A boy of 12 sees his best friend shot through the heart. Another of 15 is held in a cell with 150 other people and taken out every day to be burned with cigarettes.

Syria's children are perhaps the greatest victims of their country's conflict, suffering "layers and layers of emotional trauma," Save the Children's chief executive Justin Forsyth told Reuters.

---

Syrian children have been shot at, tortured and raped during two years of unrest and civil war, the London-based international charity said in a report released on Wednesday.

Two million children, it said, face malnutrition, disease, early marriage and severe trauma, becoming innocent victims of a conflict that has already claimed 70,000 lives.

"This is a war where women and children are the biggest casualty," Forsyth told Reuters during a visit to Lebanon, where 340,000 Syrians have sought a safe haven.

Forsyth said he met a Syrian refugee boy, 12, who saw his best friend killed outside a bakery. "His friend was shot through the heart. But initially, he thought he was joking because there was no blood. They didn't realize he had been killed until they took his shirt off," he said.

The report cited new research carried out among refugee children by Bahcesehir University in Turkey, which found that one in three reported having been punched, kicked or shot at.

Children directly targeted
Two-thirds of children surveyed said that they had been separated from members of their families because of the conflict and a third said they had experienced the death of a close friend or family member.

Millions of families have fled their homes for safer ground or neighboring countries. Save the Children says 80,000 people are living in barns, parks and caves, and children struggle to find enough to eat.

Both government forces and rebels have been accused of targeting civilians and committing war crimes. Refugees say Assad's soldiers are directly targeting children.

Forsyth said he met one child who said he was in a prison cell with 150 people, including 50 children. "He was taken out every day and put in a giant wheel and burned with cigarettes. He was 15."

Save the Children says that some young boys are being used by armed groups as porters, runners and human shields, bringing them close to the front line.

Rape is being used to deliberately punish people, Forsyth said, adding that it is underreported because of the sensitivity of the issue, especially in conservative communities.

Fear of sexual violence is repeatedly cited to Save the Children as one of the main reasons for families fleeing their homes, according to the report.

It said that there are also reports of early marriage of young girls by families trying to reduce the numbers of mouths they have to feed, or hoping that a husband will be able to provide greater security from the threat of sexual violence.

Forsyth said that he met a Syrian family in Lebanon who told their 16-year-old daughter to marry an older man. "Her mother said she is beautiful and every time the (Syrian) soldiers came to the house she thought: 'They are going to rape her.'"

"Rape is being used deliberately to punish people," Forsyth said, adding that girls as young as 14 are being married off.

Related:

'Human river' of Syrian refugees hits 1 million

Analysis: Can aid without weapons help resolve Syrian conflict?

US to send rations, medical supplies to Syrian rebels

 

Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said Thursday that intelligence about Syrian chemical weapons "raises serious concerns" that the regime of Bashar Assad may use them against the country's own citizens.

"The whole world is watching, the whole world is watching very closely," Panetta said. "And the president of the United States has made it very clear, there will be consequences — there will be consequences if the Assad regime makes the terrible mistake by using these chemical weapons on their own people."

His comments came a day after U.S. officials told NBC News that the Syrian military had loaded the precursor chemicals for sarin, a deadly nerve gas, into aerial bombs that could be dropped from dozens of fighter-bombers. The defense chief, who was speaking at a news conference at the Department of Veterans Affairs, would not elaborate on what the potential consequences would be. 

---

A member of the regime in Damascus, however, dismissed the assertions Thursday, saying he feared the United States and other Western powers could be trying to find a "pretext for intervention" in Syria's civil war, Reuters reported.

Sarin is an extraordinarily lethal agent. Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's forces killed 5,000 Kurds with a single sarin attack on Halabja in 1988.

Assad's deputy foreign minister Faisal Maqdad said Thursday that they would never kill Syrians with chemical weapons, dismissing the Western intelligence reports as "theater."

"Syria stresses again, for the tenth, the hundredth time, that if we had such weapons, they would not be used against its people. We would not commit suicide," Maqdad said, according a Reuters report that cited his comments on Lebanon's Al Manar television, the voice of the pro-Assad Hezbollah movement.

