Syrian troops backed by helicopter gunships clashed with rebels near a barracks in Aleppo on Friday as battles broke out around a military airport elsewhere in the northern province, monitors said. In Damascus, state news agency SANA said the army unearthed the bodies of 25 people shot execution-style in the Qadam district and blamed "armed terrorist groups," the regime's term for rebels.
In other developments, a masked gunman on a motorbike killed prominent Kurdish activist Mahmoud Wali on Thursday in north-eastern Syria, fellow activists said. And a tolerated opposition group said two members - Abdel Aziz Khayer and Iyas Ayash - had gone missing along with the man who had collected them from Damascus airport after they returned from a trip to China to discuss an end to the violence.
The National Co-ordination Committee for Democratic Change groups Arab nationalists, Kurds and socialists. In the Arkoub district of Aleppo, fighting erupted overnight near the Hanano army barracks, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Several districts of the northern metropolis, including Sakhur in the north-east and Bustan al-Qasr in the centre, came under overnight attack, the Britain-based monitoring group said.
Elsewhere in the province, fighting broke out between troops and rebels near the Meng military airport, it said. Military airfields have been a key rebel target because the regime is increasingly using air power to launch devastating strikes. Northwest of the capital, the Observatory reported a massive explosion believed to have been a car bomb. Heavy gunfire was heard afterwards but there were no immediate reports of casualties.
In the central province of Homs, a civilian was killed in dawn shelling of Rastan, while the eastern city of Deir Ezzor and the town of Daal in the southern province of Daraa were also bombarded. In Damascus, SANA said, soldiers acting on a tip-off from local residents found a mass grave containing 25 bodies with their hands tied and eyes masked. They had been kidnapped and killed by rebels, it said.
But as the violence rages unabated, a top Nato general said in Brussels that the alliance does not believe that military intervention would bring any improvement in Syria's security situation. Germany's Manfred Lange, Chief of Staff of Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), said the "political process has to be pushed forward, sanctions need to take effect. At the moment, this situation cannot be solved by the military in a responsible way."
Meanwhile, a UN commission investigating rights violations in Syria said it should be allowed to continue its work and get more resources. In its latest report, the commission accused the regime and, to a lesser extent, rebel forces of committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Protesters took to the streets after the main weekly Muslim prayers, as on every Friday since the revolt broke out in March 2011, activists said. There were demonstrations in the capital and in Damascus province, as well as in Daraa, Hama, Aleppo and Hasaka. At least 11 people were killed in violence on Friday, the Observatory said, a day after as many as 225 died, including at least 30 in a petrol station blast in Raqa in the north, blamed on a regime air raid.