Rebels Pull Back in Aleppo

By Damien Cave, Dalal Mawad, The New York Times

08 August 12

ebel fighters in Aleppo, Syria's largest city, said on Wednesday that government forces had launched a ground assault, forcing them to pull back from parts of the city because their ammunition was running low, as new disputes arose around the contentious issue of foreign military support for President Bashar al-Assad, and for the opposition.

In Aleppo, several rebel commanders said shelling and bomb attacks early Wednesday morning had reached new levels of intensity.

Residents who had not fled the city reported receiving text messages on their cellphones in the morning 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 the strategic neighborhood of Salaheddiin, 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 that the fight with loyalist soldiers would apparently be a long battle because of an ammunition shortage.

A spokesman for the main rebel brigade in Aleppo said heavy clashes were occurring, but neither side had advanced.

But Abu Mohmammed said some rebel fighters had to retreat because of the ammunition shortage.

Specifically, he said the rebels needed a daily supply of at least 60 rocket-propelled grenades, often used against armored vehicles, to counter a buildup of government forces including tanks and snipers in Salaheddiin, a middle-class neighborhood 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 "cleaned" Salaheddiin, seizing ammunition caches and killing several "terrorists" - the official term for the rebels - while arresting others, including fighters from unidentified foreign countries.

Rebels said troops had already moved into parts of the area. But broader suggestions that a long-awaited ground offensive had begun against the rebels could not be independently confirmed.

The developments coincided with several conflicting reports involving the role of other countries in Syria's conflict.

In Jordan, the state news agency reported that Syria's prime minister, Riyad Farid Hijab, 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.

Jordanian officials did not respond to requests for comment on the discrepancy, but analysts said Jordan either lied initially to confuse the Syrian government and protect Mr. Hijab from capture at the border, or is changing its story now to minimize its own role in the original defection, to maintain its public stance of neutrality.

"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."

There were also new, disputed accounts regarding the identity of dozens of Iranian hostages taken prisoner in Syria over the weekend and an equally contentious claim by the insurgents that they had killed a senior Russian general acting as a military adviser to government 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" Gen. Vladimir Petrovich Kochyev. The video showed what the rebels said was a copy of an identity card issued by the Russian military.

There was no independent corroboration of the claim, which was denied strenuously in Moscow by Russian media reports saying the general had been in Syria but was currently on vacation outside Moscow. The same media outlets later quoted the officer by name as saying he was alive and in Moscow.

It was not clear whether the claims and counterclaims were part of the broader propaganda war between Damascus and its adversaries that has burgeoned in the information vacuum created by restrictions on independent reporting.

Russia, which has a naval base in Syria, is Mr. Assad's most important international sponsor, while Iran is his biggest regional ally.

Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency said Wednesday that Iran's foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, flying back from Turkey, had told Iranian reporters that "some" of the Iranian hostages in Syria seized last weekend were "retired" members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps. But he went on, "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 unnamed Foreign Ministry official denied the minister's reported remarks on Iran's Arabic-language Al Alam state television channel, saying there was "no truth in any reports linking the kidnapped Iranians in Syria to the Revolutionary Guards."

Confusion also accompanied official Iranian announcements of an international conference on Syria to be convened Thursday in Tehran. The semiofficial Fars News Agency quoted Hussein Amir Abdollahian, the deputy foreign minister for Arab and African affairs, as saying "a remarkable number of interested and influential regional and world states" were sending emissaries.

But less than 24 hours before the conference was to begin, Iran had not disclosed which countries would be represented at the conference. Its tentative nature was reflected in a Twitter message by Russia's Foreign Ministry, which said that "if the meeting takes place, 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 to discuss Syria, to be held on Aug. 30. The French mission to the United Nations, which currently holds the rotating post of Security Council president, said Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius would lead that conference, which would be devoted to "examining the humanitarian situation in Syria and neighboring countries."