Regime Claims Aleppo District as 85 Killed in Syria
The Damascus regime said its forces recaptured a strategic district of Aleppo city, a claim rejected by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which gave an nationwide toll of 85 people killed nationwide on Tuesday.
At least three children were also killed in the country, including a six-year-old killed by soldiers who opened fire on the car she was in on the motorway linking Aleppo to Damascus, the Britain-based watchdog said.
The six-year-old was killed after midnight, while another child died from mortar shelling in the town of Irbin just northeast of the capital and a teenage died of shelling elsewhere in Aleppo province, it added.
State media said the army had retaken the Aleppo district of Arkoub, but the Observatory said there was still fighting in the area.
A military official told an AFP reporter in Aleppo that "army operations have been completed in Arkoub" and that security forces were conducting "door-to-door raids in search of rebels".
Syrian television showed footage of soldiers carrying Kalashnikovs and patrolling Arkoub, where high-rise buildings were shelled out and rubble lined the streets.
State media said "our armed forces have cleansed Arkoub district of terrorists," citing a military source.
Municipal maintenance teams "have entered Arkoub to rehabilitate the infrastructure destroyed by the terrorist mercenaries," the official SANA news agency said, using regime terminology for the rebels.
But the Britain-based Observatory said clashes in Arkoub had not ceased, and fighting was also ongoing in nearby Sakhur district.
"There is still heavy fighting in the area. The army cannot claim control when there are still clashes," the Observatory's Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
The AFP correspondent at the scene also heard sporadic machinegun fire coming from far inside the area.
Army checkpoints had been set-up at three entrances to Arkoub and soldiers were preventing people from entering the area for fear of mines.
Residents, meanwhile, spoke of neighborhoods devastated by the fierce fighting that first erupted in Aleppo in mid-July, including apartment blocs on central Suleiman al-Halabi street,
"I went to my area to see if everything is okay to move home but the situation is still not good," one resident identifying himself as Salah told AFP, adding that soldiers were on the streets although clashes had ceased.
"There are so many buildings destroyed. My home was okay, but the houses around me were uninhabitable," he said, adding that he saw burned out cars, bullet casings and huge pieces of rubble covering the streets.
In Damascus, explosions shook the headquarters of an army administration building that manages schools for children of killed veterans, according to the Observatory. State media said seven people were wounded.
There was also deadly violence in other parts of the country, including in the eastern oil hub of Deir Ezzor where 11 civilians were killed in bombardments, and in the southern province of Daraa, the cradle of the anti-regime uprising, the Observatory said.
Rebels in Daraa captured three regular troops, including a lieutenant after clashes on the border with Jordan, the Observatory said.
And at least five troops and nine rebels were killed in fighting that erupted after insurgents attacked army checkpoints near the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights.
In the coastal city of Banias, security forces torched properties and arrested 14 residents, including women and children, the watchdog said.
Nationwide, at least 85 people -- 43 civilians, 26 soldiers and 16 rebels -- were killed in shelling, clashes and other violence, according to the Observatory, which gathers its information from a network of activists, medical sources and lawyers on the ground.
Source: Agence France Presse
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