"In fact, we fear a conspiracy ... by the United States and some European states, which might have supplied such weapons to terrorist organizations in Syria, in order to claim later that Syria is the one that used these weapons," he added.

"We fear there is a conspiracy to provide a pretext for any subsequent interventions in Syria by these countries that are increasing pressure on Syria," he said.

 

Panetta echos Obama 'red line' warning
"The intelligence we have raises serious concerns"  that Damascus was considering using chemical weapons, Panetta said Thursday.

"Without commenting on the specific intelligence ... we remain very concerned, very concerned that as the opposition advances, in particular on Damascus, that the regime might very well consider the use of chemical weapons." 

Obama and other NATO leaders have warned that using chemical weapons would cross a red line and have consequences, which they have not specified.

Four U.S. Senators on Thursday urged President Obama to send a strong message to Assad.

"We urge the President of the United States to make whatever military preparations are necessary to show Assad that the United States is fully willing and able to impose the consequences that he has spoken of in the event these weapons are used," said Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz), speaking first. "For deterrence to work it must be based on a credible threat."

He appeared with Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) and Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.).

"We are all saying to President Obama, who has stated that there will be drastic consequences for Assad and his government if they use chemical and biological weapons, we’re with you," said Lieberman. "There’s strong support across Congress if the president takes the strong action that’s necessary to prevent a very, very — historically horrific — humanitarian disaster in Syria. 

There are limited options for military intervention by the United States in Syria. It has one of the most robust air defense systems in the world — supplied by key ally Russia — but one option could be sending cruise missiles to attack regime targets.

Germany's cabinet approved stationing Patriot anti-missile batteries on Turkey's border with Syria, a step requiring deployment of NATO troops that Syria fears could permit the imposition of a no-fly zone over its territory.

Slideshow: Syria uprising
Syria loads chemical weapons into bombs; military awaits Assad's order
Syria regime 'reeling, armed to the teeth' with chemical weapons
More weapons in Syria could trigger 'all-out war'

The 20-month-old battle between Assad and opposition forces has claimed more than 40,000 lives.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton met in Dublin on Thursday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and international Syria mediator Lakhdar Brahimi to try to restart a U.N. peace process for Syria. Prior to the meeting, she said she expected to raise the chemical weapons threat.

Watch World News videos on NBCNews.com

Clinton has said that in addition to the possible use of chemical bombs by "an increasingly desperate" Assad, Washington was concerned about the government losing control of such weapons to extreme Islamist armed groups among the rebel forces.

U.S. officials said Washington was considering blacklisting Jabhat al-Nusra, an influential rebel group accused by other rebels of indiscriminate tactics that has advocated an Islamic state in Syria and is suspected to have ties to al-Qaida.

In other developments reported by Reuters:

• Syrian state TV said a\n explosion in front of the Damascus headquarters of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent killed at least one person on Thursday.
• Activists said the army pummeled several eastern suburbs of Damascus, where the rebels are dominant, with artillery and mortar fire. The suburbs have been cut off from the city's water and electricity for weeks, rebels say, accusing the government of collective punishment.
• Rebels say they have surrounded an air base two-and-a-half miles from the center of Damascus, a fresh sign the battle is closing in on the Syrian capital.
• Rebels said they were battling soldiers on the road to Damascus International Airport, 12 miles out of the capital, where several airlines have canceled flights due to security concerns.

Maqdad, in his interview on Thursday, argued that reports of such advances were untrue. "What is sad is that foreign countries believe these repeated rumors," he said. Rebel and state claims about the military situation cannot be verified independently. But residents inside the capital say the sound of shelling on the outskirts has become a constant backdrop. 

Reuters contributed to this report.

More world stories from NBC News:

• EXCLUSIVE: US behind Afghan 'insecurity,' Karzai says
• Sex mobs target Egypt's women
• Researchers: North America least likely region for terrorism
• Africa's lion population plummets, study finds
• North Korea pays tribute to Kim Jong Il's 'threadbare' parka
• ANALYSIS: Egyptians warn Morsi is no friend of US
• Bread and expired milk: School lunch scandal sparks outrage in China
• Experts: Antarctica, Greenland ice melting into sea

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

This summer, as the Syrian economy began to unravel and the military pressed hard against an armed rebellion, a Syrian government plane ferried what flight records describe as more than 200 tons of “bank notes” from Moscow.

