Syrian youth stand in a building damaged by tank shells in a neighborhood of Damascus, Syria, after a raid by Syrian troops killed several rebels and civilians Thursday, April 5, 2012. Syrian troops launched a fierce assault Thursday, days ahead of a deadline for a U.N.-brokered cease-fire, with activists describing it as one of the most violent attacks around the capital since the year-old uprising began. (AP Photo) (Credit: AP)
SARAQEB, Syria — By late March, the Free Syrian Army in this restive city was bracing for trouble.
Although the rebels had controlled Saraqeb for months, government troops had just finished their conquest of surrounding cities, including the provincial capital, Idlib.
Saraqeb would no doubt be next, attacked by forces far better equipped than the rebels. The night before, rebel commanders had heard the tanks were coming on the military radio channel they monitored.
On the crisp, sunny morning of March 24, they saw the ominous sign of a full-blown government assault. A column of T-72 tanks rolled into the city center, emerging and disappearing between the city’s street blocks.
It was typical of the strategy Syrian forces had deployed to reclaim rebel strongholds throughout the country. From Hama to Homs and beyond, the tanks rolled in, shelling rebel positions before launching a broader attack. Once they controlled the city, activists said, regime militias would go door-to-door, arresting or executing anyone suspected of aiding the rebels.
It is this kind of assault that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has promised to halt as part of cease-fire negotiated by the United Nations and Arab League.
On the day that Assad had agreed to withdraw his tanks and troops, GlobalPost correspondent James Foley reveals how a violent government strategy has at least partially succeeded in reclaiming control Saraqeb.
MARCH 24:
When the tanks first arrived here in Saraqeb, a city of about 40,000, the rebels knew they were in trouble.
All that stood between them and a dozen or so 60-ton tanks was a smattering of AK-47s and a few RPGs. On street corners, the often-inexperienced rebels psyched themselves up for the impossible.
“Boom,” the first tank shell drove into the side of a multi-story building, clouding the air with plaster and dust and spraying fist-sized pieces of shrapnel into the street.
The fighters responded with shouts of “Allah Akbar!” as if it was their victory. It wasn’t. Soon one of their wounded volunteers was dragged off with an arterial bleed from his thigh. He would likely bleed to death.
One young fighter, a sweatband around his head, darted into the line of fire. Balancing an antiquated RPG launcher on his shoulder, he fired a rocket. But it wasn’t able to even puncture the tank’s frontal armor. In desperation, other fighters rolled out propane tank bombs.
But it was all in vain.
With their distinctive engines humming above the screams and gunshots, the tanks continued to crawl through the streets.
Sniper shots cracked over the heads of rebels who dared venture into the open. Eventually, the Free Syrian Army fighters who hadn’t already fled found themselves boxed into the central market.
“We have only God,” one fighter said.
Teens on opposite street corners peered at the approaching tank, some filming it with their cell phones. Syrian Army machine-gun bursts ran up the white tower of the central mosque. One fighter from a small village on the outskirts of the city attempted to fire his RPG. But it flamed out the wrong end like a defective Roman candle.
Maher Al Sufi, a well-known rebel fighter who had taken on tanks before, was not so lucky this time. He lingered in view of the T-72 for too long, or maybe at the wrong moment.
After the explosion and the cloud of white dust cleared, his rebel friends dragged his headless body around a corner, leaving a thick trail of blood. It appeared he’d taken a direct tank shell to the head.
“La illaha illa Allah,” cried his comrades, who then called his name as his body was taken away in the back of an open car trunk.
By late afternoon the fighters were in full retreat. The Al-Nour brigade, which claims to have more than 300 men, evacuated the school they had used as their base for months.
Remaining rebel fighters huddled together as darkness fell. Abdullah, a commander, sped his Toyota pickup through a maze of alleys, stopping to yell at his young volunteers for failing to signal as the tanks drove over a bridge he’d packed with explosives.
Although all could hear the heavy tank engines in the darkness, the opportunity, if there was one, had passed. Abdullah emptied his 9mm pistol clip into the night in frustration.
All of a sudden the cracks of an AK-47 rang down from the night sky. The fighters, confused, scattered back into alleys for cover.
