BEIRUT, Dec 2 (Reuters) – Syrian army forces pounded
rebel-held suburbs around Damascus with fighter jets and rockets
on Sunday, activists said, killing at least ten and wounding
dozens in an offensive to stop rebels closing in on the capital.

Rebels planned to push into the city centre from their
strongholds on the outskirts and fighting has been fierce. The
army sent reinforcements after a week of rebel advances,
including the capture of two military bases near the capital.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Rebel strikes against military bases across Syria have exposed President Bashar al-Assad’s weakening grip in the north and east of the country and left his power base in Damascus vulnerable to the increasingly potent opposition forces.

Rebel fighters, who have taken at least five army and air installations in the last 10 days, are still waging an asymmetrical war against a powerful army backed by devastating air power, and predict months of conflict still lie ahead.

BEIRUT, Nov 27 (Reuters) – Rebel strikes against military
bases across Syria have exposed President Bashar al-Assad’s
weakening grip in the north and east of the country and left his
power base in Damascus vulnerable to the increasingly potent
opposition forces.

Rebel fighters, who have taken at least five army and air
installations in the last 10 days, are still waging an
asymmetrical war against a powerful army backed by devastating
air power, and predict months of conflict still lie ahead.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian aircraft attacked towns in the country’s north and east and killed at least five people in a strike on an olive oil press as fighting raged in the capital Damascus on Tuesday, opposition activists said.

Rebels battled government forces in the Damascus suburb of Kfar Souseh, on the edge of the center of the capital housing the government of President Bashar al-Assad, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based monitoring group.

BEIRUT, Nov 23 (Reuters) – Syria on Friday condemned
Turkey’s request for NATO to deploy Patriot defence missiles
near their common border, calling it “provocative”, after a
spate of fighting there that has raised fears of the Syrian
civil war embroiling the wider region.

In the first Syrian response to Ankara’s request earlier
this week, a ministry source told Syrian state television that
Damascus would hold Turkey’s prime minister responsible for
increasing tensions along the frontier.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syria’s new opposition leaders are struggling to win over powerful Islamist rebel combat units, whose radical elements question whether the “hotel warriors” of the fledgling coalition can offer their fighters any real support.

Islamists have established themselves as the most effective, best armed and fastest growing units in the 20-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah urged Arab states on Thursday to use all political means possible, including raising oil prices, to end Israeli air strikes on Gaza, suggesting this could be as effective as military attacks on the Jewish state.

The leader of Lebanon’s powerful Shi’ite militant group, which fought a war with Israel in 2006, called on countries with ties to the United States and the West to pressure them to help stop the air strikes.

BEIRUT, Nov 15 (Reuters) – Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan
Nasrallah urged Arab states on Thursday to use all political
means possible, including raising oil prices, to end Israeli air
strikes on Gaza, suggesting this could be as effective as
military attacks on the Jewish state.

The leader of Lebanon’s powerful Shi’ite militant group,
which fought a war with Israel in 2006, called on countries with
ties to the United States and the West to pressure them to help
stop the air strikes.

ALEPPO, Syria (Reuters) – As Syria’s rebellion has slid from peaceful protest into all-out war, women have had to find new roles in the struggle to oust President Bashar al-Assad.

Umm Hassan, wrinkled and stooped, spends her days in her tiny concrete home, cooking rice and lentils for her sons and their comrades fighting in northern Syria to push government soldiers out of the frontier region.

IDLIB, Syria (Reuters) – Every morning, Amjad goes through two army checkpoints to attend a school run by the Syrian government. Every night, he sits by his father’s side to plot attacks to bring that government down.

Amjad doesn’t see the strangeness of his predicament – reciting chants of loyalty to President Bashar al-Assad in the army-controlled city where his school is, and going home to a village where everyone knows his father’s rebel unit just blew up an Assad tank convoy.