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| In this Thursday, Oct. 25, 2012 photo, smoke rises from the Karmal Jabl neighborhood, during clashes between rebel fighters and the Syrian army in Aleppo, Syria. |
BEIRUT (AP) -- A Syrian warplane flattened a three-story building, suspected rebels detonated a deadly car bomb and both sides traded gunfire in several hotspots across the country Saturday, activists said, leaving a U.N.-backed holiday truce in tatters on its second day.
The
unraveling of the cease-fire marked the latest setback to ending
Syria's civil war through diplomacy. Foreign military intervention is
unlikely, raising the grim prospect of a drawn-out war of attrition
between President Bashar Assad and those trying to topple him.
The
proposed four-day truce during the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha had
been a long shot from the start since international mediator Lakhdar
Brahimi failed to get solid commitments from all combatants. Fighting
dropped off in the first hours of the cease-fire Friday, but by the end
of the day, activists said 151 people had been killed in bombings and
shootings, a standard daily toll in Syria.
On
Saturday, the first regime airstrike since the start of the truce
reduced a three-story building in the Arbeen suburb of the capital,
Damascus to rubble, killing at least eight men, said the Britain-based
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which compiles reports from
activists.
In the remote eastern town of Deir
el-Zour, assailants detonated a car bomb near a military police
compound, then opened fire at those rushing to the scene, killing a
total of eight people and causing extensive damage, the Observatory
said. Syrian media denied there were casualties. The attack bore the
hallmarks of Jabhat al-Nusra, a radical rebel-allied Islamic group that
has rejected the cease-fire.
The Syrian air
force also bombed rebel positions Saturday during a fierce battle for
control over the main road linking Aleppo, Syria's largest city, with
the capital, activists said. Earlier this month, rebels seized Maaret
al-Numan, a town along the highway and besieged a nearby military base,
disrupting regime supplies to embattled Aleppo. The Syrian air force has
responded with sustained bombing raids on area villages.
By
late Saturday, at least 76 people had been killed across Syria,
including 20 Syrian soldiers, activists said.
The Observatory reported
deadly regime shelling and sniper attacks in several locations, while
Syrian state-media said rebels ambushed a number of military positions.
Military
analyst Joe Holliday said neither side has an incentive to halt
fighting, noting that rebels have disrupted regime supply routes to the
northern provinces of Aleppo and Idlib. "The regime can't accept the
current military status quo without a fight and the rebels have no
reason to since they believe they have the momentum," said Holliday, a
researcher at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington.
Brahimi's
spokesman declined comment Saturday on the apparent failure of his
initiative. It's not clear what Brahimi's next move could be, since the
international community is divided over the Syria conflict that erupted
19 months ago.
Assad allies Russia and China
have shielded the regime against harsher U.N. Security Council
sanctions, while the rebels' foreign backers have shied away from
military intervention.
The U.S., meanwhile, is
averse to sending strategic weapons to help the rebels break the
battlefield stalemate, fearing they will fall into the hands of militant
Islamists, who are increasingly active in rebel ranks.
The
al-Qaida-inspired Jabhat al-Nusra, for example, is believed to be on the
front lines in Aleppo and near Maaret al-Numan.
When
Brahimi, the U.N.-Arab League envoy, first floated the idea of a
holiday truce, he did not say what his long-term plan was. Even a
temporary reduction in violence during such a truce would not have been a
springboard for talks between Assad and the opposition on ending the
war. Syria's opposition says it will only negotiate if Assad resigns, a
step the Syrian leader has refused to take.
Some
said Brahimi's initiative allowed a paralyzed international community
to show briefly that it was doing something to try to end the war that
has claimed more than 35,000 lives and displaced hundreds of thousands.
Shadi
Hamid of the Brookings Doha Center said the truce at least "provides
the illusion of movement, that something is being done, that the
international community is still trying to find a solution."
The
U.S. said Friday that both sides have violated the holiday cease-fire,
but singled out the regime. In the previous attempted truce six months
ago, the Syrian military violated key provisions, such as withdrawing
troops from urban centers, and was widely held responsible for the
collapse of the cease-fire.
Syrian Foreign
Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdessi on Saturday accused the U.S. of being
one-sided. He said Syria remains committed to halting military
operations. He said all cease-fire violations were the result of
attacks, most of them carried out by organizations that originally
rejected the truce, an apparent reference to Jabhat al-Nusra. The
spokesman said Syria has sent messages to the U.N. Security Council
concerning the violations.
Syrian state media accused the rebels of breaking the truce from the start.
One of the deadliest attacks Friday was a car bomb attack in a residential area of Damascus.
The
state-run news agency SANA on Saturday quoted the director of Damascus
Hospital, Dr. Adib Mahmoud, as saying the hospital received 15 dead
civilians, including eight children, and 92 wounded, among them 65
children. Activists had put the death toll at 11.
Also
Saturday, Lebanese broadcaster LBC TV said journalist Fidaa Itani, one
of its employees covering Syria's civil war, was detained by the rebels
and is being held in the town of Azaz near the Turkish border.
The
station quoted a local rebel leader in Azaz, Abu Ibrahim, as saying
that rebels suspected Itani after he filmed many videos of rebels
operations in Aleppo. Itani's Lebanese cellphone was closed when The
Associated Press tried to reach him.
The area
also was the site of the May kidnapping of 11 Shiite Lebanese pilgrims
who were on their way home from Iran. Two have been released while
rebels say they will hold the others until Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, the
leader of Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group, apologizes to the Syrian
people for supporting Assad.
