• Syrian forces launch air attacks as rebels push on largest city

    Dozens are reported dead in Syria where opposition forces are fighting to maintain control of Syria's commercial capital and biggest city. NBC's Richard Engel reports.

    By NBC News and wire services

    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."

    Syria's government is acknowledging for the first time it has the ability to use chemical and biological weapons, though the government says those weapons wouldn't be used on the country's citizens. The Morning Joe panel – including New York Magazine's John Heilemann and the Council on Foreign Relations' Dan Senor and Richard Haass – discusses.

    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.

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  • Rebel fighter: Syria army firing on more villages after 'massacre'

    Rebels in Syria say Assad's forces had slaughtered at least 78 people, including women and children, but Assad's people say it was the rebels and the numbers were far fewer. ITN's Paul Davies reports. Warning: Some pictures in this report are disturbing.

    By F. Brinley Bruton, msnbc.com

    The Syrian army was on Thursday shelling more towns, just a day after at least 78 villagers were allegedly slaughtered by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, a rebel fighter told msnbc.com.

    "They are shooting now," the man, who asked to be called Abu Allaith to protect his family in Syria, told msnbc.com. He said helicopters were shooting at the villages of Safarneah, Taryesah and Makrameah near Hama. "I give you my word the helicopters are shooting by automatic gun."

    Hardly any foreign journalists are allowed into Syria so there was no way to independently verify his account. The Syrian government has blamed reported massacres and other violence on foreign-backed terrorists.

    Edlib News Network ENN

    Anti-Syrian regime protesters chant slogans and hold a banner in Arabic.

    Abu Allaith said he defected from the Syrian army in December when he was ordered to fire on civilians and was now a major with the rebel army. 

    He said he witnessed the attack on Mazraat al-Qubeir, the village near Hama where dozens of people, including around 40 women and children, were allegedly massacred on Wednesday. 

    UN: Monitors shot at trying to reach Syria 'massacre' village

    "I have seen what happened there last night. The government army have gone there and shoot (people) on the farms," he said.  "There is no Free Army there, nobody has weapons, (there are) just farmers."

    The Free Syrian Army is the main armed opposition group in Syria. 

    Abu Allaith said he was just over a mile from the hamlet of Mazraat al-Qubeir, near Hama, when it was attacked, although he and his comrades have since fallen back about nine miles as it became too dangerous. 

    He has not been able to reach over a dozen friends and acquaintances from Mazraat al-Qubeir since the alleged attacks, he said. 

    NYT: US envoy fears Syria conflict will develop into regional sectarian war

    "I am afraid for them, maybe they are killed, maybe they are arrested. Today I can't make ... contact with them," Abu Allaith said.

    Syrian activists say 100 people were killed by government supporters Wednesday in the province of Hama, including many women and children. Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts to quell the crisis continue to stall. NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.

    The report came as U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said monitors in Syria were shot at as they tried to reach the scene of the latest reported massacre. 

    11-year-old boy says he survived Syria massacre

    Wednesday's reported violence comes after last month's massacre of more than 100 civilians in Houla, also blamed by activists and many in the world community on forces supporting the Assad government.

    Syrian authorities have denied responsibility for the Houla killings, blaming foreign-backed Islamist militants.  

    The government also called the reports from Mazraat al-Qabeer "completely false," saying security forces had intervened at the request of residents after a "terrorist group committed ... a monstrous crime," killing nine women and children.

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  • UN: Monitors shot at trying to reach Syria 'massacre' village

    Rebels in Syria say Assad's forces had slaughtered at least 78 people, including women and children, but Assad's people say it was the rebels and the numbers were far fewer. ITN's Paul Davies reports. Warning: Some pictures in this report are disturbing.

    By msnbc.com news services

    Updated at 11:20 a.m. ET: BEIRUT -- United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday that U.N. monitors were shot at trying to get to the scene of the latest Syrian massacre in which at least 78 villagers were allegedly slaughtered by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

    Opposition activists said up to 40 women and children were among the dead in Mazraat al-Qubeir, near Hama, on Wednesday, posting film on the Internet of bloodied or charred bodies.

