Rebels in battle to storm Syrian prison holding Assad opponents

Aleppo emerged as one of the major fronts in the country’s civil war after a rebel offensive there in July, and the fighting since then has settled into a bloody stalemate. The city, Syria’s largest, holds strategic and symbolic value, and both sides have taken significant losses in the battle to expand the turf under their control.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels detonated two car bombs simultaneously outside the walls of the central prison before trying to storm it. Fierce clashes were reported between President Bashar Assad’s troops and opposition fighters around the area.

The city’s central prison is believed to be holding 4,000 prisoners, about 250 of whom are jailed for reasons related to the 26-month-old uprising against Assad’s regime.

Earlier this month, the rebels overran the headquarters of the government’s anti-terrorism forces that is located near the jail.

Meanwhile at least 23 rebel factions, including Islamic groups, joined forces in a push to reopen an arms supply route and retake a key town near Damascus that fell back to regime troops last month.

The rebel groups, including the al-Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra, fought government troops around the town of Otaybah, east of the capital. The army regained control of Otaybah in late April, cutting the opposition’s arms route between Jordan and the capital.

More than 70,000 people have been killed since the revolt against Assad’s rule erupted in March 2011, and over a million more have sought shelter in neighbouring countries. Millions of others have been displaced inside Syria.

In Jordan, the UN refugee agency warned that the relentless fighting has been driving unprecedented numbers of Syrians into Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and Iraq, straining the countries’ water and food resources to the limit.

The UN General Assembly is poised to approve an Arab-backed resolution calling for a political transition in Syria and strongly condemning Assad’s regime for its escalating use of heavy weapons and “gross violations” of human rights.

The Arab group decided to seek approval of a wide-ranging resolution on Syria in the General Assembly, where there are no vetoes, to reflect international dismay at the increasing death toll, now more than 70,000, and the failure to end the conflict.

The proposed new resolution stresses that “rapid progress on a political transition represents the best opportunity” to resolve the Syrian conflict peacefully.

It would promote the road map for a Syrian transition adopted last year in Geneva by key nations including the US, UK, Russia, China and France.

The road map starts with the establishment of a transitional governing body vested with full executive powers and ends with elections - but there has been no agreement on how to implement it, which would require President Assad to relinquish power at some point.

The draft strongly condemns the continued escalation in the Syrian regime’s use of heavy weapons, including indiscriminate shelling from tanks and aircraft, as well as the use of ballistic missiles, cluster munitions and other weapons against populated areas.

It expresses “grave concern at the threat by the Syrian authorities to use chemical or biological weapons, as well as at allegations of reported use of such weapons”. It demands that Syria “strictly observes” international laws prohibiting the use of chemical and biological weapons and refrains from transferring such weapons “to non-state actors”.