Battle for Syria's Aleppo airport intensifies as regime tries to reverse rebel gains

Fox News ^ | February 23, 2013 | AP

[Pan_Yan]

BEIRUT – The battle for Syria's second-largest airport intensified on Saturday as government troops tried to reverse recent strategic gains the rebels have made in the northeast in their quest to topple President Bashar Assad.

Assad's troops have been locked in a stalemate with rebels in Aleppo since July when the city, the largest in Syria, became a major battlefield in the 2-year-old conflict the United Nations says has killed at least 70,000 people. Rebels have been trying to capture the international airport for months.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the Britain-based activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the current fighting was focused on a section of a highway linking airport with Aleppo, the commercial hub of the nation.

The rebels have cut off the highway, which the army has been using to transport troops and supplies to a military base within the airport complex. Rebels have made other advances in the battle for the complex in recent weeks, including capturing two army bases along the road to the airport.

[EQAndyBuzz]

If rebel groups are really this strong, Israel should just run over all of them and get it over with.

[jongaltsr]

Arab on Arab violence is fun to watch.
Even they have trouble figuring out who is who in the midst of battle.
Half of their causalities are people shooting others from their own side.
They are unskilled and shoot just to shoot.
When they actually do have a success, they start arguing about which group is the leader.
I was in Turkey for 1 1/2 years and watched communist demonstrations where everyone in the group was slicing up anything or anyone. They put as many of their own in the hospitals and in the graveyards as they did their sworn enemies.

[mosesdapoet]

Even the Chicago Trib dropped the AP. The source for casualty stats and perhaps the spin seem to come from Syrian Observatory for Human Rights whoever they are out of the UK.

[Greysard]

Perhaps it's appropriate to quote Mark Twain here:

10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the "Deerslayer" tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.