Syrian ground assault hits rebels in city

TEL RIFAT, Syria -- The government launched a ground assault yesterday on rebel-held areas of the besieged city of Aleppo, the center of battles between government forces and opposition fighters for more than two weeks.

It was not immediately clear whether the offensive was "the mother of all battles" that Syria's state-controlled media vowed last month would take place for control of Aleppo. In recent weeks, the regime's blistering attacks on rebel positions seem to have slowly chipped away at the opposition's grip on its strongholds in the country's largest city.

The official SANA news agency said regime forces have fully regained control of the Salaheddine neighborhood, the main rebel area in Aleppo. It claimed the "fall" of hundreds of "armed terrorists," the government's catchall term for its opponents, without specifying what that meant.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, the director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said troops met resistance in the offensive.

About 25 miles north of Aleppo, fighter jets carried out airstrikes early yesterday on the village of Tel Rifat, hitting a home and a high school and killing six people from the same family, residents said. Other strikes left two car-sized craters in the courtyard of the adjacent Tadamor Girls' High School.

It was unclear why the area was targeted. Residents said government forces often shelled the village, but that this had been the first airstrike. There were some rebels in the village, they acknowledged, though an Associated Press reporter saw no armed men during a brief drive through the area.

Chaos is mounting as the civil war deepens. President Bashar Assad's regime has suffered a series of setbacks over the past month: Four senior security officials were assassinated in Damascus, there have been a string of high-level defections, including the prime minister this week, and government forces have struggled to put down rebel challenges in Damascus and Aleppo. After two days in hiding, Riad Hijab, the former prime minister, arrived in Jordan with 35 family members.

But the regime has far more powerful weapons than the rebels and retains a firm grip on much of the country.

Aleppo, Syria's commercial center, holds symbolic and strategic importance. Some 25 miles from the Turkish border, it has been a pillar of regime support during the uprising. An opposition victory would allow easier access for weapons and fighters from Turkey, where many rebels are based.