The records of overflight requests were obtained by ProPublica. The flights occurred during a period of escalating violence in a conflict that has left tens of thousands of people dead since fighting broke out in March 2011.

The regime of Bashar al-Assad is increasingly in need of cash to stay afloat and continue financing the military’s efforts to crush the uprising. U.S. and European sanctions, including a ban on minting Syrian currency, have damaged the country’s economy. As a result, Syria lost access to an Austrian bank that had printed its bank notes.

---

“Having currency that you can put into circulation is certainly something that is important in terms of running an economy and more so in an economy that is become more cash-based as things deteriorate,” said Daniel Glaser, assistant secretary of the Treasury for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes.  “It is certainly something the Syrian government wants to do, to pay soldiers or pay anybody anything."

According to the flight records, eight round-trip flights between Damascus International Airport and Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport each carried 30 tons of bank notes back to Syria. There are records relating to the flights in Arabic and English as well as copies of over-flight requests sent to Iran, which are in Farsi.

Syrian and Russian officials did not respond to ProPublica's questions about the authenticity and accuracy of the flight records. It is not possible to know whether the logs accurately described the cargo or what else might have been on board the flights. Nor do the logs specify the type of currency.

But ProPublica confirmed nearly all of the flights took place through international plane-tracking services, photos by aviation enthusiasts and air traffic control recordings.

Each time the manifest listed “Bank Notes” as its cargo, the plane traveled a circuitous route. Instead of flying directly over Turkish airspace, as civilian planes have, the Ilyushin-76 cargo plane, operated by the Syrian Air Force, avoided Turkey and flew over Iraq, Iran and Azerbaijan.

The flight path between Syria and Russia described in the manifests.

Tensions have been rising  between Syria and Turkey since the spring. Last month, Turkey forced down a Syrian passenger plane traveling from Moscow. Turkey suspected the flight of carrying military cargo but officials have not said what, if anything, was confiscated.

If the flight manifests are accurate, a total of 240 tons of bank notes moved from Moscow to Damascus over a 10-week period beginning July 9 and ending on Sept. 15.

U.S. officials interviewed said evidence of monetary assistance, like military cooperation, point to a pattern of Russian support for Assad that extends from concrete aid to protecting Syria from U.N. sanctions.

In September 2011, six months into the violence, the European Union imposed sanctions that prohibited its members from minting or supplying new Syrian coinage or banknotes. In a statement, the EU said the sanctions aimed “to obstruct those who are leading the crackdown in Syria and to restrict the funding being used to perpetrate violence against the Syrian people.” At the time, Syria’s currency was being minted by Oesterreichische Banknoten- und Sicherheitsdruck GmbH, a subsidiary of Austria’s Central Bank.

President Obama has issued five Executive Orders that prevent members of the Assad regime from entering the United States and accessing the U.S. financial system.

 “Increasingly, it is more difficult to finance the war machine and the cost of the war is becoming more expensive for the Assad regime,” said one U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Targeted sanctions on those leading the violence are working and start to bite into their pocket books.”

Russia appears to be helping Syria blunt the impact of the sanctions.

In June, Reuters reported  that Russia had begun printing new Syrian pounds and that an initial shipment of bank notes had already arrived.  The report was denied by the Syrian Central Bank, which claimed the only new money in circulation were bills that had replaced damaged or worn bank notes. Such a swap, the bank contended, would have no effect on the economy.

On Aug. 3, the official Syrian news agency SANA, reporting from a news conference in Moscow with Syrian and Russian economic officials, quoted Syrian officials acknowledging that Russia is printing money. Qadr Jamil, Syria’s deputy prime minister for Economic Affairs, was quoted by SANA as calling the deal with Russia a “triumph,” over sanctions.

Syrian Finance Minister Mohammad al-Jleilati said that Russia was providing both replacement notes and additional currency to, as SANA put it, “reflect the country’s changing GDP.” 