    Syrian activists say 100 people were killed by government supporters Wednesday in the province of Hama, including many women and children. Meanwhile, diplomatic efforts to quell the crisis continue to stall. NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.

    Confirmation of Wednesday's massacre will pile pressure on world powers to act, but they have been paralyzed by rifts pitting Western and most Arab states against Assad's defenders in Russia, China and Iran.

    The U.N. chief told the General Assembly that the unarmed observers were initially denied access to the scene in central Hama and "were shot at with small arms" while trying to get there. He did not mention any casualties.

    Ban said each day in Syria was seeing more "grim atrocities" and that for many months it had been evident that Assad and his government "have lost all legitimacy."

    Any regime that tolerates killings such as one in which 108 people were slain in the town of Houla on May 25 and Wednesday's attack near Hama "has lost its fundamental humanity," he said, condemning "this unspeakable barbarity." 

    Earlier, Syria's pro-government Addounia TV said U.N. observers had arrived in Mazraat al-Qubeir, but the chief of the U.N. mission said that Syrian troops and civilians had barred them.

    11-year-old boy says he survived Syria massacre

    "They are being stopped at Syrian army checkpoints and in some cases turned back," General Robert Mood, the head of the U.N. observer mission, said in a statement earlier on Thursday. "Some of our patrols are being stopped by civilians in the area."

    Syrian rebels reportedly killed dozens of Syrian soldiers over the weekend, following the massacres of civilians by the regime last week in Houla. Both Mitt Romney and Sen. John McCain are calling for the arms for the rebels. Former Ambassador to Syria Theodore Kattouf discusses.

    U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the latest reported massacre as unconscionable.

    "We are disgusted by what we are seeing (in Syria)," she told a news conference during a visit to Istanbul.

    'Completely false'
    The Syrian state news agency quoted an official source in Hama describing reports from Mazraat al-Qabeer as "completely false," saying security forces had intervened at the request of residents after a "terrorist group committed ... a monstrous crime", killing nine women and children.

    Syrian authorities have also denied responsibility for the Houla killings, blaming foreign-backed Islamist militants.

    As with the May 25 killings -- which Western powers blame on Assad's troops and loyalist "shabbiha" militia -- the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "shabbiha headed into the area after the shelling and killed dozens of citizens, among them women and children."

    Shabbiha, drawn mostly from Assad's minority Alawite sect that is an offshoot of Shiite Islam, have been blamed for the killings of civilians from the Sunni Muslim majority. That has raised fears of an Iraq-style sectarian bloodbath and the prospect of a wider regional confrontation between Shiite Iran and the mainly Sunni-led Arab states of the Middle East.

    NYT: US envoy fears Syria conflict will develop into regional sectarian war

    Reports of mass killings have emerged not even two weeks after a recent massacre that killed about 100 people. NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.


    Some 13,000 people have been killed in Syria over 15 months of repression and later armed rebellion.

    The main Syrian National Council opposition group responded to reports of the new massacre by calling for stepped-up military assaults on Assad's forces.

    The failure of a cease-fire brokered by U.N. envoy Kofi Annan in March to halt the bloodshed has raised questions about its continued worth.

    The 300-member group of U.N. truce observers has been in Syria for weeks.

    Events in Syria are difficult to verify as state authorities tightly restrict access for international media.

    Up with Chris Hayes panelists Colonel Jack Jacobs, MSNBC military analyst; Karam Nachar, an activist who has been working with opposition leaders in Syria; Jeremy Scahill of The Nation magazine; and Josh Trevino of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, discuss whether civil war is inevitable in Syria, and whether there's anything the United States and the world can do to stop it.

    Rebel groups inside Syria, which helped escalate what began as popular demonstrations for democracy into what is approaching a civil war, say they are no longer bound by Annan's cease-fire and are calling for more foreign arms and other support.

