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Clashes Worsen Misery in Syria’s Biggest Cities
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK and HALA DROUBI
Published: September 8, 2012
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Clashes between the Syrian military and rebel fighters
burst a main pipe that delivered drinking water to hundreds of
thousands of residents of Aleppo, opposition groups said Saturday, as
the United Nations refugee agency said more than 1.2 million Syrians
still inside the country, half of them children, had been displaced from
their homes.
The agency, which has remained active inside Syria
throughout the conflict, said the number of people in need of
assistance there had doubled since July to 2.5 million, out of Syria’s
population of about 21 million, not including the 250,000 refugees who
have fled to camps in neighboring countries. The sudden water shortage
in Aleppo was the latest hardship in a particularly acute humanitarian
crisis in Syria’s largest city, brought on by more than a month of
street fighting and weeks of air attacks. A witness and two opposition
groups that track the violence said Saturday that heavy shelling from
Syrian helicopters appeared to have ruptured the water pipe; The
Associated Press reported that a Syrian official blamed rebel sabotage.
The opposition groups, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the
Local Coordinating Committees, reported that water flooded the
neighborhoods of Al Midan and Bustan al-Basha. Activists distributed
video of brown water coursing over curbs and flooding basements as
residents waded past with children or weapons in their arms.
A rebel brigade was also trying to cut off food and water to a
contingent of soldiers inside the city, said Majed Abdulnoor, an
opposition activist interviewed online. He said that a rebel brigade had
besieged the Mudahami security building in Al Midan, blocking food,
water or ammunition from reaching soldiers inside. The shells that cut
off the water, Mr. Abdulnoor said, were fired in an attempt to free the
building.
After reporting a day earlier that they had captured a military
headquarters in the Aleppo neighborhood of Hanano, rebels said Saturday
that the battle was still under way, with parts of the sprawling
building still controlled by the government. Opposition groups
distributed video of fighters scaling stone walls with rifles across
their backs, or moving across a large interior courtyard that they said
was inside the security building. Another video showed the testimonies
of Syrians who said they were among the 350 prisoners that the rebels
said they had rescued from the building the day before.
Mr. Abdulnoor emphasized giving credit to all five of the rebel brigades
that participated in the attack on the headquarters — the latest sign
of tensions and rivalries among the rebel fighting groups. Some, he
said, numbered as few as six fighters, but each has its own name and
leader.
He also acknowledged the role of some foreign fighters in the assault. A
keen focus on foreign fighters has been a hallmark of the government’s
characterization of the conflict as a patriotic struggle against
interference from abroad, but their presence has also increased Western
worries about itinerant Islamist militants joining what started out as a
nonviolent democracy movement.
Most of the fighters in Aleppo are from the city, Mr. Abdulnoor said,
“but to be honest with you, there are some from other countries.” Some
brigades, he said, include a few Algerians, Egyptians, Tunisians, Palestinians and others from Persian Gulf countries.
But, he added of the foreign fighters: “Don’t get the false impression
that there are thousands of them. No, honestly there are tens, or a
little more.”
Opposition groups and residents said the Syrian military continued its
deadly drive to expel the rebels from the Damascus suburbs, shelling
their havens for days before soldiers and civilian militiamen, known as
shabiha, searched house by house for the holdouts.
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