have been a steady but increasing stream of defections, including Hijab.

It also appears that Assad's brother was grievously injured in that July 18 bombing. A Russian minister also indicated that Assad's willing to give up power:

Quoting Russian deputy foreign minister Mikhail Bogdanov, the newspaper reported that Maher Assad's condition "is very serious and he is fighting for his life."

The July blast took place during a high-level meeting at the state security ministry in the capital. Among those killed were Defense Minister Daoud Rajha, former Defense Minister Hassan Turkmani, and Assad brother-in-law Assef Shawkat, who served as the country's deputy defense minister. The suicide attack was carried out by a bodyguard for the president's inner circle, a Syrian security source said at the time. Until now it was unclear whether Maher Assad had attended the meeting.

Bogdanov added that President Assad is prepared to give up power, according to the Al-Watan report. "We ask that this issue be dealt with quickly to bring about a solution to the crisis," he said. "We are speaking with the opposition and the Syrian government on a daily basis."

However, Assad's security forces continue the bloodletting and no one within the security establishment is willing to tell Assad that his time is done for the sake of all Syrians. He's apparently content to continue the violence to preserve his power. The Russians have moved to deny Bogdanov's claims, which further suggests that Assad isn't going anywhere - at least for now. They claim that Bogdanov never gave any interview to al-Watan, which other media outlets quickly re-reported.

There are also indications that Russia and Iran are busy propping up Assad's regime, even as Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia are assisting the rebels.

At the same time, al Qaeda and other terror groups, including Hizbullah are looking to fill the power vacuum, which is something that Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, and Israel are all keenly hoping to avoid.

Meanwhile, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation suspended Syria from its membership as another UN official envoy is visiting Syria so as to draw attention to the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Syria. The UN mission will fail just as surely as Kofi Annan's attempts did; Assad has no intention of giving up power, or stopping the violence, and rebel forces are just as unwilling to stop their own efforts as they continue to maintain and gain territory, even if those gains come at a significant humanitarian cost or that retribution for being part of Assad's government includes war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Assad Preparing For Aleppo Assault as Civil War Rages On

Reports indicate that Bashar al-Assad's forces are preparing for a ground offensive against rebel-held areas of Aleppo. That will most certainly increase the casualties significantly over the already high tallies seen across the country in recent weeks.

Syria on Friday amassed troops in the northern city of Aleppo in preparation for an onslaught on rebel-held areas and the opposition reported a massacre in the central city of Hama.

Opposition activists said more than 62 people, including women and children, were killed in a massacre committed by forces loyal to President Bashar Assad in Hama. The claim by the Local Coordination Committees could not be independently verified.

In Aleppo, Syria's main commercial center, the Syrian army sent more troops and tanks to break a stalemate in fighting with rebels holding out for six days in opposition areas mainly in the east and southwest of the city near the border with Turkey.

"Dozens of trucks loaded with troops and backed by more than 100 tanks are being positioned around Aleppo," Abu Omar al-Halabi, a commander in the rebel Free Syrian Army, told dpa by phone.

The UN is hobbled by a split Security Council - the Russians and Chinese are blocking everything related to Syria, up to and including even weak-worded condemnation of the violence. Kofi Annan admitted as much when he declared his mission to implement a peace deal was a failure and that he was stepping down as envoy to Syria effective at the end of the month.

Assad's looking out for one thing - to remain in power at all costs. That means paying lip service to the diplomats all while crushing those opposed to him. The burden falls on Syrians who can't get out of the way of the violence, or who have declared allegiance to one side or the other.

Meanwhile, the NY Times reports Assad's forces are bedeviled by the fact that they're not prepared to deal with an insurrection where rebel forces (the Free Syrian Army and other unaffiliated groups) are able to mount coordinated attacks and capture some of the same weapons for use against the Syrian army. It's a situation that the Libyan military faced when Mumar Khadafi sought to crush the rebellion-turned-civil war and that the Egyptian military faced when Hosni Mubarak sought to stop the protests against his regime.

However, one shouldn't feel sorry for Assad because his military is having a tough time dealing with the rebel forces. It appears that even with a tactical advantage in the air (from helicopters and jets), it's just enough for Assad's forces to maintain the status quo. The Syrian military wasn't known for having a high state of preparedness to begin with, so equipment that was unreliable to start has only become more so. That's one of the reasons those helicopters that the Russians were refurbishing was so valued by the regime. They needed them to fill in for those that were already flying missions to support Assad's loyalists on the ground.