The rebels frantically packed their blankets, water pipes and guns into trucks. Collecting as many families as they could, they sped into the night. They regrouped in the surrounding farms and small villages, plotting a return at the crack of dawn.
MARCH 25:
By early morning a ragtag group calling themselves the Al Farouk Katiba had gathered in an olive grove on the outskirts of the city. The fighters could hear the Syrian Army pressing forward with a full-scale attack in the distance.
In the field an old man hammered a screwdriver into the head of an antiquated RPG rocket in attempt to fix it. Young men watched, smoking.
The Al Farouk commander said 30 more tanks had come from the west that morning. The Syrian army had effectively locked the city down.
Some rebel fighters tried anyway, weaving through olive groves, skirting along partially constructed buildings and shuttered family homes, and dodging occasional sniper fire.
But two tanks were positioned along the highway, guarding a footbridge into the city. Spotting the rebels, the tanks started shelling in their direction. Explosions landed in the field beyond.
Before long, another mass retreat had begun. The group fled back through the houses and into the fields. Cars sped over hills and flat beds packed with youth followed through the hamlets, passing the faces of other men who’d also lost their cities. The shelling continued in the distance.
It took less than two days for the Syrian regime to regain control of Saraqeb, just as it had the city of Idlib a few weeks before.
“What can we do? Do we need to have 100 or 200 die a day for the world to help?” asked one rebel, who had defected from the Syrian army.
MARCH 26:
While the Syrian regime now controlled Saraqeb by military force, the Syrian government appeared to turn its attention to the families who live here and who it suspects are quietly loyal to the opposition.
So as the final phase of its strategy, it sent the Shabiha.
The Shabiha, a devoutly pro-regime militia, has operated in the shadows for decades. They control smuggling routes, and have earned a reputation for being above the law. Their name comes from the Arabic word for “ghosts,” and is now associated with regime torture and murder. There is little average Syrians seem to fear more.
Two activists living outside the country said Shabiha agents go house-to-house searching for names on their well-kept — and extensive — wanted lists.
“If they can’t find the son, they’ll take the father and hold him until the son comes,” said Nouri, a Syrian activist based in Belgium. “The Shabiha want to take revenge. The army is not driven in this way. They’re just doing their job.”
Residents all over Idlib Province say they won’t leave their immediate surroundings for fear of crossing an army checkpoint and finding out that their names had landed on one of these lists.
Even inside rebel strongholds like Saraqeb, Syrian intelligence forces were able to get names of protesters, fighters and those who associate with them, Nouri said.
Sermin, the small town of 15,000, shows what happens after Syrian security forces conquer a rebel stronghold. Sermin was shelled several days before Saraqeb. Its mosque was nearly destroyed. Some houses burned. And some of its residents executed by the Shabiha, leaving a town seething with anger.
“I want to show the world how [Assad] is a strong criminal,” said one 60-year-old mother. She said the Shabiha killed three of her sons. “I want to take the Kalshnikov. Bring me a Kalashnikov and I will go fight them. I will kill Assad’s men.”
Idlib Province is predominantly Sunni, a branch of Islam to which most Syrians belong. Assad and most government officials are Allawite, a smaller Islamic sect that is the minority here.
Wherever one goes in Idlib Province, the Sunni villagers are anxious to talk about how Assad is killing his own people. And they remind the few foreign correspondents traveling through this area that the opposition needs weapons to defend themselves.
“We need weapons if from the sky,” said Malik, 42, an unemployed taxi driver from Bennish. “I have seven children. I’m willing to give my children to get weapons to kill Assad.”
“Bashar uses the same strategy as his father. He thinks if he uses power, all will fall. But if he destroys Homs, Hama is coming, if he destroys Hama, Idlib is coming.”
Idlib has fallen. And, now, so has Saraqeb. But the countryside is awash in revolutionaries who say they are planning more attacks as soon as they can collect enough ammunition — cease-fire or not.
BEIRUT, Lebanon — For 13-year-old Hossam, the “ultimate pain” of his torture at the hands of the Syrian forces was when the “terrifying person” with the “huge body” wearing “black and black” drove a screwdriver up into his big toe nail before ripping it out with pliers.
