BEIRUT, Lebanon — Syrian rebels in the embattled Aleppo said on Thursday that government forces had reinforced their positions in the center of the city with troops and armor and were shelling contested areas on the second day of a ground offensive that the authorities say has inflicted heavy losses on forces seeking the overthrow of President Bashar al-Assad.
The conflicting claims reflected the swirl of urban warfare as much as the proliferation of rival versions of events in a propaganda war that has accompanied the military spread of the conflict since it started with peaceful protests in March 2011.
The activist Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Britain, said government forces sent three tanks and hundreds of soldiers in armored personnel carriers to a square in central Aleppo on Thursday while loyalist gunners pounded areas including the strategic neighborhood of Salaheddiin, which has seen some of the most sustained and bloody fighting. The organization also said the insurgent Free Syria Army had overrun a police post in the southern part of Aleppo Province.
Increasingly in recent days, each side has sought to depict the other as sustained by foreign forces, with the rebels claiming that Russia and Iran — Mr. Assad’s sturdiest international and regional allies — have sent advisers, while state media insist that rebels ranks are swollen with foreign fighters.
In a report from Aleppo on Thursday, the official SANA news agency said that the government had inflicted “heavy losses” on the rebels in a part of the city known as New Aleppo while government troops “continued purging” neighborhoods, including Salaheddiin, of what were termed “mercenary terrorists” from the Persian Gulf sheikdoms backing the rebels.
SANA claimed that “huge numbers” of rebels had been killed or wounded while other fighting involved rebel supporters from Libya, Yemen and Afghanistan.
The purpose of the claims of foreign involvement — which could not be independently verified because of restrictions on independent reporting — seemed to be to deny the rebels’ claim to legitimacy, at least in the eyes of the government’s supporters. The rebels themselves have secured broad Western and regional diplomatic support.
Since the collapse of efforts by the United Nations and the Arab League to halt the fighting, there has been little sign of new diplomacy likely to secure a broad consensus.
Iran has issued several announcements of a conference on Syria to be convened on Thursday in Tehran. The semiofficial Fars News Agency quoted Hussein Amir Abdollahian, the deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, as saying on Wednesday that “a remarkable number of interested and influential regional and world states” were sending emissaries.
But hours before the conference was supposed to begin, Iran had not disclosed which countries would be represented, and official Iranian media remained silent on Thursday about the gathering.
The developments came a day after rebel fighters in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, said Wednesday that government forces had opened a ground assault, forcing them to pull back from parts of the city because their ammunition was running low.
Residents reported receiving ominous cellphone text messages asking them to cooperate with the government. One text, signed by the Syrian Army, read: “Dear brothers, informing about terrorists means you are saving yourself and your family.”
Both the opposition and Syrian state television said the Syrian military had tried to reclaim, where much of the fighting has been concentrated.
A rebel commander identified as Abu Mohammed, chief of the insurgent Shahbaa Brigade in Aleppo, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that the fight with loyalist soldiers would apparently be long because of an ammunition shortage among the insurgent fighters, which meant they had to stage a tactical retreat pending further supplies. He said their daily needs included at least 60 rocket-propelled grenades, often used against armored vehicles, to counter a buildup of government forces, including tanks and snipers, in Salaheddiin, in the city’s southwest corner.
Other commanders spoke of a significant buildup by government troops near the southern edge of the city, which is Syria’s commercial heart.
Syrian state television reported Wednesday that the army had already reclaimed Salaheddiin, seizing ammunition caches and killing several “terrorists” — the government’s term for the armed opposition — while arresting others, including fighters from unidentified countries.
In Jordan, the state news agency reported that Syria’s prime minister, Riyad Farid Hijab, had completed his widely reported defection by arriving in Jordan early Wednesday morning — not Monday, as Jordanian officials and Syrian rebels and activists had all initially reported. A Syrian activist at the border also said in an interview that Mr. Hijab crossed on Wednesday, but Col. Malik al-Kurdi, a deputy commander for the Free Syrian Army, which arranged Mr. Hijab’s departure, disputed that account.
“He was in a bordering town inside Jordan, a tribal area,” Mr. Kurdi said. “He had some cousins there, and he did not approach the official authorities until today.”
Analysts said Jordan might have been deceived or uncertain in its response because it has tried to stay out of the conflict.
