Syrian Army

BEIRUT -- The embattled Syrian government took the unusual step Wednesday of denying reports that young men were being grabbed at checkpoints and drafted into the army as part of a new general call for military conscription. The official news service also dismissed suggestions that almost two years of fighting an internal rebellion had eroded the capabilities of Syria's once imposing military, which has suffered heavy casualties and mass desertions. The Syrian military is at its “highest levels of readiness and capability, and [is]

MARAAT NUMAN, Syria - Each morning, after saluting the Syrian flag and before the warplanes take off, soldiers at army bases across Syria are given political orientation. During the lectures, conscripts and career officers alike are repeatedly told that opposition forces are fueled by sectarian hatred and want to tear the country apart. The message - of a war waged by Sunni Muslims against Syria's Alawite and Shiite minorities - is well understood. To Syrian soldiers, "It has essentially become sectarian; the Sunnis fight out of fear and the Alawites fight out of conviction," said Muhammad Zinedden, a Sunni conscript who defected in February from the 17th Engineering Regiment in Raqqa province.

Syrian tanks and troops moved Sunday to crush resistance in the rebellious suburbs of Damascus, opposition groups reported, bringing the bloody battle that has ravaged the nation for months to the doorsteps of the nation's capital. The fierce fighting reported outside Damascus was the latest sign that Syria's armed insurgency — long concentrated in provincial hotbeds of revolt like Homs, Hama and Dara — has now reached the edge of the city from which the Assad family has ruled Syria in autocratic fashion for more than 40 years.

BEIRUT -- The embattled Syrian government took the unusual step Wednesday of denying reports that young men were being grabbed at checkpoints and drafted into the army as part of a new general call for military conscription. The official news service also dismissed suggestions that almost two years of fighting an internal rebellion had eroded the capabilities of Syria's once imposing military, which has suffered heavy casualties and mass desertions. The Syrian military is at its “highest levels of readiness and capability, and [is]

Rival militias fought hand-to-hand Monday for control of southern Beirut's Shia Muslim slums and rained shells on each other's positions in the grim shantytowns in spite of Syrian army orders to stop the carnage. Police said that 65 people were killed and 150 wounded Monday, bringing total casualties in the Shia territorial war to 154 dead and 367 wounded. Fighting began Friday between the moderate Amal militia, which has Syria's backing, and the radical, pro-Iranian Hezbollah (Party of God).

MARAAT NUMAN, Syria - Each morning, after saluting the Syrian flag and before the warplanes take off, soldiers at army bases across Syria are given political orientation. During the lectures, conscripts and career officers alike are repeatedly told that opposition forces are fueled by sectarian hatred and want to tear the country apart. The message - of a war waged by Sunni Muslims against Syria's Alawite and Shiite minorities - is well understood. To Syrian soldiers, "It has essentially become sectarian; the Sunnis fight out of fear and the Alawites fight out of conviction," said Muhammad Zinedden, a Sunni conscript who defected in February from the 17th Engineering Regiment in Raqqa province.

Lebanese Premier Rashid Karami called for Syrian troops to impose order in West Beirut after the latest outbreak of militia fighting in the capital's Muslim sector. Karami told reporters, "I see no other force . . . but the Syrian army" able to end the fighting between Shia Muslim and Druze militias. In other violence in the Beirut area, meanwhile, Shia militiamen traded gunfire with Palestinian guerrillas in the besieged Borj el Brajne refugee camp.

BEIRUT - Syrian forces and antigovernment rebels fought bruising skirmishes Saturday in the rubble of Dariya, a war-torn western suburb of Damascus that both sides have identified as necessary for victory because of its proximity to the capital city's center and the main military airfield. Dariya, with many of its buildings leveled by airstrikes and shelling, is a symbol of the destruction of ordinary life in Damascus, which claims to be the world's longest-inhabited city. On Saturday, tanks tried to enter Dariya, and a MIG fighter jet shelled the neighborhood that was once home to more than 200,000 people but now has about 10,000.

TRIPOLI, Lebanon - Late that evening, Abdel Hakim Ibrahim finally confirmed his father's worst fear: He had left for Syria. "I've crossed the border: Please forgive me," he said in a text message as midnight approached. "God be with you. " That was the last his family heard from Ibrahim, 19, a student described as introverted and pious. Ibrahim is among Lebanon's lost young men - 21 who reportedly disappeared into neighboring Syria one evening late last month and walked straight into a Syrian army ambush.

JERUSALEM -- For the second day in a row, a mortar shell fired from Syria landed in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights on Monday, prompting Israeli forces to fire back, officials said Monday. Unlike Israel's retaliatory fire on Sunday, which military officials described as a “warning shot,” the strike on Monday destroyed a mobile Syrian artillery unit, an Israeli military spokeswoman said. Though the Syrian shell did not cause damage or injury, Israel has grown increasingly frustrated by apparently errant mortar rounds landing in the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria during the 1967 war. Israel has warned Syria that it will begin to respond to each incident rather than ignore them as it has in the past.

BEIRUT - The rebel Free Syrian Army said Saturday that it was shifting its command headquarters from Turkey to Syria, a move meant to bolster its standing among fighters in the country and supporters abroad. In a video statement, the group's leader, Col. Riad Assad, said the command structure had moved to "liberated areas" in Syria. Although the shift has obvious symbolic importance, it was unclear how much significance it would have on the battlefield in Syria, where the rebellion aimed at ousting the government of President Bashar Assad is in its 19th month.

BEIRUT - An audacious bombing aimed at the heart of Syria's feared security services killed three high-ranking officials in Damascus and left President Bashar Assad's grip on power appearing more tenuous than at any time during the 16-month uprising against his family dynasty. Government reinforcements were reported to have been deployed in the streets of Damascus on Wednesday, a fourth day of fighting in the capital, which had largely been spared the violence racking much of the country.

ALONG THE SYRIA-TURKEY BORDER - The bomb maker was displaying his homemade mortar launcher, crafted from a tube and bits of metal. "Whatever we need to produce, we Google it," said the factory worker turned rebel commander and arms procurer in a border village where goats and insurgents walk along steep mountain paths. Most of the time, the weapon remains stashed under a bed in the rented home where the insurgent leader lives with his wife and five children, including two teenage boys who have joined his rebel band.

Emboldened by its takeover of a rebel-held neighborhood of Homs, the Syrian army shelled other parts of the city and nearby villages Sunday in an effort to regain control of the area, antigovernment activists said. Shells rained down through the day on the villages of Rastan, Tall Kalakh and Qusair, to which Free Syrian Army rebels were said to have fled from the battered Baba Amr neighborhood. The western city of Homs has suffered the most concentrated fighting and the highest number of casualties since the uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad began last March.

Syrian tanks and troops moved Sunday to crush resistance in the rebellious suburbs of Damascus, opposition groups reported, bringing the bloody battle that has ravaged the nation for months to the doorsteps of the nation's capital. The fierce fighting reported outside Damascus was the latest sign that Syria's armed insurgency — long concentrated in provincial hotbeds of revolt like Homs, Hama and Dara — has now reached the edge of the city from which the Assad family has ruled Syria in autocratic fashion for more than 40 years.