“He was shouting at me, ‘You want freedom? You want to topple the regime?’ And he beat me. They asked me, ‘What is your name? What is your father’s name? Where are you from? Why did you join the protest?’ He showed me a video and said ‘Isn’t that you?’ I said no and he beat me. ‘Isn’t that you?’ No. He beat me. ‘Isn’t that you?’ Yes. He beat me more.”
In a regime whose systematic and widespread torture has shocked even hardened human rights researchers, Syrian children have been singled out for abuse, with hundreds reportedly tortured over the past year by the men fighting to keep President Bashar al-Assad and his family in power.
“The level of torture is not comparable to any other conflict I’ve worked on,” said Anna Neistat, associate director for Program and Emergencies at Human Rights Watch, who has worked for more than a decade in crises from Chechnya to Zimbabwe to Sri Lanka.
“There are a disproportionate number of children trapped in this system. Children are tortured alongside adults and are even subject to more brutal torture as interrogators believe children could crack faster and give them names.”
For the 13-year-old from Tal Kalakh, a town west of the flashpoint city of Homs, the nightmare began when security arrested him on his way home from school on the last day of exams.
Blindfolded and beaten by soldiers at a checkpoint, Hossam — not his real name — and his cousin of the same age were bundled into a car and taken to a military security office about 45 minutes away. This was in May last year, less than two months into the uprising.
“In the cell there was me and my cousin and about 50 other people. We were the only children,” said Hossam, interviewed by GlobalPost in north Lebanon after he crossed the border with his family. “The cell was really small and smelled like sewage. There were bugs and rats in it. I was sleeping in the corner as everyone was packed in, like a zig zag.”
Documenting a dozen cases of children detained and tortured, Human Rights Watch reported that prison cells of 5-by-6 meters (16-by-20 feet) often contain up to 70 people. After conducting hundreds of interviews with survivors of torture, Human Rights Watch said that up to one in five detainees were minors, under the age of 18.
Neistat said that tens of thousands of Syrians have been processed through the prison system since the uprising against the Assad dictatorship began last March. She said the vast majority of them have been subjected to degrees of torture.
Reacting to the screams of the men under interrogation, Hossam said he thought he would die under torture, just like Hamza al-Khateeb, the 13-year-old from Daraa whose death last May became a rallying cry for the opposition.
“I told them: ‘I’m a kid, why are you beating me?’ He said, ‘You’re young? So why are you in a protest?’ I told him: ‘To express my opinion.’ … They electrocuted me in my leg and in my chest. I passed out for about 15 minutes. Then I felt my soul come back to me and I thanked God I did not die.”
Mohammed, a 16-year-old from Duma, one of the restive satellite towns outside Damascus, was also tortured with electricity after being arrested, he said, by members of Airforce Intelligence. He said he was picked up on Jan. 20 and held until early March.
“I was young, so the security men were not very hard with me. But I got my share of torture,” he told a GlobalPost reporter in Syria last week. “I was beaten and whipped with cable two or three times a day. One time I told the interrogator I wanted a country for all Syrians, not for one family. He reacted very badly and told some soldiers to electrocute me on my chest, hands, legs, neck and on my stomach, close to my penis.”
Last month Navi Pillay, the UN human rights chief, told the BBC that Syrian forces had systematically targeted and tortured children and that Assad “could simply issue an order to stop the killings and the killings would stop.”
Both Pillay and Neistat said the UN Security Council now has enough reliable information to refer Syrian leaders to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity.
But because Syria is not a party to the ICC, unless Damascus referred itself to the court, the only way to give the tribunal jurisdiction to act is through referral by the UN Security Council. But Russia and China have twice vetoed watered-down Security Council resolutions condemning the Assad’s crackdown that made no mention of the ICC.
This month Amnesty International identified 31 methods of torture used by Syrian authorities. Some methods have been in use for decades, include the “tire,” where the victim is forced into a large tire and beaten on the feet. There is also the “flying carpet,” where the prisoner is strapped face-up on a wooden board that is bent to stretch the spine.
Less well known are apparently new and even more disturbing techniques, including pincers used to rip out flesh, anal rape with sharp objects and a form of crucifixion where the prisoner is hung from a wall by their wrists.
