Syria rebels fight for police academy near Aleppo

A French freelance photographer working in Syria has died after being hit by shrapnel while covering an opposition group for Reporters Without Borders, the French government said on Sunday.            

Olivier Voisin was following the operations of an armed opposition group near Idlib, in northwestern Syria, Reporters Without Borders said. 
                               
Voisin, born in 1974, was taken to the international hospital in the Turkish border city of Antakya but subsequently died from wounds to his head and arm, the office of French President Francois Hollande said in a statement.                    

Earlier, Syrian activists said that rebel fighters have launched a fresh offensive on a government complex near the embattled northern city of Aleppo.   
                                    
The director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdul-Rahman, says the complex includes a police academy and several smaller army outposts in charge of protecting it west of the city.                            

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

The rebels control large swaths of land outside Aleppo and whole neighborhoods inside the city, which has been a major battlefield in civil war since July.
                  
In the international positions, Turkey's prime minister is urging the world to speak out about atrocities by Syria's leader, whom he called a "mute devil" for carrying out attacks on his own people but not standing up to Israel.                           

Recep Tayyip Erdogan received applause Sunday at a government communications forum in the United Arab Emirates, which has joined other Gulf nations in backing Syrian rebels seeking to topple President Bashar Assad.                      

Erdogan urged world leaders to denounce attacks on civilians by the Syrian regime. He described Assad as a "mute devil" for exercising brutality against Syrians while not pressing harder to challenge Israel over its occupation of the Golan Heights.          

For his part, the US Secretary of State John Kerry embarked Sunday on his first official overseas voyage in a diplomatic mission to bring new ideas to capitals in Europe and the Middle East on how to end nearly two years of brutal violence in Syria.                

Kerry left Washington to start a grueling nine-nation, 10-day trip that will take him to America's traditional western European allies of Britain, Germany, France and Italy along with Turkey, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. In addition to Syria, he will focus on conflicts in Mali and Afghanistan and Iran's nuclear program.          

In turn, the US has condemned the latest rocket attacks targeting Syria's northern city of Aleppo, which killed dozens of people, according to opposition activists.                     

The US state department said the strikes were "the latest demonstrations of the Syrian regime's ruthlessness", the US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.           


REUTERS/AP/LBCI