Heavy fighting yesterday August 5 continued in Syria's second city of Aleppo as government troops prepared to launch another attack on the city to flush out remaining rebels. Military sources said about 20,000 troops were massed around the city in readiness for a massive offensive, the BBC said.
President Bashar al-Assad's forces reportedly used artillery, planes and a helicopter gunship to attack rebel positions. The Syrian military has been steadily building up its presence around the city with large numbers of tanks and other armoured vehicles. In the capital, Damascus, army sources yesterday said they had pushed rebels from the last stronghold, the southern neighbourhood of Tadamon.
Abdel Jabar Oqaida, a rebel commander in Aleppo told the AFP news agency that Salah al-Din District had come under the heaviest bombardment since the battle began on July 20. A senior government security official told the agency the battle for Aleppo had not yet begun. He described what was happening as the appetizer, warning that the main course was yet to come. The fight for the strategic city has been intensifying over the last few days, with Syrian State television reporting that troops had inflicted huge losses on terrorist mercenaries in Salah al-Din and in other nearby areas.
Meanwhile, 48 Iranian pilgrims were kidnapped from a bus in the capital, Damascus on Saturday August 4, the Iranian Embassy Consular Chief in the city told Iran's State television. Al Jazeera Television quoted officials as saying the pilgrims were on their way to the airport when they were kidnapped. Lebanese media reported on Saturday that several of the pilgrims had managed to escape from their kidnappers after the area was shelled, but there was no independent confirmation of the reports.
Hundreds of thousands of Iranians travel each year to Syria to visit a Shia pilgrimage site, the shrine of Sayeda Zainab in Damascus. Several dozen Iranian pilgrims and engineers were abducted in December and January, but most were released months later. Earlier in May, 11 Lebanese Shia pilgrims were also kidnapped by an armed group inside Syria.