“The biggest lie of the regime is that there are no orders to torture,” a defected former member of Airforce Intelligence told GlobalPost. “It’s a program, a routine. I saw an old man with a 6-year-old girl brought to the interrogation department. Just five minutes of what she saw there, the screams she heard will surely traumatize her for the rest of her life.”
John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman (Credit: AP)
When John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman join forces, you can be sure of one thing: It will involve state-sponsored violence. Today, they want us to arm Syrian rebels. Though, you know, what they really wanted to call for was actually bombing the hell out of Syria, until there is freedom. They’re just taking it slow.
The Senate’s three most predictable and least credible warmongering “moderates” frequently join forces to publish joint Op-Eds or hold press conferences and the one thing they always, invariably want is for the United States to have just a little bit more war than it currently has, somewhere far away. Sure, we could draw down in Iraq … or we could listen to McCain, Lieberman and Graham and draw back up. We could draw down in Afghanistan … or we could stay the course and keep sending troops there until we win! Americans may be tired of endless war with no coherent goal, but on the other hand, “only decisive force can prevail in [whatever country John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman are talking about now].”
As the Hill recently explained in a story on how John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman were pushing for a resolution basically promising to make war with Iran, “Graham, Lieberman and McCain are considered some of the top foreign policy experts in the upper chamber,” because they always, invariably support military intervention everywhere for any reason, and that is invariably considered a sign of “seriousness” in Washington. If you don’t like waging wars everywhere, forever, you are a weird kooky hippie, and everyone laughs at you. If you believe that bombs and troops have the power to magically solve all problems, you are invited on all the Sunday shows every week to offer your sober analysis of the foreign situation.
You just never know which country these three will decide needs bombing next! One time the three amigos also took a trip to Tripoli to hang out with Moammar Gadhafi. (They invited Susan Collins along, though usually their sleepover parties are strictly “no girls allowed.”) Sadly, by April of last year, they were no longer friends with Gadhafi, and the three had decided that the United States should assassinate him. (That is not really legal but, you know, “war on terror” and “serious, muscular foreign policy” or something.)
One time Lieberman and Graham tried to hang out with a different senator and they all came up with an idea that didn’t involve bombing anyone but that made McCain mad and he yelled at them. Don’t hang out with John Kerry and try to solve climate change! Hang out with me and let’s try to convince everyone to bomb Russia or something!
Sadly, Joe Lieberman will be leaving the U.S. Senate soon, which means John McCain and Lindsey Graham will need to find a new fake-Democrat best friend to add a patina of “bipartisanship” to their endless demands for explosions and shooting and death.
Alex Pareene writes about politics for Salon and is the author of "The Rude Guide to Mitt." Email him at apareene@salon.com and follow him on Twitter @pareene
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In this citizen journalism image taken on Saturday, March 24, 2012 and provided by Edlib News Network ENN, a Syrian boy stands next to damaged cars which were attacked from Syrian government forces shelling at Sarmeen town in Idlib province, northern Syria(Credit: AP)
SARAQEB, Syria — Just four days ago the Free Syrian Army had total control of this city, the second-largest in Syria’s northestern Idlib province.
Then the tanks rolled in.
The Syrian regime’s assault began March 24. It started in the same way it has so many times before — in the cities of Idlib, Homs, Hama and elsewhere — in this country gripped by more than a year of conflict.
A column of tanks first rolled into the city center, making precision strikes on roving bands of Free Syrian Army fighters.
The mishmash of Syrian army defectors, doctors and former shop owners had tangled with the tanks before and attempted to stop them. They would sneak up to the tanks at night to take pot shots and plant roadside bombs, neither of which had any effect.
At one point a strong-jawed youth proceeded down a parallel avenue, holding an antiquated rocket-propelled grenade launcher, the kind that still uses a chain link strap.
He darted around the corner into the “death zone,” and launched a rocket that was unable to puncture the tank’s front armor, where it is the strongest. Other fighters rolled out propane tank bombs attached to wires.
Despite their efforts, the tanks continued to shell the city, supported by snipers on rooftops.
By Monday, the Syrian forces had ousted the rebels and regained control of Saraqeb. The city is now on lockdown. No one is able to move in or out without passing through Syrian checkpoints — a risk few are willing to take.
