BEIRUT — Damascus was tense Tuesday as clashes between the Syrian army and rebels near the city center extended into a third day, with government forces throwing a security cordon around some embattled neighborhoods, firing from helicopters and reinforcing the number of tanks on the streets.
There was also new evidence, reported by Israel’s intelligence chief, that President Bashar Assad was moving troops into Damascus from Syria’s border with the disputed Golan Heights territory held by Israel, a possible indication of the seriousness of the fighting that was roiling neighborhoods at the president’s doorstep.
The epicenter of the Damascus fighting remained an area in the capital’s southwest where street battles first erupted Sunday, particularly the Midan neighborhood where rebel fighters concentrated after being chased out of surrounding quarters.
“The heaviest clashes are going on in Al-Midan and the neighboring areas,” said one spokesman for an activist group in Damascus. “Regime forces are threatening to bombard the whole area and telling civilians to evacuate their houses.”
Despite other fighting in the northern suburb of Qaboun, plus some sweeping statements from some rebel fighters that the ultimate battle for Damascus had been joined, numerous opposition members suggested it was basically more intense skirmishing in a limited number of neighborhoods — a continuing of gun battles that started Sunday.
In Jerusalem, Maj. Gen. Aviv Kochavi, Israel’s military intelligence chief, told a parliamentary committee that the Syrian government had withdrawn forces from the Golan Heights to redeploy them in Damascus. He did not give more specifics.
Satellite images show that Assad is directing artillery at highly populated regions and acting “extremely brutally, which displays their desperation and indicates they are unable to find more efficient solutions to pacify the uprisings,” Kochavi said.
Indeed, the government seemed prepared to employ the same tactics in and around Midan that it had in other cities like Homs and Hama, where it momentarily lost control — isolating them, waiting for the rebels’ ammunition to run low and then pounding them into submission.
Elias Hanna, a retired Lebanese officer and military analyst, said the fighting in Damascus was important for three reasons: control there is the main pillar of the Assad regime; attacking in the capital indicates the rebels have ramped up their game; and the task of maintaining calm there will tie down a lot of elite troops that the regime has used to try to crush the uprising throughout Syria.
