REPORT: Fierce fighting in Syria, ministry official killed

Gunmen killed a government official in a Damascus restaurant, Syrian state media and activists reported Friday as regime troops and rebels fought fierce battles near the Lebanese border, killing 18 people in Syria's third largest city of Homs.                         

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the government official, Ali Ballan, was gunned down late Thursday in Mazzeh, a western neighborhood of the Syrian capital. Ballan was head of public relations at the Ministry of Social Affairs and a member of Syria's relief agency, the Observatory said.                           

The state-run SANA news agency said "terrorists" opened fire on Ballan while he was dining at the restaurant, killing him instantly. The government refers to opposition fighters as terrorists, denying there is an insurgency against President Bashar Assad's regime.                           

Since Syria's crisis began two years ago, a number of government and security officials, as well as regime supporters, have been assassinated in the capital, Damascus.                   

Last month, a suicide bomber struck a mosque, killing a top Sunni Muslim preacher and outspoken Assad supporter, Sheikh Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti.                            

On July 18, a bomb inside a high-level crisis meeting killed top security officials, including the defense minister and his deputy, who was also Assad's brother-in-law, and wounded the interior minister. Rebels claimed responsibility for that blast.                           

Heavy fighting was reported near the contested town of Qusair in the central Syrian province of Homs, along the Lebanese border.                          

The border region in Homs is strategic because it also links Damascus with the coastal enclave that is the heartland of Assad's minority Alawite sect, a Shiite offshoot. The coast also is home to the country's two main seaports, Latakia and Tartus. Assad's regime is dominated by his Alawites while the rebels are mostly from the country's Sunni majority.       

The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said Syrian army warplanes bombarded the area around Qusair on Friday.                       

Both activist groups also reported heavy clashes in Damascus's southern suburb of Daraya, which the regime has been trying to recapture for months. They also reported clashes in Aleppo, Idlib and Raqqa in the north and in the southern province of Daraa, where the uprising against Assad began.                           

In the country's east, there were reports of heavy fighting in the oil-rich Deir el-Zour province, with clashes between government troops and rebels concentrated on the airport in the outskirts of the provincial capital. There were no immediate reports on the casualties in the fighting.                  

Syria's crisis began with largely peaceful protests against Assad's regime in March 2011 but eventually turned into a civil war. More than 70,000 people have been killed in the conflict so far, according to the United Nations.                           

More than 5 million Syrians have fled their homes because of the relentless fighting, seeking shelter in neighboring countries or in other parts of Syria where the violence has temporarily subsided.                           

In the past few weeks, UN's humanitarian agencies have warned that they were running low on resources and that without additional funds they would be forced to scale back relief efforts.                                

The Security Council has been deadlocked for months on the Syrian war, and even the most modest attempts to end the bloodshed have failed.                     

Western and Arab nations blame the conflict on Assad's government. Russia insists on assigning equal blame for the suffering to the Syrian opposition and rebels fighting on the ground, and has cast vetoes, along with China, to block draft council resolutions.                           

Later Friday, the joint UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, was scheduled to brief the Security Council behind closed doors.                          

On another note, the United States is poised to significantly expand its non-lethal military aid to the Syrian opposition.                                         

The move comes as European nations weigh easing an arms embargo to potentially supply rebels with arms and increase pressure on President Bashar Assad to step down.           

US Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to announce a contribution of more than $100 million in defensive military supplies. That could include items such as body armor, armored vehicles, night vision goggles and advanced communications equipment. Kerry's announcement is expected at an international conference on Syria he will attend Saturday in Turkey.                             

That's according to officials speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to preview Kerry's announcement publicly.


AP


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