Syrian Military Retake Parts of Damascus

Syrian soldiers in Medan on July 20, 2012. The military has retaken areas invaded by the US-backed rebels fighting the Assad government. , a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

July 20, 2012, 7:43 p.m. ET

Front Lines Shift in Syrian Capital

Government Forces Retake Parts of Damascus but Rebels Stage Guerrilla Fight, Driving Some Regime Backers Out of City.

By SAM DAGHER
Zuma Press

Syrian soldiers march in the Midan area of Damascus Friday during a tour for journalists organized by the country's Information Ministry.
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MASNAA, Lebanon—Syrian government forces routed rebels from several Damascus neighborhoods on Friday but rebels struck back in others, as fears of a protracted fight drove some well-to-do supporters of the Assad regime from the capital.

Around 20,000 people have entered Lebanon through this main border crossing since Wednesday, when a rebel bombing struck a meeting of senior regime officials, Lebanese customs officers said. Most of the refugees were families from Damascus, 25 miles to the east.

"The blood that has been spilled in Damascus has scared people," said a native of the capital in her 50s, in Masnaa on Friday. "We do not want to become another Iraq."

As rebels were pounded and driven from the northeastern district of Qaboun on Friday, they began harassing government forces with guerrilla tactics in nearby areas, activists said. "It's a game of alleyways," said an activist based in the city of 2.5 million people.

By nighttime Friday, government forces had begun pounding rebels in another restive district to the southwest, residents said.

As the 17-month conflict looked increasingly likely to play out militarily, the United Nations Security Council extended its 300-man observer mission for 30 days, a day after Russia and China vetoed a resolution that would have threatened sanctions against President Bashar al-Assad's regime while extending the U.N. mission.

The observer mission has been suspended since June and confined to a hotel in Damascus. The extension will end in a month unless U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon determines the Syrian government has withdrawn heavy weapons and troops from populated areas—a shift seen as unlikely as the battles continue in the capital.

"We believe that it is the right thing to do to give a final chance for that mission to be able to fulfill its function, but we have said, clearly, that it is a final extension, unless there is a change in the dynamic on the ground," British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said.

"We hope that the double veto yesterday will not put the Annan plan in peril," said Peter Wittig, the German ambassador, referring to U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan's cease-fire plan, which has failed to halt fighting by both sides in the Syrian conflict.

The rebels' most direct hit on the regime so far claimed another victim on Friday, with the death of national-security chief Gen. Hisham Ikhtiyar from wounds suffered in Wednesday's bombing, state media reported. The attack had also killed three other officials including the defense minister and President Assad's brother-in-law.

A state funeral with full military honors was held Friday at the Martyrs' Memorial on a mountaintop overlooking Damascus for the generals who died Wednesday, state media reported. Footage showed three caskets draped in Syrian flags being towed by military trucks with Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa and the newly appointed defense minister, Gen. Fahed al-Freij, leading the procession.

Government troops on Friday reclaimed control of sections of the central Damascus neighborhood of Midan that had been taken over by rebels earlier in the week, according to state media and opposition activists.

An activist said government troops captured or killed several rebel fighters in Midan in the early hours of Friday. The activist confirmed the accuracy of footage broadcast on Syrian state television later Friday of scattered, slumped bodies under the banner "the crushing of the mercenary terrorists in Midan."

Several antiregime fighters that were also said to be captured in Midan were paraded in front of the camera. "We came to rid Midan and all of Damascus from this disease," a Syrian army officer said.

Government forces meanwhile were using tank fire against rebels in northeastern districts, the activists said—areas where clashes involving heavy artillery and helicopter gunships have raged since Monday night.

Most of the rebels now fighting in Damascus come from impoverished and long-marginalized surrounding districts and suburbs. This has heightened fears of those that live in more affluent neighborhoods and remain either neutral or supportive of Mr. Assad, said residents who had crossed into Lebanon.

"These are just people from the countryside, Syria is going to be OK, this is the decisive battle and the president is staying," a refugee in Masnaa said. His wife, with designer handbag and shoes, stood nearby shielding their two-month-old baby from the blistering sun.

A family from the upscale Malki neighborhood said they planned to stay in Lebanon for a few weeks only, until the army restored security to the whole capital. "Security forces are deployed everywhere," said a woman in her late 20s who said she works in trade finance.

The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition organization, said that since fighting intensified on Thursday at least 430 people have been killed, including civilians, government forces and rebels, as the regime appears to have intensified its crackdown across the whole country after the Damascus bombing.

Outside the capital, earlier rebel claims that they were in control of border crossings with Iraq and one of the main crossings with Turkey appeared to be inconclusive.

Senior Iraqi officials said the Syrian government appeared to be still in control of at least two of three border crossings with its eastern neighbor while there were reports of intermittent clashes at the Bab al-Hawa crossing with Turkey.

—Ali A. Nabhan in Baghdad and Joe Lauria in New York contributed to this article.
Write to Sam Dagher at sam.dagher@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared July 20, 2012, on page A7 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Front Lines Shift in Syrian Capital.