Al-Jleilati said the money would have no effect on inflation. Printing new notes beyond simply replacing old ones could undermine Syria’s already battered currency.

At the time of the meeting, at least 30 tons of currency had already been delivered, according to the flight records, and another 210 tons would be delivered in subsequent flights.

In its regional economic outlook released earlier this month, the International Monetary Fund noted that Syria’s currency has lost 44 percent of its value since March 2011, trading for about 70 Syrian pounds to the dollar compared with about 47 pounds when the conflict began.

Ibrahim Saif, a political economist based in Jordan and a resident scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center said 30 tons of bank notes twice a week is a significant amount for a country like Syria.

“I truly believe it’s not only that they’re exchanging old money for new notes. They are printing money because they need new notes,” Saif said.

“Most of the government revenue that comes from taxes, in terms of other services, it’s almost now dried up,” noted Saif. Yet, “They continue to pay salaries. They have not shown any signs of weakness in fulfilling their domestic obligations. The only way they can do this is to get some sort of cash in the market.”

Before the unrest broke out, Syria had about $17 billion in foreign currency reserves. Saif said he and other economists in the region estimate they now have about $6 billion to 8 billion in reserves, dwindling about $500 million a month for salaries and supplies to keep the government running.

In Moscow, the Syrian finance minister had said that his country required additional foreign currency reserves, which Russia may provide in the form of loans.

“It’s possible the Syrians are acquiring foreign currency reserves, either Euros or US dollars, which they would need to conduct any serious commerce,” said Juan Zarate, who served as assistant secretary of the Treasury for Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes during the Bush administration.

Zarate noted that other countries, when faced with economic sanctions, have leaned on allies for foreign currency reserves. China supplied North Korea with such funds in the past and Venezuela agreed to sell reserves to Iran.

Syria’s currency is still traded on open markets, but there is limited on-the-ground information about the economy, including inflation.

Officials at the IMF “have not been able to get direct information about Syria for at least a year,” Masood Ahmed, director of the group’s Middle East and Central Asia department, told reporters at a conference in Tokyo last month.

Glaser, at Treasury, declined to put a figure on Syria’s current reserves, but said the Syrian economy is suffering in part from a lack of tourism and a ban on oil sales, both of which provided Damascus with foreign currency. “There is significant inflation in the country. It can be caused by adding new currency or not having foreign reserves to prop up the existing currency.”

Quinn Norton contributed to this story.

ProPublica is an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest.

More from Open Channel:

• One email exposes millions to ID theft risk in South Carolina cyberattack
• Study finds breast cancer risk for women in auto plastics factories
• Jill Kelley email: Petraeus, Allen sought my help to hush 'Bubba the Love Sponge'
• Broadwell, Kelley both were repeat White House visitors, official says
• New cartel drug smuggling trend: teenage couriers
• Feds fail to fight Medicaid fraud in home health-care services, report finds
• As their secret dissolved, Petraeus, Broadwell chatted at awards dinner
• Email to Gen. Allen warning about Kelley among those she gave to the FBI
• As FBI investigated Petraeus, he and Allen waded ino nasty child custody fight

 

Follow Open Channel from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

BEIRUT -- Syrian rebels captured an air defense base east of the key city of Aleppo on Friday as government forces battled insurgents on several fronts across the country, anti-regime activists said.

Clashes were also taking place at a military barracks close to Maarat al-Nuaman, a town on the main highway to Aleppo that was seized by rebel forces earlier this week, the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

---

Aleppo, in the northwest of the country, is Syria's largest city and commercial hub. It has been fiercely contested since July.

The pro-opposition Observatory gave a death toll for Thursday of more than 260 people, including civilians and combatants on both sides in violence in the capital and the north, west and east.

It said 92 soldiers were killed on Thursday, which would be one of the highest daily casualty counts on the government side since the uprising against President Bashar Assad broke out in March 2011.

The official SANA news agency also reported fighting nationwide and said dozens of rebels, which it called "mercenary terrorists," had been killed.

The reports could not be independently verified. If true, however, they indicate a rapidly intensifying conflict, with the death tolls of the past several weeks far exceeding previous months.

