Aleppo

BEIRUT - Syrian President Bashar Assad on Wednesday exhorted his military to maintain "continued preparedness," as human rights groups condemned an apparent rebel execution of Assad loyalists in the embattled northern city of Aleppo. Assad lauded his troops' role in "confronting the criminal terrorist gangs," a reference to the rebels fighting across a wide swath of the country, in a statement marking the anniversary of the founding of the army, state media reported. Meanwhile, video surfaced online appearing to show the execution of members of a loyalist clan in an Aleppo neighborhood.

TARTUS, Syria - War may be ravaging much of Syria, but there is no sign of conflict on bustling streets here, where diners wearing designer sunglasses order freshly caught fish at seaside cafes and gaze out on a palm-fringed expanse resembling a slightly tattered version of southern France or the Greek isles. Absent are the rows of pulverized apartment blocks that mark parts of battleground cities like Homs, Damascus and Aleppo. But that doesn't mean this ancient port - once home to Phoenicians, Romans and Crusaders - hasn't suffered its share of losses.

WASHINGTON - Delivering weapons and ammunition to beleaguered Syrian rebels will take weeks, White House officials acknowledged Friday as the administration's decision to supply arms set off a debate about how far, and how fast, President Obama's plunge into the conflict will take him. The move, after months of hesitation, has been widely viewed as a possible turning point toward far greater U.S. involvement in the 2-year-old civil war. But the...

WASHINGTON - Delivering weapons and ammunition to beleaguered Syrian rebels will take weeks, White House officials acknowledged Friday as the administration's decision to supply arms set off a debate about how far, and how fast, President Obama's plunge into the conflict will take him. The move, after months of hesitation, has been widely viewed as a possible turning point toward far greater U.S. involvement in the 2-year-old civil war. But the...

BEIRUT - Some of the fiercest clashes in weeks in the Syrian city of Aleppo were reported Friday as rebels said they were pressing a "decisive" battle for the besieged northern metropolis. As night fell, it was unclear whether either side had made any substantial advances in the city, which has been divided between government and opposition forces for more than two months. The battle had evolved into a brutal war of attrition until Friday's surge in urban combat. There was no overall casualty count from Friday's clashes in Aleppo, Syria's most populous city and its commercial hub. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled the city and the once-vibrant economy has ground to a halt since fighting broke out in July.

ANTAKYA, Turkey - Clashes between troops and rebels flared up Tuesday in the heart of Aleppo's old city in northern Syria. The rebels seized the centuries-old Umayyad Mosque, which for months has been used as a military encampment and checkpoint by regime forces, after a day of fighting, Aleppo activists said. The mosque sits near the medieval citadel, the city's signature landmark and a strategic site high above the surrounding neighborhood, which remains in the hands of the military.

BEIRUT -- The bodies of dozens of young men, apparently victims of summary execution, were found along a small river in the war-ravaged northern Syria city of Aleppo, opposition activists said Tuesday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based pro-opposition group, said it had managed to document the names of at least 17 of the 65 men whose corpses were pulled from along the waterway in the city's Bustan al-Qasr district. Amateur video purported to be from the scene showed mud-caked bodies and streaks of blood along the riverbank.

BEIRUT - Fierce clashes and hours of bombardment were reported Saturday in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, where rebels and government forces have been bracing for a critical battle in the nation's commercial hub. It wasn't clear whether Saturday's fighting signaled the start of a major government offensive to retake the city, a confrontation that could prove a decisive moment in the 17-month rebellion against Syrian President Bashar Assad....

ALEPPO, Syria - In a two-room apartment where the paint is peeling off the walls, a woman talked about the bombardment of her neighborhood as her granddaughters, ages 3 and 4, sat nearby clutching teddy bears. "They tell me, 'Grandma, tell them not to hit us, not to injure us, not to kill us,'" said the woman, who like others in this article didn't want to give her first name. "We're just civilians. What's our crime? We're not with this side or this side. " Two weeks into a fierce Syrian government offensive in Aleppo, few residents remain in the Salahuddin neighborhood, where some estimate more than 100,000 used to live in addition to hundreds of displaced families fleeing the shattered city of Homs who found cheap housing here.

BEIRUT - Syrian opposition forces said Tuesday that they had captured a strategic military air base near the embattled northern city of Aleppo, the latest air facility reportedly overrun by insurgents. The reported capture of the Jarrah air base, about 40 miles east of Aleppo, came after a 17-day siege during which forces loyal to President Bashar Assad were cut off from supplies, said a representative  - reached by Skype  - of the Liwa al Islam group, one of the rebel units reported to have taken the airfield.