“They did not take a position on the first day of the defection because they were scared of a reaction,” said Talal Atrissi, a Lebanese political analyst. “They might also have been protecting him for security reasons.”
Disputed accounts also arose regarding the identities of dozens of Iranian hostages seized in Syria over the weekend and an equally contentious assertion by the insurgents that they had killed a Russian general acting as a military adviser to forces around the capital, Damascus.
A rebel group calling itself the Hawks Special Operations Battalion said in a video posted on YouTube that it had “eliminated” the Russian, Gen. Vladimir Petrovich Kochyev. The video showed what the rebels said was a copy of an identity card issued by the Russian military. The Russian news media denied the rebel claim, quoting the general as saying he was in Moscow.
Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency said the Iranian foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, had told Iranian reporters that “some” of the Iranian hostages in Syria seized last weekend were retired members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. But, he was quoted as saying, “Their appearance and clothes and documents show they are honest pilgrims.”
Iran has insisted that the captives are religious pilgrims, while their captors say they were on a military mission.
Hours later, an unidentified Foreign Ministry official denied the minister’s reported remarks on Iran’s Arabic-language state television channel, Al Alam.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Twitter that if the meeting takes place in Tehran, “Russia will be represented by its ambassador to Iran.”
At the United Nations, France announced that it was organizing a ministerial-level meeting for members of the Security Council on Aug. 30, “examining the humanitarian situation in Syria and neighboring countries.”
In Washington, John O. Brennan, the Obama administration’s counterterrorism adviser, suggested that the United States was reviewing the possibility of establishing a no-flight zone in northern Syria. Other administration officials have suggested there is no appetite for such an intervention.
“These are things the United States government has been looking at very carefully, trying to understand the implications and trying to understand the advantages and disadvantages of this,” Mr. Brennan said in response to a question during a forum of the Council on Foreign Relations. Asked whether a no-flight zone was “a nonstarter,” Mr. Brennan said, “I don’t recall the president ever saying that anything was off the table.”
Damien Cave and Dalal Mawad reported from Beirut, Lebanon, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Reporting was contributed by Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Ellen Barry from Moscow, Steven Lee Myers from Washington, Rick Gladstone from New York, and Ranya Kadri from Amman, Jordan.
The conflicting claims reflected the swirl of urban warfare as much as the proliferation of rival versions of events in a propaganda war that has accompanied the military spread of the conflict since it started with peaceful protests in March 2011.
The activist Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, based in Britain, said government forces sent three tanks and hundreds of soldiers in armored personnel carriers to a square in central Aleppo on Thursday while loyalist gunners pounded areas including the strategic neighborhood of Salaheddiin, which has seen some of the most sustained and bloody fighting. The organization also said the insurgent Free Syria Army had overrun a police post in the southern part of Aleppo Province.
Increasingly in recent days, each side has sought to depict the other as sustained by foreign forces, with the rebels claiming that Russia and Iran — Mr. Assad’s sturdiest international and regional allies — have sent advisers, while state media insist that rebels ranks are swollen with foreign fighters.
In a report from Aleppo on Thursday, the official SANA news agency said that the government had inflicted “heavy losses” on the rebels in a part of the city known as New Aleppo while government troops “continued purging” neighborhoods, including Salaheddiin, of what were termed “mercenary terrorists” from the Persian Gulf sheikdoms backing the rebels.
SANA claimed that “huge numbers” of rebels had been killed or wounded while other fighting involved rebel supporters from Libya, Yemen and Afghanistan.
The purpose of the claims of foreign involvement — which could not be independently verified because of restrictions on independent reporting — seemed to be to deny the rebels’ claim to legitimacy, at least in the eyes of the government’s supporters. The rebels themselves have secured broad Western and regional diplomatic support.
Since the collapse of efforts by the United Nations and the Arab League to halt the fighting, there has been little sign of new diplomacy likely to secure a broad consensus.
Iran has issued several announcements of a conference on Syria to be convened on Thursday in Tehran. The semiofficial Fars News Agency quoted Hussein Amir Abdollahian, the deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, as saying on Wednesday that “a remarkable number of interested and influential regional and world states” were sending emissaries.
But hours before the conference was supposed to begin, Iran had not disclosed which countries would be represented, and official Iranian media remained silent on Thursday about the gathering.