Clashes on the border with Turkey
Although international attention has focused on the Turkish border in the past week, Aleppo and the city of Homs -- north of Damascus and near the border with Lebanon -- are being fought over and clashes take place almost daily in the suburbs of the capital Damascus as well as in the countryside.

Turkey: Syria plane carried Russian-made munitions

Turkey scrambled two fighter planes to the border with Syria on Friday after a Syrian military helicopter bombed the Syrian border town of Azmarin, according to a Reuters witness.

Fighting along Turkey’s 560-mile border with Syria has repeatedly spilled over into Turkish territory in the past week, with the Turkish army responding in kind to gunfire and mortar shells fired from Syria.

Turkish Chief of Staff Gen. Necdet Ozel said Wednesday his troops would respond "with greater force" if the shells continued to land on Turkish soil, and parliament last week authorized the deployment of troops beyond Turkey, heightening fears that Syria's civil war will drag in regional powers.

Turkey forces Syrian plane suspected of carrying weapons to land

Jihadi group reportedly takes part in base assault
The Observatory said the air defense base seized by the rebels was located in al-Tana village by the Koris military airport on the road east from Aleppo to al-Raqqa.

Videos posted online Friday claiming to have been shot inside the base said the extremist group, Jabhat al-Nusra, participated in the battle, according to The Associated Press. The videos show dozens of fighters inside the base near a radar tower, along with rows of large missiles, some on the backs of trucks.

A report by a correspondent with the Arabic satellite network Al-Jazeera who visited the base Friday said Jabhat al-Nusra had seized the base. The report showed a number of missiles and charred buildings, as fighters covered their faces with black cloths.

Complete Middle East & North Africa coverage on NBCNews.com

Two Aleppo-based activists and Rami Abdul-Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, also said Jabhat al-Nusra fought in the battle.

Little is known about Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Support Front, which began claiming attacks in Syria earlier this year in postings on jihadi forums often used by al-Qaida. While neither group has officially acknowledged the other, analysts say al-Nusra's tactics, jihadist rhetoric and use of al-Qaida forums point to an affiliation.

Western powers -- and many Syrians-- worry that Islamist extremists are playing an increasing role in Syria's civil war.

Highway route cut
Meanwhile, the capture of Maarat al-Nuaman cut the highway between Aleppo and Homs, the main route for the government to resupply and reinforce the northern city.

Complete World coverage on NBCNews.com

SANA said government forces were mounting operations to clear rebels from Aleppo's Karm al-Jabal area on Friday.

More than 30,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which began as a popular uprising against four decades of Assad family rule before descending into civil war. The armed forces have relied heavily on air power and artillery to hold back the rebels.

Fighting has also spilled over the borders into Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, raising concern that the fighting could spread across the region, now home to 340,000 Syrian refugees.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

More world stories from NBC News:

• Pakistan: 3 arrested over teen peace activist shooting
• Seven British marines arrested in Afghanistan murder probe
• Hezbollah admits launching drone over Israel
• Indonesia's Bali recalls horror of bombs 10 years on
• Tunisian magazine teaches children how to build a Molotov cocktail
• Video: Australian PM launches attack on ‘sexist’ opponent

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

 

News analysis

ISTANBUL, Turkey -- Earlier this year, a young Syrian man who along with his family found refuge in the safety of the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli, described his conflict-torn home country as being like a "stopper on a drain."

The stopper, he told me, had been removed and now the region was slowly being sucked down the drain.

His words may have been prescient. As the conflict in Syria drags on, the war is affecting neighboring countries and shaping politics in a way that threatens the stability of the region.

---

Opposition troops, led by the Free Syrian Army, have been battling President Bashar Assad’s forces for more than a year in an attempt to topple the regime.

Activists say that around 20,000 people have been killed since the start of the uprising -- that has since evolved into a full-fledged civil war -- in March last year.

Three fronts
The external impact of Syria’s internal fighting on neighboring countries can be summed up on three fronts: refugees and resources, sectarian tensions, and regional geopolitics.

The United Nations estimates that close to 200,000 refugees have escaped Syria into neighboring countries, including Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq.

Turkish officials say they have registered close to 65,000 refugees in their camps. Hundreds of Syrians there are being treated outside the official health care system in makeshift care centers in private buildings.

