Atrocities Seen as Battle for Aleppo Intensifies

The video purports so show Syrian rebels executing Assad's loyalists.

And see the New York Times, "Syrian Fighting Intensifies in Battle for Control of Aleppo."

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The battle for the Syrian city of Aleppo intensified on Wednesday as United Nations observers there reported that Syrian jets had fired rockets into contested neighborhoods and that rebels had commandeered tanks and other heavy weapons.

Opposition leaders — a few hours after President Bashar al-Assad urged his forces to step up the fight — also said that they had found dozens of bodies in a suburb of Damascus in the aftermath of the Syrian Army’s house-to-house search for rebel fighters and activists. This claim of a new massacre came as the rebels faced severe criticism themselves for what appeared to be their brutal summary execution, one day earlier, of suspected pro-government gunmen on the streets of Aleppo, recorded and uploaded on the Internet.

Videos purported to have been taken in the Damascus suburb, Jdeidet Artouz, showed bodies lined up under bloodstained sheets, as a narrator gave an estimated count that continued rising: 37, 42, and then even more.

“I counted 52 bodies,” said Abu Abdullah, a resident who said he had helped move the dead to a local mosque before burial. “I’m really shocked. Why here?”

The bodies were found near an area where rebels said fighting had flared in the past week. But analysts said the bodies appearing outside Damascus in a town also filled with refugees — along with reports of renewed fighting in the capital and an escalation of combat in Aleppo, Syria’s largest metropolis and commercial center — all suggested that the 17-month-old conflict was becoming increasingly intense and bitter, with more front lines and more bloodshed.

“It’s a rapid escalation,” said Andrew J. Tabler, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Once you start using fixed-wing aircraft and you have a city under full revolt, it’s clear that the Assad regime is not going to stop and is not breaking. We’re entering a new phase of this conflict.”

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