Syria rejects truce as rebels intercept reinforcements
SYRIA: The Syrian regime rejected a UN call for a unilateral
ceasefire on Wednesday as rebels confronted columns of tanks and troops
sent to retake a town on the road to main battleground city Aleppo.
Rebels launched an attack on army positions in the northern
metropolis’s landmark Umayyad Mosque in the heart of the Old City adding
to the urgency for the army to restore its supply lines.
Turkey forced a Syrian passenger plane to land in Ankara to check its
cargo for weapons and warned its own aircraft to avoid Syrian airspace
for fear of retaliation as tensions soared between the two neighbours.
President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, on the back foot with rebels
controlling swathes of northern Syria, insisted the insurgents must stop
the violence first as it turned down the call issued the previous day by
UN chief Ban Ki-moon.
“We told Ban Ki-moon to send emissaries to the countries which have
influence on the armed groups, so that they put an end to the violence,”
foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Maqdisi said.
As he spoke, the embattled regime was sending tanks from Mastumah
south of Idlib city to Maaret al-Numan, a rebel source told an AFP
reporter in the nearby town of Sarmin.
The military also deployed soldiers along the highway to Maaret al-Numan
to secure the passage of its heavy armour to the strategic town on the
Damascus-Aleppo highway.
The insurgents were battling to halt their advance, however, using
rocket launchers and improvised explosive devices, the source said,
adding three tanks were damaged.
The intensifying battle for Maaret al-Numan was “very important,”
said the rebels who took control of the town on Tuesday after 48 hours
of fierce fighting and heavy shelling.
AFP |
