BEIRUT, Lebanon — Damascus was tense on Tuesday as clashes between the Syrian army and rebels near the city center extended into a third day, with government forces throwing a security cordon around some embattled neighborhoods, firing from helicopters and reinforcing the number of tanks on the streets.
The urban combat in Damascus overshadowed international diplomacy aimed at halting the Syria conflict, which intensified ahead of a United Nations Security Council vote this week on whether to extend the mission of 300 United Nations monitors, who have been basically trapped in their hotel rooms since last month, their work suspended.
There was also new evidence, reported by Israel’s intelligence chief, that President Bashar al-Assad was moving troops into Damascus from Syria’s border with the disputed Golan Heights territory held by Israel, a possible indication of the seriousness of the fighting that was roiling neighborhoods at the president’s doorstep.
The epicenter of the Damascus fighting remained an area in the capital’s southwest where street battles first erupted on Sunday, particularly the Midan neighborhood where rebel fighters concentrated after being chased out of surrounding quarters.
“The heaviest clashes are going on in Al-Midan and the neighboring areas,” said one spokesman for an activist group in Damascus. “Regime forces are threatening to bombard the whole area and telling civilians to evacuate their houses.”
Despite other fighting in the northern suburb of Qaboun, plus some sweeping statements from some rebel fighters that the ultimate battle for Damascus had been joined, numerous opposition members suggested it was basically more intense skirmishing in a limited number of neighborhoods — a continuing of gun battles that started Sunday.
“The battle for Damascus has not started,” said Abu Raed, a coordinator in Qaboun for the Free Syrian Army, the lose coalition of rebel fighters, interviewed in Turkey and using only one name because he plans to return to Syria. “It is more ebb and flow; these skirmishes are just a test as our fighters infiltrate then withdraw.”
There were signs the government was taking it seriously, however, with one video posted online showing tank and troop reinforcements rolling into Damascus and activists reporting more tanks entering Midan. Another showed a tiny pickup truck groaning under the weight of more than a dozen shabiha, the militiamen deployed by the government to subdue neighborhoods, apparently headed toward the fighting.
In Jerusalem, Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, Israel’s military intelligence chief, told a parliamentary committee that the Syrian government had withdrawn forces from the Golan Heights to redeploy them in Damascus. He did not give more specifics.
Satellite images show that Mr. Assad is directing artillery at highly populated regions and acting “extremely brutally, which displays their desperation and indicates they are unable to find more efficient solutions to pacify the uprisings,” General Kochavi said.
Indeed, the government seemed prepared to employ the same tactics in and around Midan that it had in other cities like Homs and Hama, where it momentarily lost control — isolating them, waiting for the rebels’ ammunition to run low and then pounding them into submission.
But that is a riskier, more fraught policy in Damascus, the capital, because it is such a symbolic prize and the government has tried to use the stability there throughout the 16 months of the uprising to project the sense that it remains in control of the entire country.
Elias Hanna, a retired Lebanese officer and military analyst, said the fighting in Damascus was important for three reasons: control there is the main pillar of the Assad regime; attacking in the capital indicates the rebels have ramped up their game; and the task of maintaining calm there will tie down a lot of elite troops that the regime has used to try to crush the uprising throughout Syria.
“Damascus is a symbol, it is the center of gravity of the Syrian regime, so this has a psychological, moral, military and political consequences,” Mr. Hanna said. “This is a war of attrition, the Free Syrian Army has a hit and run strategy, this is urban warfare, it favors the rebel forces and not the conventional forces.”
But Mr. Hanna was also dismissive of claims that this was any kind of end game, saying that the rebels would have to control much more territory and be able to make direct assaults on key institutions. “We are seeing changes, but it is still not decisive,” he said.
The official Syrian news media concentrated their reports on what was happening in the Midan neighborhood, saying Syrian security forces were pursing “armed terrorist groups” — the government’s catchall description for the opposition — and inflicting heavy losses on them there.
Eyewitnesses said that the government had deployed a huge security presence in Damascus, basically cutting off all the embattled neighborhoods from the rest of the city. There were also reports that government employees in the area, including the staff of Tishreen newspaper, had been sent home early.
Unlike on Monday, when activists streamed live images of an assault in Midan and a number of videos showing heavy clashes and sandbagged barricades appeared online, anti-government activists posted relatively few images of street fighting from Tuesday.
Activists in the Qaboun suburb reported that helicopter gunships were firing at fighters in the area, and they claimed that that rebel forces had shot down one of them. That could not be independently corroborated and there was no video evidence.
Videos posted by antigovernment activists showed night scenes of gunfire and helicopter noise as well as daytime images of what was said to be helicopter gunships flying over the capital. One person posting on Twitter said he could see a helicopter shelling a Damascus suburb.
There were also reports from Qaboun of rebel soldiers firing on government targets, including a police station and the headquarters of an elite Revolutionary Guard unit.
Elsewhere, there were scattered reports from eyewitnesses and postings on Twitter of gunfire in the very heart of the city, around the Seven Seas Square and near the old Hamidiyah bazaar, but the heavier fighting did not reach there.
The United Nations observers still in Damascus did not leave their hotel to investigate the fighting, said Sausan Ghosheh, the spokeswoman for the monitoring mission. Their work has been suspended since June 16 due to attacks against them, and she noted there was no cease-fire in order for them to be able to operate.
