The Washington Post.
BEIRUT — Syrian warplanes bombed the nation’s largest city Tuesday,
activists said, a dramatic escalation in the 16-month uprising and a
stark sign of the government’s growing desperation as it tries to
reverse the recent momentum of rebel forces.
Aleppo, like Damascus, the Syrian capital, had long been seen
as a stronghold of support for President Bashar al-Assad. But the unrest
has spread to the city, Syria’s commercial capital, in recent days,
adding to a sense that the regime is losing control after the assassinations last week of four of its top security officials in a bombing.
Tuesday’s
aerial bombing of Aleppo, the first of its kind in the conflict, was
part of a coordinated assault by government forces that included heavy
artillery shelling and rockets launched from military helicopters. The
attacks targeted Tariq Bab, a residential area east of Aleppo, as well
as the neighborhoods of Sakhour and Masaken Hanano in Aleppo, according
to the Local Coordination Committees, an activist network.
Although
helicopter gunships have been used in the past, the government’s
decision to deploy fixed-wing aircraft appeared to be an effort to
intimidate the rebel forces by signaling that the regime had yet to use
its full military arsenal. Syria has one of the largest air forces in
the Middle East, and its use in battling the rebels could give the
government a critical advantage over a rebel force that has struggled to
acquire heavy weapons.
