BEIRUT, (Reuters) – A fourth member of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s inner circle died today from a bomb attack this week and his forces fought to recapture border posts and parts of Damascus from rebels who have converged on the capital.
As refugees flooded across Syria’s borders and U.N. officials said they had heard banks in Damascus had run out of cash, Russia’s envoy to Paris added to a sense Assad’s days were numbered by saying he had accepted he would have to leave power.
Syrian state television flashed a government statement soon afterwards saying the comments were “completely devoid of truth”.
Assad not spoken since Wednesday’s attack on a meeting of his high command and only appeared on Thursday to appoint a new defence minister to replace one of the assassinated men.
Syrian state television said a funeral ceremony for the defence minister, his deputy – Assad’s brother-in-law – and a senior general was being held today in Damascus.
It said later Syria’s intelligence chief Hisham Bekhtyar had died this morning of wounds sustained in the same attack.
Clashes continued in Damascus for a sixth day and at least three people were killed when Syrian army helicopters fired rockets at the southeastern neighbourhood of Saida Zeinab, opposition activists said.
Rebels from elsewhere in Syria have poured into the capital for what they say is the final battle for Damascus.
“The regime is going through its last days,” Abdelbasset Seida, the leader of the main Syrian opposition umbrella group, the Syrian National Council, said in Rome, predicting a possible dramatic escalation in violence.
Clashes were fiercest overnight in the sprawling Mezzeh district, where rebels appear to be sustaining attacks on many security compounds located there, residents said.
State television said Syrian forces had cleared the central district of Midan of “mercenaries and terrorists”. Opposition activists and rebels sources confirmed on Friday that they had withdrawn after coming under heavy bombardment.
“It is a tactical withdrawal. We are still in Damascus,” Abu Omar, a rebel commander, said by telephone.
EMPTY STREETS
Residents in central Damascus said shops were closed, roads were empty and only a handful of people were outside.
“We have heard reports that many of the banks have just run out of money,” Melissa Fleming, chief spokeswoman for the United Nations’ refugee agency UNHCR, told a briefing in Geneva.
Residents reported a lack of government checkpoints in the heart of the city and fewer guards in front of the Interior Ministry a day after the police headquarters was torched.
Government forces struck the rebel-held Bab al-Hawa border post on the frontier with Turkey overnight and shelled the city of Abu Kamal near the main checkpoint on the border with Iraq which was seized by rebels on Thursday, the Observatory said.
Syrian rebels were still in control of the main Abu Kamal border post on the Euphrates River highway, one of the major trade routes across the Middle East, a senior Iraqi interior ministry official said on Friday.
Other border posts further north, near the Iraqi city of Mosul, appeared to still be under Syrian government army control, Lieutenant-General Ahmed Al-Khafaji told Reuters.
Up to 30,000 Syrian refugees may have crossed into Lebanon in the past 48 hours to escape the fighting, the UNHCR said, a huge increase in numbers seeking to flee.
A total of 310 people, including 98 security personnel, were killed yesterday, the Observatory said, the highest daily death toll so far. The reports could not be confirmed. The Syrian government restricts access by international journalists.