Reporting was contributed by Hwaida Saad from Istanbul, J. David Goodman from New York, Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem and an employee of The New York Times from Damascus, Syria.
The urban combat in Damascus overshadowed international diplomacy aimed at halting the Syria conflict, which intensified ahead of a United Nations Security Council vote this week on whether to extend the mission of 300 United Nations monitors, who have been basically trapped in their hotel rooms since last month, their work suspended.
There was also new evidence, reported by Israel’s intelligence chief, that President Bashar al-Assad was moving troops into Damascus from Syria’s border with the disputed Golan Heights territory held by Israel, a possible indication of the seriousness of the fighting that was roiling neighborhoods at the president’s doorstep.
The epicenter of the Damascus fighting remained an area in the capital’s southwest where street battles first erupted on Sunday, particularly the Midan neighborhood where rebel fighters concentrated after being chased out of surrounding quarters.
“The heaviest clashes are going on in Al-Midan and the neighboring areas,” said one spokesman for an activist group in Damascus. “Regime forces are threatening to bombard the whole area and telling civilians to evacuate their houses.”
Despite other fighting in the northern suburb of Qaboun, plus some sweeping statements from some rebel fighters that the ultimate battle for Damascus had been joined, numerous opposition members suggested it was basically more intense skirmishing in a limited number of neighborhoods — a continuing of gun battles that started Sunday.
“The battle for Damascus has not started,” said Abu Raed, a coordinator in Qaboun for the Free Syrian Army, the lose coalition of rebel fighters, interviewed in Turkey and using only one name because he plans to return to Syria. “It is more ebb and flow; these skirmishes are just a test as our fighters infiltrate then withdraw.”
There were signs the government was taking it seriously, however, with one video posted online showing tank and troop reinforcements rolling into Damascus and activists reporting more tanks entering Midan. Another showed a tiny pickup truck groaning under the weight of more than a dozen shabiha, the militiamen deployed by the government to subdue neighborhoods, apparently headed toward the fighting.
In Jerusalem, Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, Israel’s military intelligence chief, told a parliamentary committee that the Syrian government had withdrawn forces from the Golan Heights to redeploy them in Damascus. He did not give more specifics.
Satellite images show that Mr. Assad is directing artillery at highly populated regions and acting “extremely brutally, which displays their desperation and indicates they are unable to find more efficient solutions to pacify the uprisings,” General Kochavi said.
Indeed, the government seemed prepared to employ the same tactics in and around Midan that it had in other cities like Homs and Hama, where it momentarily lost control — isolating them, waiting for the rebels’ ammunition to run low and then pounding them into submission.
But that is a riskier, more fraught policy in Damascus, the capital, because it is such a symbolic prize and the government has tried to use the stability there throughout the 16 months of the uprising to project the sense that it remains in control of the entire country.
Elias Hanna, a retired Lebanese officer and military analyst, said the fighting in Damascus was important for three reasons: control there is the main pillar of the Assad regime; attacking in the capital indicates the rebels have ramped up their game; and the task of maintaining calm there will tie down a lot of elite troops that the regime has used to try to crush the uprising throughout Syria.
“Damascus is a symbol, it is the center of gravity of the Syrian regime, so this has a psychological, moral, military and political consequences,” Mr. Hanna said. “This is a war of attrition, the Free Syrian Army has a hit and run strategy, this is urban warfare, it favors the rebel forces and not the conventional forces.”
But Mr. Hanna was also dismissive of claims that this was any kind of end game, saying that the rebels would have to control much more territory and be able to make direct assaults on key institutions. “We are seeing changes, but it is still not decisive,” he said.
The official Syrian news media concentrated their reports on what was happening in the Midan neighborhood, saying Syrian security forces were pursing “armed terrorist groups” — the government’s catchall description for the opposition — and inflicting heavy losses on them there.
Eyewitnesses said that the government had deployed a huge security presence in Damascus, basically cutting off all the embattled neighborhoods from the rest of the city. There were also reports that government employees in the area, including the staff of Tishreen newspaper, had been sent home early.
Unlike on Monday, when activists streamed live images of an assault in Midan and a number of videos showing heavy clashes and sandbagged barricades appeared online, anti-government activists posted relatively few images of street fighting from Tuesday.
Activists in the Qaboun suburb reported that helicopter gunships were firing at fighters in the area, and they claimed that that rebel forces had shot down one of them. That could not be independently corroborated and there was no video evidence.
Videos posted by antigovernment activists showed night scenes of gunfire and helicopter noise as well as daytime images of what was said to be helicopter gunships flying over the capital. One person posting on Twitter said he could see a helicopter shelling a Damascus suburb.
There were also reports from Qaboun of rebel soldiers firing on government targets, including a police station and the headquarters of an elite Revolutionary Guard unit.
Elsewhere, there were scattered reports from eyewitnesses and postings on Twitter of gunfire in the very heart of the city, around the Seven Seas Square and near the old Hamidiyah bazaar, but the heavier fighting did not reach there.
The United Nations observers still in Damascus did not leave their hotel to investigate the fighting, said Sausan Ghosheh, the spokeswoman for the monitoring mission. Their work has been suspended since June 16 due to attacks against them, and she noted there was no cease-fire in order for them to be able to operate.
Reporting was contributed by Hwaida Saad from Istanbul, J. David Goodman from New York, Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem and an employee of The New York Times from Damascus, Syria.