WASHINGTON - The White House declared Thursday that Syria had crossed a "red line" by using chemical weapons in that country's civil war, and in response, U.S. officials said, President Obama had authorized sending arms to some rebel groups. The arms will be provided to the rebel Supreme Military Council, an official said. The council is the military arm of an umbrella group that represents more moderate factions of the forces arrayed against the government of President Bashar Assad.

The civil war in Syria is heading in the wrong direction. In the last year, rebels had won control of big slices of territory, including much of the country's largest city, Aleppo. But those gains prompted a surge of military aid to Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime: urban guerrillas from Lebanon's Hezbollah and Iraq's Shiite Muslim militias, combat advisors from Iran's Revolutionary Guard and antiaircraft missiles from Russia (to prevent "hotheads" from trying to impose anything like a no-fly zone, an official in Moscow said Monday)

BEIRUT - Last week's allegations from top U.S. officials that Syrian forces probably deployed chemical weapons against rebels come amid an array of disputed  reports about purported chemical attacks in Syria. There have been at least three incidents - all unconfirmed - in which reports surfaced publicly that chemical weapons had been deployed in Syria, either by the government or rebels. All have been relatively small scale considering the fact that agents such as sarin can cause mass casualties.

 BEIRUT -- A top Syrian official on Friday denied U.S. and Western charges that Syria has deployed chemical weapons against rebels fighting to overthrow the government of President Bashar Assad.  “The U.S.-British and Western allegations in general on that issue do not have any credibility,” Syrian Information Minister Omran Zoubi told Russian television during a visit to Moscow, Syria's close ally. The denial comes after U.S. officials said Thursday for the first time that it was likely that Syria had used chemical weapons on a small scale, though definitive proof was still lacking.

BEIRUT - In a strong message of solidarity, Muslim clerics across Damascus on Friday denounced the kidnapping earlier this week of a pair of Syrian Christian bishops abducted at gunpoint. Imams and preachers at mosques throughout the Syrian capital said in Friday sermons that  the kidnappers were  “violating the sanctity of Christian and Islamic clergymen,” the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported. Greek Orthodox Archbishop Paul Yazigi and Syriac Orthodox Archbishop Yohanna Ibrahim were abducted Monday when gunmen stopped their vehicle near the battleground northern city of Aleppo, where both are based.

WASHINGTON - The White House said for the first time that there was evidence Syria had used chemical weapons in its civil war, but administration officials called for a broader United Nations investigation and edged away from declaring Damascus had crossed a "red line" that might trigger U.S. intervention. According to a White House letter to Congress, U.S. intelligence agencies assessed "with varying degrees of confidence" that President Bashar Assad's forces had used small amounts of sarin gas, a deadly nerve agent banned by international treaty.

ALEPPO, Syria - In million-dollar apartments in a neighborhood of the city as yet unscathed, the battle for Aleppo plays out daily on flat-screen TVs. Amid imported sofas and abstract art, the revolution doesn't seem so close. But as the call for night prayers rang out from the minaret of the nearby mosque on a recent day, two loud explosions boomed. "Do you hear that?" a father of seven asked, briefly looking away from the TV. "It's like this every night. " From the balcony, which on this night let in a little cool summer breeze, his family can occasionally see smoke rising above other Aleppo neighborhoods that are under attack by forces loyal to President Bashar Assad.

BEIRUT - Syrian forces on Thursday renewed attacks against rebel strongholds in the nation's two largest cities, highlighting the determination of President Bashar Assad's government to crush resistance in Damascus and the northern city of Aleppo. For a second consecutive day, opposition activists said, the military used mortars and airstrikes in Daraya, a suburb south of Damascus, the capital. "They are shelling it at an insane pace," said Moaz Shami, a Damascus-based activist.

BRUSSELS - U.S. officials said Tuesday that they are not persuaded that Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime used chemical weapons against rebels, despite the strongest accusations to date from Israel. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who is in Brussels for a North Atlantic Treaty Organization ministerial meeting, said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not prepared to assert that chemical weapons had been used when they discussed a new Israeli intelligence assessment Tuesday.

JERUSALEM - Israel's accusation that Syria used chemical weapons against rebels raises the prospect that Damascus crossed what President Obama has termed a "red line," but appears unlikely to overcome deep resistance of the U.S. and its allies to military involvement in the country's civil war. Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, Israel's top military intelligence analyst, said at a security conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday that Syria used chemical weapons, probably a sarin-based nerve agent, in attacks March 19 near Aleppo and Damascus.