    Western leaders, wary of new military engagements in the Muslim world and especially of the explosively complex ethnic and religious mix that Syria represents, have offered sympathy but shown no appetite for taking on Assad's redoubtable armed forces, which can call on Iran and Russia for supplies.

    Assad: Syria faces 'real war waged from the outside'

    In Washington on Wednesday, the United States and Saudi Arabia, among dozens of mostly Western and Arab countries in the Friends of Syria working group, called for further economic sanctions against Syria including an arms embargo, travel bans and tougher financial penalties.

    Thirteen men were shot dead at close range in Syria. Activists claim the killers were government militia. The government blames the rebels. NBC's John Ray reports. Some of the images in this report may be disturbing.

    Separately, ministers and envoys from 15 countries and the European Union agreed at a meeting hosted by Turkey in Istanbul on Wednesday to convene a "coordination group" to provide support to the opposition but left unclear what this may entail.

    The U.S. and its allies in Europe, Turkey and the Arab world also agreed to work on a political transition plan for Syria, hoping to persuade Russia to join a broadened diplomatic effort to ease Assad out of power, a senior U.S. official said. 

    Syria agrees to wider aid efforts, UN says

    But with neither Russia nor China present, and both remaining hostile to the idea of global sanctions against the Syrian government or any Libya-style military intervention, it was unclear what effect the show of unity might produce. 

    Brutal shelling and attacks have made life inside of Syria's Homs harrowing and for those who try to flee, perilous.  NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.

    Speaking in Beijing, Russia's foreign minister presented a counterproposal for international action, proposing a conference on Syria but with an emphasis on pressuring opposition groups to respect Annan's peace plan. 

    Sergei Lavrov criticized the Friends of Syria meetings that the U.S. and its partners have been having for being "devoted exclusively to the support of the Syrian National Council and its radical demands." He said the Russian gathering would, by contrast, put pressure on the Syrian opposition to "end all violence and sit down for talks." 

    Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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  • Syria blames 'terrorist' bombs for deadly Hama blast

     

    By Reuters

    Syria blamed "terrorist" bomb-makers on Thursday for an explosion that ripped through a building and killed 16 people in the restive city of Hama, where hostility to President Bashar Assad runs deep.

    The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based anti-Assad organization tracking the 13-month-old conflict in which the United Nations says at least 9,000 people have died, gave the same death toll but said the cause of Wednesday afternoon's blast was not clear.

    The Local Coordination Committees, a grassroots opposition group, had said earlier that a military rocket had inflicted the carnage and put the death toll at more than 50.

    Whatever its origins, the blast dealt another blow to a two-week-old U.N.-backed truce that has failed to halt violence on both sides of the conflict, one of a string of uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa against autocratic rule.

    An activist said seven civilians and two rebel militiamen were killed in fighting in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor, while a resident of Zamalka on the outskirts of Damascus reported intense gun-battles.

    "There have been heavy clashes today, really heavy over the past couple hours," the man said. "I couldn't get close enough to see. There are checkpoints everywhere."

    Meanwhile the state news agency, SANA, said a school headmaster was blown up in a booby-trapped car in the northern city of Aleppo, and an "armed terrorist group" had shot dead four members of the same family in Erbin near Damascus.

    It also said two members of the security forces were killed in Deir al-Zor.

    Russian monitors
    United Nations monitors charged with checking the ceasefire engineered by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan are trickling in to and two are now based permanently in Hama, where many thousands of people were killed when Assad's late father, Hafez Assad, crushed an armed Islamist uprising 30 years ago.

    Activists have been dismayed at the pace of the observer deployment, and a senior U.N. official said this week it would take a month to put the first 100 monitors on the ground.

    Only 15 are in place so far out of an envisaged full-strength team of 300 to be led by Norwegian General Robert Mood.

    Sana said four monitors from Russia, Syria's most powerful ally, were on their way.

    The killing of a Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteer on Tuesday underscores the dangers the monitors may face.