“This is the second time in five months that tanks have entered the city,” one rebel fighter told GlobalPost at the scene. “We have only God.”
Idlib Province and its cities are predominantly Sunni. Based on two weeks traveling through the province, most appear to support the rebels.
Outside the major cities, residents willing to speak to the press say they are fed up with President Bashar al-Assad and his government. In these parts, the rebels move freely.
But in recents weeks, Syrian security forces have attempted to retake the province, moving methodically from town to town. Earlier this month Syrian forces assaulted the city of Idlib, the largest in the province. That city too remains on lockdown. Few will go anywhere near it.
As Syrian forces moved to secure Saraqeb on Monday, rebel fighters packed their blankets, water pipes, and odd laptops and guns into trucks. Along with many families, including women and children, they sped off into the night. Red tracers flew overhead. Once safely outside, they slept in farms and small villages, plotting their return.
But with Saraqeb secure, activists still inside said they feared the “Shabiha” — plain-clothed mercenaries loyal to the regime. The Shabiha began patrolling the streets, rounding up anyone suspected of helping the Free Syrian Army. Activists said that as many as 40 people had so far been killed.
At a small hut outside the city that had been transformed into a field hospital, medics tended to an old woman with deep shrapnel wounds to her ankles and forearm. Another man arrived with shrapnel embedded in his backside. To their internet contacts, activists read off the names of seven killed that night. One activist said his wife and baby were still inside the city.
“All they can do is stay behind the doors,” he said.
Activists outside of the country are concerned about house to house roundups, in search of those on their wanted lists.
“If they can’t find the son, they’ll take the father and hold him until the son comes,” the activist, Nouri, said from Belgium. “The Shabiha want to take revenge.”
These feared lists contain the names of protesters and rebel fighters — and anyone associated with them. Being on the wanted list can prevent whole villages from leaving their confines for fear of having to cross an army checkpoint and getting nabbed, activists said.
“They have the best database in the Middle East,” Nouri said. “The last time I was in Syria in April, I found I was on the list. I thought I was helping anonymously, but my name was on the list from Idlib intelligence.”
The small town of Seramin, about 20 kilometers away, might be an indicator of how Saraqeb will look after the Syrian security forces are done with it. A week ago, regime forces shelled Sermin before entering. Shells obliterated its mosque. And then Shabiha burned houses belonging to revolutionaries. Activists claim a handful of people were executed.
“Everyone listen,” Nor Haj Hussein, a mother in mourning cried, pointing to a charred corner of her house. “They killed my three sons. They shot the three in the head, and after they burned them in front of my eyes.”
BEIRUT, Lebanon — On Tuesday, just a few hours before President Bashar al-Assad arrived in Homs, the Syrian Army shelled the city. And they resumed bombing as soon as he left, activists said.
But briefly, during the president’s visit — his first since Homs was devastated by fighting last month — a surreal bonhomie prevailed. Assad was greeted by a group of well-wishers, rounded up and organized by security forces, activists claimed. There were faithful pledges of “With you until death” and “Reconstruction is 90 percent complete.”
But away from the spectacle, Homs residents saw matters from an entirely different vantage point. One such perspective comes from Abu Hamza Sabouh (not his real name) a 23-year-old former math student, now a rebel fighter.
It was on a Syrian TV station with close ties to Assad that Abu Hamza first learned that 17 members of his extended family had been killed, and that his brigade was being blamed for the murder.
“I wish I hadn’t seen that footage on TV. I saw my family killed: My father shot in the eye; my cousins, uncle, aunt and grandfather; my cousin lying on the bed, also shot in the head. Now I can’t get the images out of my mind,” he told GlobalPost from a hospital in north Lebanon, where he is receiving treatment for an elbow shattered by shrapnel.
He said that in February, he was injured fighting in Homs’ Baba Amr district with the Free Syrian Army’s Farouk Brigade, which held that and other neighborhoods until being forced to withdraw on March 1 after a month-long assault by Syrian forces that killed at least 700 people, and wounded thousands more.
The death toll from the year-long crackdown now exceeds 10,000, according to activists documenting fatalities. The vast majority of those killed are civilians, according to human rights groups.