The developments came a day after rebel fighters in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, said Wednesday that government forces had opened a ground assault, forcing them to pull back from parts of the city because their ammunition was running low.
Residents reported receiving ominous cellphone text messages asking them to cooperate with the government. One text, signed by the Syrian Army, read: “Dear brothers, informing about terrorists means you are saving yourself and your family.”
Both the opposition and Syrian state television said the Syrian military had tried to reclaim, where much of the fighting has been concentrated.
A rebel commander identified as Abu Mohammed, chief of the insurgent Shahbaa Brigade in Aleppo, said in a telephone interview on Wednesday that the fight with loyalist soldiers would apparently be long because of an ammunition shortage among the insurgent fighters, which meant they had to stage a tactical retreat pending further supplies. He said their daily needs included at least 60 rocket-propelled grenades, often used against armored vehicles, to counter a buildup of government forces, including tanks and snipers, in Salaheddiin, in the city’s southwest corner.
Other commanders spoke of a significant buildup by government troops near the southern edge of the city, which is Syria’s commercial heart.
Syrian state television reported Wednesday that the army had already reclaimed Salaheddiin, seizing ammunition caches and killing several “terrorists” — the government’s term for the armed opposition — while arresting others, including fighters from unidentified countries.
In Jordan, the state news agency reported that Syria’s prime minister, Riyad Farid Hijab, had completed his widely reported defection by arriving in Jordan early Wednesday morning — not Monday, as Jordanian officials and Syrian rebels and activists had all initially reported. A Syrian activist at the border also said in an interview that Mr. Hijab crossed on Wednesday, but Col. Malik al-Kurdi, a deputy commander for the Free Syrian Army, which arranged Mr. Hijab’s departure, disputed that account.
“He was in a bordering town inside Jordan, a tribal area,” Mr. Kurdi said. “He had some cousins there, and he did not approach the official authorities until today.”
Analysts said Jordan might have been deceived or uncertain in its response because it has tried to stay out of the conflict.
“They did not take a position on the first day of the defection because they were scared of a reaction,” said Talal Atrissi, a Lebanese political analyst. “They might also have been protecting him for security reasons.”
Disputed accounts also arose regarding the identities of dozens of Iranian hostages seized in Syria over the weekend and an equally contentious assertion by the insurgents that they had killed a Russian general acting as a military adviser to forces around the capital, Damascus.
A rebel group calling itself the Hawks Special Operations Battalion said in a video posted on YouTube that it had “eliminated” the Russian, Gen. Vladimir Petrovich Kochyev. The video showed what the rebels said was a copy of an identity card issued by the Russian military. The Russian news media denied the rebel claim, quoting the general as saying he was in Moscow.
Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency said the Iranian foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, had told Iranian reporters that “some” of the Iranian hostages in Syria seized last weekend were retired members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. But, he was quoted as saying, “Their appearance and clothes and documents show they are honest pilgrims.”
Iran has insisted that the captives are religious pilgrims, while their captors say they were on a military mission.
Hours later, an unidentified Foreign Ministry official denied the minister’s reported remarks on Iran’s Arabic-language state television channel, Al Alam.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on Twitter that if the meeting takes place in Tehran, “Russia will be represented by its ambassador to Iran.”
At the United Nations, France announced that it was organizing a ministerial-level meeting for members of the Security Council on Aug. 30, “examining the humanitarian situation in Syria and neighboring countries.”
In Washington, John O. Brennan, the Obama administration’s counterterrorism adviser, suggested that the United States was reviewing the possibility of establishing a no-flight zone in northern Syria. Other administration officials have suggested there is no appetite for such an intervention.
“These are things the United States government has been looking at very carefully, trying to understand the implications and trying to understand the advantages and disadvantages of this,” Mr. Brennan said in response to a question during a forum of the Council on Foreign Relations. Asked whether a no-flight zone was “a nonstarter,” Mr. Brennan said, “I don’t recall the president ever saying that anything was off the table.”
Damien Cave and Dalal Mawad reported from Beirut, Lebanon, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Reporting was contributed by Hwaida Saad from Beirut, Ellen Barry from Moscow, Steven Lee Myers from Washington, Rick Gladstone from New York, and Ranya Kadri from Amman, Jordan.