Recently, Jordan’s King Abdullah warned that the international community needs to do more to help countries cope with the refugees.

Jordan, directly south of Syria, is a country familiar with absorbing refugees. It currently shares borders with Israel, the West Bank, Iraq and Syria, among others, and over the decades has wrestled with how to handle refugee crises involving Palestinians, Lebanese, Iraqis and Syrians.

30 dead in Syrian air strike; strife spills into Lebanon

Jordan already has a struggling economy, and its infrastructure has been further strained by refugees in need of medical care, education and basic services.

Lebanon has been slow to acknowledge a Syrian refugee problem in its territory. Because Syrians can move freely across the border, many of those escaping the fighting are staying with friends and relatives and not actually registering as refugees within the country. In turn, this also adds stress on local resources for a country with its own domestic economic woes.

Sectarian strains
Beyond the refugee and humanitarian crisis triggered by the Syrian conflict on neighboring countries, increased sectarian tensions in some of these countries are rapidly reflecting the divide within Syria itself.

UN investigators: War crimes perpetrated in Syria

On more than one occasion, deadly clashes have erupted inside Lebanon between supporters of Assad’s regime and the opposition trying to topple it. This fighting has mirrored the sectarian fault lines of Syria.

The regime and its supporters are mainly drawn from Syria’s Alawite community, which is an offshoot sect of Shiite Islam. The rebel forces and the opposition are largely driven by Sunnis Muslims.

In recent days, Syrian rebels have seized dozens of men they claimed where Iranian and Lebanese Shiites sent to help the Assad regime.

In response, the relatives of the Lebanese men kidnapped in Syria carried out their own wave of kidnappings by taking as many as 23 Syrians who were inside Lebanon.

Syria diversion: Passengers asked for fuel money

The reprisal abductions suggest that the conflict is becoming a regional, rather than a purely Syrian, one.

As the fighting continues, more deadly clashes, kidnappings and the exchange of bitter accusations among the external proxy supporters and opponents inside Lebanon appear likely.

Collision course
The Syrian conflict has turned into a quagmire that goes beyond its borders, locking countries into a collision course over their stances on the Syrian divide.

Wealthy Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates are behind the Syrian opposition. So, too, is Turkey, which shelters the Free Syrian Army.

Syrian regime near collapse, ex-PM says

But the internationalization of Syria’s conflict has spread far beyond the immediate region.

The United States has announced its plan to equip the rebels with communications equipment and other valuable intelligence.

Washington has accused Iran of providing material and financial support to the embattled regime.

Russia has provided the Syrian regime with arms and military hardware since the conflict began. Moscow, which has had a de facto alliance with Syria for decades, has also blocked several U.N. Security Council efforts to sanction the Assad regime.

Libyan fighters join Syrian revolt, Irish-born militant says

With action stymied in the Security Council, action against Assad shifted to the General Assembly, where members voted earlier this month on an Arab-backed resolution harshly condemning Syrian regime. The vote -- 133-12 in favor of the resolution, with 33 countries abstaining -- underscored the relative isolation of the Assad regime.

Central piece?
Depending on whom you ask -- supporters or opponents of the Assad regime -- Syria can be seen as a central piece to a larger conflict in the Middle East.

Dislodging Assad’s regime would mean a significant blow to the regional alliance between Syria, Iran and the Hezbollah Shiite militia group, which constitutes a powerful anti-U.S., anti-Israel power bloc.

Others argue that removing Assad would be one more victory for budding democracies in the wake of the Arab revolutions across the region.

Complete World news coverage from NBCNews.com

In addition, the Syrian military has shot down a Turkish fighter jet, shelled the Lebanese border and has had almost daily running gunfights with the Jordanian army. Its border with Iraq was shut down, and crossing terminals with Turkey have fallen into the hands of the rebels.

Some have warned that as the conflict in Syria drags on, its problems will spill over into neighboring countries and the region. But when one takes a step back and looks at the big picture, it is easy to see why young Syrians and many others say it has already done so.

