Beirut: Regime forces shelled the southern Damascus neighbourhood of Tadamon on Monday, hours after the most violent battles in the capital since the outbreak of the Syrian revolt, activist said.
“Mortar shelling resumed in the early morning,” said the Local Coordination Committees (LCC), a grassroots network of activists.
The LCC added that regime troops and rebel fighters of the Free Syrian Army also clashed in the western Damascus district of Kfar Sousa.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported “dawn battles on the road south of Kfar Sousa, between rebel fighters and soldiers who were in a convoy passing through the area.”
“I did not sleep all night,” a resident of nearby Jaramana said. “It was a real war zone.”
Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said he heard “rockets and shooting until the early hours of the morning,” and that he saw four armoured vehicles heading towards the embattled areas.
One Tadamon resident said he could not leave the neighbourhood on Sunday.
A newspaper seller in Ain Tarma, just outside Damascus, said he had to make a long detour in order to reach his place of work on Monday.
“Fighting broke out in the early morning,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity, adding that “RPGs and guns were used.”
The pro-government newspaper Al Watan, meanwhile, carried a front page headline on Monday apparently addressed to anti-regime activists that read: “You will never take Damascus.”
According to the newspaper army and security forces were battling “terrorist groups who are trying to take root in the suburban districts” of southern Damascus, including Tadamon, Al Hajar Al Aswad, Daff Al Shok, Nahr Aishe, Qadam and Kfar Sousa to the west.
The town of Qatana, 20km away from the capital, was also shelled on Monday.
Elsewhere, regime troops shelled the besieged Homs districts of Khaldiya, Jourat Al Shiah and Qarabees, while FSA fighters clashed with the army at the edges of the battered neighbourhoods.
To the north, regime forces raided the central city of Hama, scene of fierce clashes and a series of loud blasts, the Observatory said.
Regime troops also raided eastern Deir Al Zor, where snipers shot dead a man, the watchdog said.
It also reported that goalkeeper Mustafa Shakoush was abducted in the coastal city of Latakia “because of his support for the revolution and for opposition activists in the nearby town of Haffe.”
The Observatory said violence across Syria on Sunday had killed 105 people — 48 civilians, 16 rebels and 41 soldiers. The toll cannot be independently verified.
According to the watchdog more than 17,000 people have been killed since the uprising erupted against the regime of President Bashar Al Assad in mid-March last year.
