BEIRUT — With warplanes circling overhead, Syrian attack helicopters pounded rebel-held neighborhoods in Aleppo on Tuesday in an escalation of the battle for the country’s commercial capital and largest city, residents and activists said.
After a pair of rebel assaults on the country’s two main cities and a bombing that wiped out some of his top security last week advisers, President Bashar Assad on Tuesday reshuffled his top intelligence posts, dismissing one general and appointing a new national security council chief to replace the one killed in the blast.
The Syrian regime, shaken after last week’s attack on Assad’s inner circle and rebel advances, has turned to heavy weapons like artillery and helicopter gunships to uproot the opposition fighters in Damascus and now in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city with about 3 million people.
“It’s like a real war zone over here, there are street battles over large parts of the city,” said Aleppo-based opposition activist Mohammed Saeed by telephone as the sound of gunfire and explosions could be heard in the background. “Aleppo has joined Homs and Hama and other revolutionary cities.”
Four days into the rebel attack on Aleppo, Saeed estimated that the opposition fighters were holding large chunks of the city.
Facing a resilient opponent, the government responded Tuesday with attack helicopters to pound rebellious neighborhoods, and fighter jets circling overhead periodically roared down and broke the sound barrier in an apparent attempt to cow the rebels.
“It’s the worst day of fighting in Aleppo so far, but I can’t tell what’s happening on the ground or who’s in control,” said a local writer in the Zahra neighborhood, about 3 miles from some of the heaviest clashes.