Assad speaks as battle rages for Aleppo

President Bashar Assad on Wednesday told Syrians that the "destiny of our people" depends on the outcome of the military's fight against rebels as soldiers battled insurgents in the country's largest city, Aleppo.

In a speech marking Army Day, Assad said his troops were fighting a "heroic" battle to defend national sovereignty, according to a copy of his remarks posted on the website of state television.

Assad's public comments are his first since a July 18 bomb attack in Damascus that killed his brother-in-law, Maj. Gen. Assef Shawkat, Defense Minister Dawoud Rajhah and the vice president's military adviser, Hasan Turkmani. They were the most senior officials to die since the uprising in Syria began in March 2011.

The military on Wednesday pressed forward with its offensive to drive out rebels who had moved into several neighborhoods in Aleppo, the country's commercial hub. The fight for Aleppo is emerging as a major test for the lightly armed insurgents and the Syrian army. About 200,000 people have fled Aleppo and nearby areas, Valerie Amos, the United Nations' top humanitarian affairs official, said on July 29.

The fighting has increasingly split the country along sectarian lines, with a Sunni Muslim-led opposition confronting a government whose top officials are drawn from the Alawite sect, affiliated to Shia Islam.

Riad al-Asaad, head of the rebel Free Syrian Army, said in a telephone interview from the Syrian-Turkish border that while a large number of high-ranking officers and soldiers have defected, not a single senior officer belonging to Assad's Alawite sect has joined the rebels.

"I urge these officers, if their hands have not been smeared with Syrian blood, to join the Free Syrian Army so we can, hand-in-hand, liberate the country," al-Asaad said.