Many have been killed by bullets, bombs or torture. But in the wake of the rebel withdrawal from Homs, activists documented what they said was the cold-blooded murder or scores of Sunni civilians by Syria’s security forces, which are composed mainly of minority Allawites, an off-shoot of Shiite Islam that dominates the country’s leadership.
Activists said the killing spree included the execution of 12 young men during raids on houses in Baba Amr by security forces hunting Free Syrian Army fighters, Abu Fares, a spokesman for the Homs Revolutionary Council, told GlobalPost.
In a another incident at least 10 men were executed outside a state-run cooperative supermarket that was transformed into a prison and military base where dozens of young men, some as young as 14, were held and tortured, said Abu Bakr, a local activist.
Many of those killed were wounded with large knives. Some corpses were found missing body parts or even decapitated, he said. Activists found children whose fingers had been cut off.
The last time Abu Hamza spoke to his family, who lived in the countryside on the edge of Baba Amr, he said he felt safe enough. The bombs and missiles flying over their heads had stopped and although Assad’s security forces had entered the village, they had only stolen cars, not killed anyone.
“I think the security forces came to the village and took the cars so the families could not escape,” he alleged. “Two days later security forces came back and forced the two families into one house. They killed 17 of them in cold blood. There were children from one and half years old to six. I don’t know what kind of religion these people follow who can do this.”
The bodies were first discovered on Feb. 29, just as the rebels were withdrawing from Homs and the regime’s forces were moving in. But it was not until March 5 that Abu Hamza heard his family name reported on Al Dunya, the only private satellite channel in Syria, which is majority-owned by Assad’s first cousin and Syria’s wealthiest tycoon, Rami Makhlouf.
Al Dunya blamed the murders on “armed terrorist gangs,” the label the regime has consistently used for its opponents. But this time, the propaganda was more specific: The Farouk Brigade, the very force Abu Hamza had been fighting with, were responsible for killing the Sabouhs.
The report showed bodies slumped on floor cushions in a front room where they had apparently been sharing lunch. The pictures included women and children who all appear to have been shot at close range. Pale graffiti scrawled on the walls shown in the broadcast, purportedly signed by the Free Syrian Army, said: “Death to the agents.”
Abu Hamza tells a different story.
“Al Dunya claims the Farouk Brigade were killing the people but I am 100 percent sure that they were not. I don’t know the name of the people who did this to my family but I know they must be from the army or Assad’s militias,” he said.
A statement by the surviving members of the Sabouth family, which was released by activists in Baba Amr on March 5, said they “hold the Assad regime fully accountable for this massacre in retaliation for the support we gave to the revolution.”
Abu Hamza said he thought the murders were more about spreading terror than revenge on his family in particular.
“My father was a government employee. He never went to a protest. Why would you kill a one and half-year old child? It’s to terrify people and tell them: ‘This could happen to you.’”
A Syrian rebel runs with his AK-47 towards a Syrian army checkpoint in a suburb of Damascus, Syria, on Saturday March 17, 2012 (Credit: AP)
This article originally appeared on GlobalPost. It was reported by a journalist in Damascus whose name has been kept secret for security reasons.
DAMASCUS, Syria — Rebel fighters landed their most serious blow yet against the Syrian regime’s security apparatus, even as dramatic but conflicting accounts emerged of what triggered an intense overnight firefight in a heavily protected neighborhood of Damascus earlier this week.
Both the regime and the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) claimed as a victory the battle that eyewitnesses said began around 11 p.m. and lasted into the early hours Monday morning. The battle involved heavy machine gunfire, rocket-propelled grenades and helicopters, the witnesses said.
State-run Syria TV and Al Dunya reported that security forces attacked a “terrorist cell” living in a flat in the western Mezze district of the capital, where foreign embassies and official residences are located. It is also home to many senior figures from the ruling Baath Party, the military and security apparatus.
With armed guards on each door, security cameras and gates, Mezze is the capital’s most-secured neighborhood. Activists said Assef Shawkat, President Bashar al-Assad’s brother-in-law, a former military intelligence chief and now deputy head of the armed forces, has a home in Mezze Villas West, the scene of the fighting.
