DAMASCUS, Syria
(AP) -- Mortar attacks and air raids in two major cities in Syria
killed at least 17 people, activists and government officials said
Tuesday, as a Kurdish opposition leader was killed in the north.
The
deadliest attack struck the central city of Homs, which has been an
opposition stronghold since the beginning of the two-year conflict and
is now the target of a withering offensive by President Bashar Assad's
forces.
Three mortars slammed into a
government-held district of Dablan before dawn Tuesday, killing 10
people and wounding 26 others, a government official. He said many
living in the neighborhood fled there to escape fighting elsewhere in
Homs. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with
regulations for civil servants.
The
Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 11 people -
including a child - were killed. The Observatory, citing hospital
officials, also said attack happened late Monday close to midnight.
Homs
has been the center of protests against Assad's rule since the Syrian
revolt started in March 2011. In recent weeks, the city has been the
scene of fierce fighting between Assad's troops and rebels fighting to
topple his regime. On Monday, government troops captured Homs' strategic
area of Khaldiyeh after a monthlong battle, bringing Assad's regime
closer to its goal of capturing all of Syria's third largest city.
In northern Syria, regime warplanes hit the town of Andan, killing seven people, including five children, the Observatory said.
Much
territory in the north and the northeast along the borders with Turkey
and Iraq has been under rebel control since last summer, when the
opposition forces seized large swaths of land and several neighborhoods
in Aleppo, Syria's largest city. In February, rebels also captured
Raqqa, the first city to fall entirely under opposition control.
In
the past months, Assad's troops regrouped and have been battling rebels
on multiple fronts, capturing strategic towns near the border with
Lebanon and steadily regaining control of territory they previously lost
to the opposition, including around the capital, Damascus, the seat of
Assad's power. The battlefield successes largely have been credited to
the regime's superior firepower, including heavy artillery and fighter
jets, as well as battle-hardened fighters from Lebanon's militant
Hezbollah group that have been fighting rebels alongside Syrian troops
in recent weeks.
While the rebels have been
forced into retreat on the central front, rebel-on-rebel fighting also
has sapped energy from anti-Assad forces.
A
prominent Kurdish opposition leader, Issa Hisso, was killed Tuesday in a
bomb attack in the city of Qamishli, near the border with Turkey, the
Observatory said. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the
attack. A Kurdish member of the Syrian parliament, Omar Ossi,
confirmed to The Associated Press that Hisso had died in car bombing.
Hisso
was an opponent of Assad's regime. He also was speaking against radical
Islamic groups, including the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra and the
Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which have gained influence in the
opposition movement after leading several battles against the regime.
Kurds,
the largest ethnic minority in Syria, make up more than 10 percent of
the country's 23 million people. Their loyalties in the conflict are
split. Kurdish rebel factions have fought al-Qaida lined militants in
recent weeks for control of the territory they captured from the regime
together.
More than 100,000 people have been
killed in the conflict and millions have been driven out of their homes,
seeking shelter in safer areas of the country or in the neighboring
Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.
---
Surk reported from Beirut.
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