If he can't resupply and rearm, then the rebels will gain the upper hand and leave Assad with fewer and fewer options for how to retain power. It potentially opens the door for Assad to use chemical or biological weapons as a last ditch effort to crush the opposition though he claims that he wouldn't use it against the Syrian people (even as he calls the fighters arrayed against him foreign terror groups and proxies of the US and/or Israel, Syria, Qatar or others).

Meanwhile, Russia has dispatched more ships and ground forces to their port in Tartus; they are claiming that they are there to protect Russia's personnel and infrastructure at the port.

Rebel forces have again claimed that the regime carried out massacres in Hama, while both sides are blaming the other for a mortar attack against a Palestinian refugee camp that killed nearly 2 dozen civilians.

Kofi Annan Resigns As Envoy as Syrian Civil War Intensifies

The outcome was all but assured. Bashar al-Assad paid lip service to United Nations Envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, and his plan to end the ongoing violence wracking Syria for more than a year and a half. So Kofi has quit as envoy.

Assad continues to claim that foreign entities and terrorists are to blame for the violence, but it's Annan's security forces and loyalist goon squads who have introduced the violence and then intensified it as opposition groups moved to defend themselves.

The situation has been a civil war for some time now, as rebel forces have gained and held territory, including parts of Syria's two big cities - Aleppo and Damascus.

Annan's plan has been an abysmal failure though it wasn't exactly his fault. UN monitors could only look on as the violence raged around them; they were themselves targeted on more than one occasion. That ultimately led to their withdrawal. Assad never had any intention of stopping the brutal crackdown since he had no intention of ever stepping down or relinquishing power under any circumstances.

Aleppo is an urban battleground, with Assad's loyalists firing heavy weapons into the city and rebel-held strongholds, while the rebel forces have overrun some of Assad's positions and obtained heavy weapons of their own to return fire. Civilians remain caught in the crossfire.

Video footage seen by the Monitor shortly after the showdown bolstered rebel claims: It showed a Syrian armored vehicle with an RPG hole in its side still smoldering, and a number of Syrian soldiers lying dead at their positions on a wide avenue. Later footage showed burnt tanks.

The assault had been stopped, at least on the ground.

But shortly after came the roar of artillery barrages. Mortars, rockets, and tank shells were unleashed on the rebel enclave and did not end, nor even ease up, until well into the night.

Casualties began to pour in to the makeshift field hospital. Civilians said the intense shelling felt like regime revenge for the earlier military setbacks.

Few Syrians here forget the example of the rebel stronghold of Bab al-Amr in Homs – which was destroyed by weeks of artillery bombardment earlier this year, then declared "free" – or the more recent brutal "cleansing" of rebel turf in Damascus.

The bombardment was so intense that the United Nations estimates that in the last two days alone, 200,000 of the city’s 2 million residents have fled.

Artillery shells and rockets fell every few minutes in Salaheddin, sometimes as often as one a minute and sometimes in groups of five, coming in rapid succession. Some landed so close to the field hospital that shrapnel and debris hit the roof or walls.

Meanwhile, President Obama issued a secret finding authorizing covert aid to the Syrian rebels. He's also arranged for more humanitarian aid to those displaced by the Syrian civil war.

Aleppo Besieged As Assad and Rebels Claim Victories

The fighting in and around Aleppo, Syria's commercial hub, continues and the number of refugees is soaring. 200,000 have fled the city as a result of the brutal fighting on the streets and in the buildings of multiple neighborhoods around the city.

Both Assad and rebel forces have claimed victories. Assad's forces have claimed that they've overrun rebel held areas and retaken the city after more than a week's worth of artillery assaults and airstrikes.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition group, reported heavy shelling in Salaheddine today, suggesting the district or parts of it are still under rebel control. An officer interviewed by the state-run TV channel said “mercenaries” from other countries, including Yemen, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, were helping the rebels in Aleppo.

Troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad have been battling rebels who seized several neighborhoods in Aleppo, Syria’s most populous city and its commercial hub, since last week. The army pounded the city with heavy artillery and helicopter gunships, opposition groups say.

Motee al-Bateen, a member of the executive committee of the Syrian National Council, the main opposition group, said he couldn’t confirm that Salaheddine has fallen into army hands.

“How much territory the opposition holds is not important,” he said by telephone from Istanbul today. “What’s important is to engage the troops in cycles of attack-and- retreat to exhaust them.”

Al-Bateen said the army was using mortars, rocket launchers and tanks to shell areas from a distance and avoid engaging rebels in close combat.

Rebels note that despite the artillery and airstrikes, they've continued to hold on to Aleppo. Moreover, they've noted that Assad's forces haven't invaded the city en masse, precisely because they'd be facing an uphill battle in a brutal urban setting.