More world stories from NBC News:

• Police find severed human head, foot in park near Toronto
• Russian court sentences Pussy Riot rockers to 2 years in prison
• Women allowed on bicycles as N. Korea turns wheels of change
• What's causing Afghan troops to turn on coalition forces?
• NZ skydiver hits ground after parachute fails
• I'd like a beer, 70-year-old says after icy 6-day ordeal in Alps
• Study: Japan nuclear disaster caused mutated butterflies

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

 

Fierce clashes intensified in Syria's commercial capital of Aleppo on Tuesday as the government unleashed air attacks on rebellious neighborhoods, while activists claimed opposition fighters had control over several neighborhoods in the city.

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.

At least 20 people have been killed in the fighting in Aleppo, the Local Coordination Committees told NBC.

Opposition activist Mohammed Saeed has estimated that the rebels are holding large chunks of the city and the government has responded with attack helicopters — key to their retaking of Damascus over the last few days.

Circling fighter jets have also been breaking the sound barrier overhead in an apparent attempt to cow the fighters, the AP reported.

Syria acknowledges it has chemical weapons, will use them if attacked

"It's like a real war zone over here, there are street battles over large parts of the city," Saeed said, with the sound of gunfire and explosions audible over the phone. "Aleppo has joined Homs and Hama and other revolutionary cities."

On Sunday, a newly formed alliance of rebel groups called the Brigade for Unification announced an operation to take Aleppo, the country's largest city with about three million people. While the rebels have not shown themselves able to hold neighborhoods for any significant period of time, the continued fighting highlights the government's inability to pin down the lightly armed opposition forces.

Prisoners in Aleppo's jail also rioted overnight and activists said at least eight have been killed by government forces. Another prison riot in the city of Homs has been quelled with tear gas and live ammunition.

The International Committee of the Red Cross issued a statement Tuesday calling the situation in and around Damascus "tense and volatile."

"People have been calling us on a daily basis, saying they need a helping hand," Marianne Gasser, the ICRC's head of delegation in Syria, said in the statement. "Some are in need of the basics -- items one usually takes for granted, such as water and food, and a mattress to sleep on. But first and foremost, they are in need of safety."

NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin answers your questions about Syria

With the conflict raging in Syria's two biggest cities, as well as many provincial ones, Western and many Arab nations are pushing for Assad's removal, although Russia, China, Iran and Iraq are among others opposed to any forced handover of power.

The ferocity of the Syria conflict, in which 1,261 people have been killed since fighting intensified in Damascus on July 15, according to one opposition watchdog, has concentrated attention on the possible repercussions of Assad's overthrow.

Warning over chemical weapons
As the struggle for Syria intensified, Western leaders seized on an admission by Damascus that it has chemical and biological arms and could use them if foreign powers intervened.

Analysts: Russia will be big loser if Assad falls

President Barack Obama said the world would hold Assad and his entourage accountable "should they make the tragic mistake of using those (chemical) weapons."

Israel, which has publicly discussed military action to prevent Syrian chemical weapons or missiles from reaching Assad's Lebanese Shiite militant allies Hezbollah, said there was no sign any such diversion had occurred.

"At the moment, the entire non-conventional weapons system is under the full control of the regime," a senior Israeli defense official, Amos Gilad, told Israel Radio.

Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said the army would not use chemical weapons to crush rebels but could use them against forces from outside the country.

The Global Security website, which collects published intelligence reports and other data, says there are four suspected chemical weapons sites in Syria: north of Damascus, near Homs, in Hama and near the Mediterranean port of Latakia. Weapons it produces include the nerve agents VX, sarin and tabun, it said, without citing its sources.

NBC News' Ayman Mohyeldin, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

More world stories from NBC News:

• Going for gold: British workers cash in on Olympics with strike threats
• Afghan police commander leads defection to Taliban
• Norway to London: One family's Olympic odyssey
• Reports: Workers told to underplay Fukushima radiation
• US F-16 fighter jet crashes off coast of Japan
• Gunman in Afghan police uniform kills 3, wounds several
• Explosion, fire shuts down Turkey-Iraq oil pipeline; PKK blamed
• Assad reportedly directs troops from tribal heartland as rebels flood capital

Follow World News on NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook