Syrian rebels are gaining ground and might win, Russia's Middle East envoy said on Thursday, in the starkest such admission from a major ally of President Bashar al-Assad in 20 months of conflict. "One must look the facts in the face," Russia's state-run RIA quoted Mikhail Bogdanov as saying. "Unfortunately, the victory of the Syrian opposition cannot be ruled out."
Bogdanov, a deputy foreign minister and the Kremlin's special envoy for Middle East affairs, said the Syrian government was "losing control of more and more territory" and Moscow was preparing to evacuate Russian citizens if necessary. Syria has relied on war planes and helicopters to bombard rebel districts but Damascus denied accusations by US and Nato officials that it had fired Scud missiles in recent days.
The foreign ministry said the long-range missiles were not used against "terrorist groups," a term it uses for the rebels, who now hold an almost continuous arc of territory from the east to the south-west of Damascus. The head of Nato said he thought Assad's government was nearing collapse and the new leader of Syria's opposition told Reuters the people of Syria no longer needed international forces to protect them. "The horrific conditions which the Syrian people endured prompted them to call on the international community for military intervention at various times," said Mouaz al-Khatib, a preacher who heads Syria's National Coalition.
In the latest blow to the government, a car bomb killed at least 16 men, women and children in Qatana, a town about 25 km (15 miles) south-west of Damascus where many soldiers live, activists and state media said. The explosion occurred in a residential area for soldiers in Qatana, which is near several army bases, said Rami Abdelrahman, head of the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
He put the death toll as 17, including seven children and two women. State news agency SANA said 16 people had died. State television showed soldiers walking by a partly collapsed building, with rubble and twisted metal on the road. The pro-government Al-Ikhbariya TV said a second car bomb in the Damascus suburb of al-Jadideh killed eight, most of them women and children.
Apart from gaining territory in the outskirts of Damascus in recent weeks, rebels have also made hit-and-run attacks or set off bombs within the capital, often targeting state security buildings or areas seen as loyal to Assad, such as Jaramana, where twin bombs killed 34 people in November. "I think the regime in Damascus is approaching collapse," Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Thursday. At least 40,000 people have been killed in Syria's uprising, which started in March 2011 with street protests which were met with gunfire by Assad's security forces, and which spiralled into the most enduring and destructive of the Arab revolts.
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