    The International Committee of the Red Cross said three other aid workers were wounded when the clearly marked ambulance in which they were traveling came under fire near Damascus.

    Syria says it has completed withdrawing tanks and troops from populated areas in line with Annan's peace plan, but the former U.N. chief said on Tuesday Damascus had failed to meet all its commitments and the situation remained "unacceptable".

    France, leading Western calls for tougher action against Assad, says it planned to push next month for a "Chapter 7" Security Council resolution if Assad's forces did not pull back.

    Chapter 7 of the U.N. charter allows the Council to authorize actions which can include military force. But Western powers have disavowed any intention to intervene militarily in Syria, as they did last year in Libya.

    The U.N. is drawing up a major humanitarian effort for more than a million people affected by the conflict. A report seen by Reuters on Thursday said sewage networks had been damaged and water contaminated, setting the stage for outbreaks of water-borne diseases such as cholera. 

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  • Syrian troops launch ground assault on restive city

    Gianluigi Guercia / AFP - Getty Images

    A Free Syria Army member sits guard at a gate during the funeral of a man who was killed by shrapnel in Qusayr, 9 miles from Homs on Tuesday.

     

    By msnbc.com news services

    Heavy fighting broke out on Wednesday near the main rebel stronghold of Baba Amr in the city of Homs when Syrian troops began a ground assault, opposition sources told Reuters.

    "The army is trying to go in with infantry from the direction of al-Bassel football field and fierce confrontations with automatic rifles and heavy machine guns are taking place there," activist Mohammad al-Homsi told the news service from Homs.

    He said the military had shelled the area heavily on Tuesday and overnight before the ground attack started.

    While shelling continues on Homs, it was confirmed journalist Paul Conroy, of the Sunday Times, who was wounded in the attack that killed reporter Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik, is safely out of Syria.  ITN's Tim Ewart reports.

    The reports of a ground assault came as the United Nations put the death toll in the 11-month uprising against authoritarian President Bashar Assad at well over 7,500. Activists reported more than 250 dead in the past two days alone — mostly from government shelling in Homs and Hama province.

    Clinton: Syria's Assad could be labeled a war criminal

    Tunisia's president — the first since the country's own Arab Spring uprising toppled his predecessor — offered the Syrian leader asylum as part of a negotiated peace, an offer Assad will almost surely refuse.

    A Syrian diplomat reportedly stormed out of an emergency U.N. meeting amid renewed calls for a cease-fire to deliver humanitarian aid. A top human rights official told The Associated Press a U.N. panel's report concluded that members of the Damascus regime were responsible for "crimes against humanity."

    Rebel stronghold shelled as Syria vote result looms

    In shift, China backs aid
    In a possible significant change of tact, China backed international efforts to send humanitarian aid to Syria, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi said, after Western powers proposed a United Nations resolution authorizing humanitarian aid.

    It was not clear whether Yang's remarks mean China will consider the proposed new U.N. Security Council resolution. China is one of the five permanent members of the Council which have the power to veto such resolutions.

    "The pressing task now is for all sides to cease violence in the Syrian conflict, and to launch as soon as possible inclusive political dialogue and together deliberate on a reform plan," Yang told Elaraby, who has previously said Beijing's veto lost it diplomatic credit in the Arab world.

    'I think I will die,' man in Syria's besieged city of Homs says — then the line goes dead

    "The international community should create conditions for this, and extend humanitarian aid to Syria," added Yang.

    China is trying to win back diplomatic ground after its widely condemned handling of the Syrian crisis.

    Western powers said the U.N. Security Council would work on a draft resolution about extending help to stricken parts of Syria, and France urged Russia and China not to veto it, as they have previous drafts.

    Yang made the comments in a phone call late on Tuesday with the head of the Arab League, Nabil Elaraby, the official Xinhua news service reported on Wednesday.

    The bloodshed in Syria, where government forces have been bombarding neighborhoods held by opposition forces, has turned into a broader test setting Western powers against China and Russia over how the world should respond to civil turmoil.

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    Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.