Ali Mamluk, head of State Security is said to have two houses on the same street.
Just 500 meters up the road is Mezze 86, a military housing compound home to officers and families from the army and security services, most of them Allawites, the minority sect that dominates Syria’s ruling elites.
“On this street there are dozens of the country’s senior officials and officers. They come and go in big cars with blacked out windows,” Mohammed, a 30-year-old living on the street where the fighting took place, told GlobalPost.
But for residents trying to sleep on Monday morning, the usually secure neighborhood felt more like a war zone.
“I heard shooting and looked out of the window to see large numbers of security men with Kalashnikovs and machine guns deployed around every building in the street and even on the rooftops,” Mohammed said “At about midnight there was the sound of two big bombs. We live in the most secured area of Damascus. This is the first time in my life I saw shooting.”
Official media reported three “terrorists” had been killed on an attack that left a flat burned out and pockmarked with bullet holes, while an officer and plain-clothes security member were killed.
Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 18 soldiers or security personnel were killed.
Speaking to Bloomberg, an FSA officer claiming to oversee the Damascus area for the rebels, said the fighting killed 50 people, 25 from each side, and had been triggered when the FSA attempted to escort a high-ranking defector from the nearby Political Security headquarters.
Maj. Maher Nuaimi said the fighting had centered on the political security building, not the flat broadcast on state-run TV, and had drawn in dozens of night guards who “didn’t even know who was fighting who.” Nuaimi claimed the defection was a success but declined to name the official.
A second eyewitness who spoke to GlobalPost said residents believed an FSA unit was indeed attempting to extract a high-ranking defector, and regime security forces had tracked them to a flat and destroyed it, killing all inside.
Syriandays, a Syrian website close to the regime, reported “an attempt to kidnap a senior officer but security forces foiled the plot.” But it did not name the officer.
A defected former member of Syrian intelligence with contacts to an FSA unit in Damascus, meanwhile, told GlobalPost the attack had in fact been an assassination attempt against Shawkat, Assad’s brother-in-law.
“There were 10 guys from an FSA unit who attacked Shawkat’s home with Kalashnikovs,” he said. “The regime sent a helicopter to light up the street so there was nowhere for the FSA guys to hide or to escape in their car. They ran to a flat used by the FSA which was destroyed with RPGs. All 10 died.”
Foreign media are banned from reporting independently in Syria and the account of the attempted assassination was impossible to verify.
Whatever the trigger for the firefight, a Damascus-based political analyst said the fact that such street fighting had come to the Syrian capital represented a serious threat to the regime’s grip on power.
“The Mezze attack opened the eyes for people in the capital about the regime’s control on the ground. This was a big escalation,” he said.
“If defected soldiers and officers can carry out such a big attack in the heart of Damascus this means they can hurt the Assad regime, even though it began to control much of Homs, Daraa , Hama, Idlib and Aleppo’s countryside. If the regime loses control of Damascus then the regime’s days are numbered.”
Syrian youth stand in a building damaged by tank shells in a neighborhood of Damascus, Syria, after a raid by Syrian troops killed several rebels and civilians Thursday, April 5, 2012. Syrian troops launched a fierce assault Thursday, days ahead of a deadline for a U.N.-brokered cease-fire, with activists describing it as one of the most violent attacks around the capital since the year-old uprising began. (AP Photo) (Credit: AP) 
Although the rebels had controlled Saraqeb for months, government troops had just finished their conquest of surrounding cities, including the provincial capital, Idlib.
13-year-old Hossam (Credit: Screengrab from GlobalPost video) 
John McCain, Lindsay Graham and Joe Lieberman (Credit: AP) 
In this citizen journalism image taken on Saturday, March 24, 2012 and provided by Edlib News Network ENN, a Syrian boy stands next to damaged cars which were attacked from Syrian government forces shelling at Sarmeen town in Idlib province, northern Syria(Credit: AP) 
Protesters burn portraits of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in northern Syria on Feb. 26, 2012 (Credit: AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd) 
A Syrian rebel runs with his AK-47 towards a Syrian army checkpoint in a suburb of Damascus, Syria, on Saturday March 17, 2012 (Credit: AP) 