Rebel forces also announced that they captured a significant military base near Aleppo. They managed to capture the position after heavy fighting, and gained heavy weapons to supplement their own weapons.

Pro-Assad groups have claimed that Assad's forces have assassinated a Saudi official, Bandar bin Sultan, who they claim involved in plotting to eliminate key members of the Syrian defense and intel establishment earlier this month. However, there's no evidence to substantiate those claims, but it does show the animosity between Syria and Saudi Arabia is growing. The Saudis have been working to bring Assad's regime to an end, both by diplomacy and by covert means.

Meanwhile, another Syrian official has defected. At the same time, a Chinese news outlet is reporting that Assad's continuing to claim that he seeks to carry out the terms of the Arab League/Kofi Annan plan to end the violence. It's just so much talk since Assad could have simply brought the violence to an end by reining in his brutal crackdown. He has no intention of giving up power peacefully, and is seeking retribution against those that questioned his regime.

At the same time, concerns are mounting that al Qaeda and other Islamists are taking advantage of the chaos to gain a foothold in Syria.

Aleppo Bracing For Assad's Forces

Syria is in a state of civil war and has been for some time. Rebel forces have captured territories outside of the major cities and provinces of Hama and Homs as Assad's gaze has focused on retaking those areas. It's left outlying provinces to their own devices. They're running things without Assad's government goons in sight:

As the Syrian state recedes, the people in this village and villages around it are filling in the blanks with their own institutions and, for better or for worse, their own ideas about how a country should be run.

The rebels started taking control of these villages and towns a few months back, as the Syrian army focused on holding major cities.

The first thing the rebels do is take over the post office or the police station and set up shop as the local authority.

Each village or town has something different to offer the rebels. In Qurqanya, it's a school that during the summer break can be used as a kind of media center, with a few laptops and an Internet connection.

In the next town over, it's a hospital.

The head doctor says he might treat dozens of injured rebel fighters from all around this region in a single day. Places that treat rebels used to be totally underground — makeshift MASH units set up in people's houses.

In many parts of Syria, it's still like this. But more and more the rebels are coming out into the open and asserting their control.

While the fighting has receded from those areas, it's intensifying in and around Aleppo as Bashar al Assad's forces prepare to overwhelm the rebel forces in the sprawling city with artillery, airstrikes, and an armored assaults.

Civilians caught in the crossfire are attempting to get out of the way, but face hazards at every step of the way with gunfire erupting at every turn.

“We fear the government’s retaliation — may God help us,” said Ahmad, a resident of the southeastern Salaheddiin neighborhood, one of the first areas overrun with insurgents over the weekend. So many poured in from the countryside that they sometimes ended up fighting each other for control of individual streets, residents said.

People streamed out of the neighborhoods where the rebel soldiers claimed control, figuring they would be pounded by government forces, following the same pattern in one Syrian city after another during the course of the 17-month-old uprising. But some men stayed behind to protect their property from looters.

Tanks and troops normally deployed in nearby Idlib province began to lumber eastward toward Aleppo after suhur, the morning meal that comes before sunrise during the monthlong Ramadan holiday, fighters and activists said.

One column of an estimated 23 armored vehicles carrying soldiers and ammunition out of Jebel az-Zawiya, a rebel stronghold in southern Idlib, was attacked by local fighters, according to a local activist in Turkey who said he was in touch with the insurgents. Roughly a third of the vehicles were destroyed but the rest moved on toward Aleppo, he said.

Assad's prospects may be slightly improved on the battlefield, but his diplomatic contacts are getting hammered hard.

Turkey has cut trade ties with Syria in closing its border. At the same time, two more Syrian diplomats have defected:

Turkey sealed its border with Syria to trucks on Wednesday, effectively cutting off a trade relationship once worth almost $3 billion with the embattled nation, as regime forces fought to evict rebels from the country's largest city.

Two more Syrian diplomats, the envoy to Cyprus and her husband, the former ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, have also defected, according to the opposition Syrian National Council, in the latest sign of fraying support for the regime among its own elites. The announcement follows the televised appearance Tuesday night of a defected regime general calling for a new Syria.

Turkish Economy Minister Zafer Caglayan said deteriorating security was behind the closure of a border through which Turkey once exported food and construction materials to the entire Middle East, though the volume of traffic had dropped 87 percent since the Syrian conflict began in March 2011.

Aleppo Under Siege As Assad's Forces Attack From Air and Golan Heights DMZ

Israel is contacting the United Nations over an incursion by more than 500 Syrian soldiers into the DMZ between Israel and Syria in the process of attacking rebel targets near the demarcation line.

Following the incident, in which 500 soldiers and 50 vehicles crossed into the demilitarized zone, Israel filed a formal complaint to the UN secretary general and to the president of the UN's Security Council, warning that the event may have serious ramifications.

Concern in Israel, in light of the situation in Syria, especially over Assad's chemical weapons stockpile and land-to-land missiles, is growing every day. In a meeting on Sunday afternoon, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu consulted the heads of Israel's security establishment, including Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman and other senior cabinet members.

"We are monitoring the events in Syria closely and are prepared for any development to come," Netanyahu said in his opening statement.

At the same time, rebel forces are claiming that Bashar al-Assad's forces have dispersed chemical weapons to airports along Syria's borders as a threat against foreign countries from interfering in the brutal crackdown against the rebels. However, we need to keep in mind distances we're talking about here. The threat is that he's going to disperse and deploy them against foreign targets.

Damascus is 45 miles from the Golan Heights DMZ.

Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are only around 120 miles beyond that.

The distances are so small that the threat is the same regardless of where Assad is putting those weapons if he's going to use them against Israel via aircraft or long range missiles. Artillery delivering such weapons would have a shorter range, but that's something that the Israelis would see via their listening posts on Mt. Hermon. Israel would see something was afoot, though the reaction time would be less the closer to the border.

Dispersing the weapons means that the chances that they could fall into the wrong hands increases (terrorists or those who may have no idea what they're doing) increases. But since Assad is expanding its air campaign against the rebels, it's not beyond the possibility that despite his claims to the contrary, he could be preparing to use them against the rebel forces.

If Assad thought that trying to provoke Israel into engaging in a firefight would help his cause, he's seriously misguided since Syrians would see and respond that he's trying to bluff his way out of his predicament by blaming Israel (something he's done for far too long). And the last thing he wants to do is split his forces between going after the rebel forces and any kind of conflict with Israel and its technological superiority. He would unwittingly be playing right into the hands of rebel forces who lack the capability to neutralize the Syrian air force. If Assad brings Israel into the conflict, it would neutralize his air force, which is one of the few things holding the rebel forces at bay.

Recent reports indicate that Assad's now using fighter jets in addition to helicopter gunships. Until now, Assad's forces have used helicopters and artillery for long range attacks against the rebel forces.

Assad's forces have increasingly relied upon their air force to attack rebel forces, which is also about the only way Assad's loyalists can stay ahead of the rebels, who have managed to carry off spectacular advances in holding territory as well as attacks killing the highest echelon of Assad's security establishment.

Government helicopter gunships attacked Aleppo, the Local Coordination Committees, a network of on-the-ground activists, told NBC News. The Associated Press reported that warplanes circled in the air around the city, while the British Broadcasting Corp., citing one of its reporters near the area, said that fighter jets had bombed eastern parts of Aleppo.
With sequential rebel attacks on the country's two largest cities and a bombing that wiped out some of his top security advisors, President Bashar Assad reshuffled his top security posts, dismissing one general and appointing a national security council chief to replace the one killed in the recent attack.

Syria's rebels, outmanned and outgunned by the regime's professional army, have mounted a surprising pair of offensives over the last 10 days against the country's two major cities — Damascus and Aleppo. Even as the government appears to have snuffed out most of the rebel pockets in the capital, the rebels appear to be fight fiercely in the commercial hub of Aleppo in the north.

The government has instituted tight restrictions on outside news outlets working in Syria, making it difficult to verify many reports from inside the country.

Fighting spreads in Aleppo
The battle in Aleppo has spread from neighborhoods in the northeast and southwest of the city to previously untouched areas like Firdous in the south and Arkoub closer to the center, local activists and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

This is the fourth day of heavy fighting in Aleppo, which also includes a prison uprising that was brutally put down. There's also evidence that Assad's forces are using Iranian-made UAVs in spotting targets.

Rumors Rampant That Assad's On The Run

Everything is on rumor at the moment. No one seems to have seen Syrian despot Bashar al-Assad in the past few days, particularly since the attacks began in Damascus proper and especially after the bombing that took out his defense ministers yesterday.

The silence is fueling rumors of his whereabouts and whether he's still in control of the government. However, considering that there were a series of proclamations announcing the replacements to those who were killed in yesterday's audacious bombing of security officials, including the defense minister and his deputy (one of Assad's brothers-in-law), it appears that he's still running the show.

The fact that Assad made no public statement about such a devastating attack quickly fueled rumors that the president himself had been injured or killed. It was also unclear where his wife and children were after the bombing.

One Syrian opposition activist claimed in an interview with Al Arabiya television network that the presidential jet had left the Damascus airport Wednesday for Latakia, echoing a flurry of online claims by activists that Assad had been injured and sent to the Mediterranean port city.

However, Syrian state media reported that Assad had issued two decrees after the Wednesday attack, appointing Gen. Fahd Jassem Freij as defense minister and deputy commander-in-chief of the army.

There are rumors that he's out of Damascus and running things from one of his palaces in Latakia (an Alawite majority town on the coast), and there are rumors that his presidential jet has taken off to points unknown, though it appears that the destination was Latakia.

None of the reports can be substantiated though he's clearly unsure of his personal safety so he's on the move and doesn't know who he can trust. So, there's a measure of safety in the silence/ambiguity.

Yesterday's events have once again raised questions of a post-Assad Syria, and the US is beginning to consider that possibility, including consulting with Israel and other countries.

All this comes as Syrian forces continue attacking Damascus from the air and with artillery.

The army shelled its own capital from the surrounding mountains as night fell on Wednesday. Government troops, having vowed retaliation for the assassination, fired machine guns into the city from helicopters.

Rebels, massed in several neighborhoods, are armed mostly with small arms and rocket-propelled grenades.

Activist videos posted on the Internet showed bloodied bodies lying in the street.

Striking at the Heart of Assad's Regime

Fighting has intensified in and around Damascus over the past couple of days, but today's news is breathtaking in its consequences. A suicide bomber, who apparently was a bodyguard, blew up at a meeting of high ranking security officials.

Bashar al-Assad's brother in law and defense minister were killed in the blast. At the same time several reports indicate that more generals have defected.

The assassinations were the first of such high-ranking members of the power elite in the 17-month revolt against Mr. Assad’s rule, and could represent a turning point in the conflict, analysts said, confirming that opposition forces have been marshaling their strength to strike at the close-knit centers of state power.

According to state television, the dead included the defense minister, Daoud Rajha, and Asef Shawkat, the president’s brother-in-law who was the deputy chief of staff of the Syrian military. But the television report rejected claims by activists that the minister of the interior also was killed, saying he remained alive and in stable condition.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said all the members of the crisis group set up by President Assad to try to put down the revolt were are either dead or injured. But there was no official confirmation of that account.

With tensions already high in Damascus after three days of clashes between the Syrian Army and rebels near the city center, SANA, the official news agency, described the assault as a “suicide terrorist attack.” Opponents claimed a major victory.

“The Syrian regime has started to collapse,” said the activist who heads the Syrian Observatory. “There was fighting for three days inside Damascus, it was not just a gun battle, and now someone has killed or injured all these important people.”

The Free Syrian Army has claimed responsibility and that they were able to infiltrate the ministry building shows that the opposition has managed to infiltrate the regime and its security measures.

It's premature to call this the beginning of the end of Assad's regime, but it's the beginning of the next phase in the ongoing civil war. Considering that those involved plotting in the brutal crackdown were among those killed, it's going to be interesting to see the strategy that Assad uses going forward. Considering how ignorant Assad is of the plight of his countrymen, I fully expect him to further intensify the crackdown and brutalization of the Syrian people.

We're already seeing that there is widespread shelling of civilian areas, as BBC reports.

The more that he uses violence, the more the country realizes that Assad has got to go. We're already seeing some of those dividends as more military leaders defect rather than stay and fight against their fellow countrymen.

The British Foreign Secretary, in condemning the bombing that took out Assad's defense ministers, also used it as an opportunity to again assert that the UN needs to act under Chapter VII (using force) to solve the crisis there.

Russia continues blocking UN Chapter VII-type actions, but it's again reiterating that it will not prop up Assad. That's rather duplicitous of them, considering that Assad is being propped up by Russia by their stubborn refusal to offer up Assad a golden parachute to exile that avoids the ignominious end that met the likes of Mumar Khadafi.

UPDATE:
I don't have a crystal ball about what will happen, but it might be instructive to look at Yemen's civil war/insurrection for guidance. There, Ali Abdullah Saleh was hit in a bombing and forced to leave the country for medical treatment but he and his regime never broke and he was able to return. The endgame there was that on January 22, 2012, the Yemeni parliament passed a law that granted Saleh immunity from being prosecuted and he left Yemen for treatment in the United States. Saleh stepped down and formally ceded power to his deputy Abd Rabbuh Mansur Al-Hadi and Al-Hadi will be a caretaker for the government as a new constitution is drafted and new elections are scheduled for 2014. However, the security situation there remains dire as the government is locked in a battle with al Qaeda.

UPDATE:
Video is streaming showing fighting on the streets in Damascus despite propaganda video shown by Assad's media outlets attempting to show calm: