Syrian troops retake Iraq border crossing

The officials say the rebels abandoned the border post Sunday near the Iraqi town of Rabiya before Syrian troops reclaimed it. All three officials spoke on condition of anonymity.There were no reports of violence or clashes at the crossing, located about 520 kilometers (320 miles) northwest of Baghdad.Iraqi state TV also reported that Rabiya was back in the hands of Syrian authorities.Rabiya was the second border crossing with Iraq that Syrian rebels captured from government forces. The other, at the western Iraqi town of Qaim, remained in rebel hands as of Sunday afternoon.Feared forces headed by President Bashar al-Assads brother used helicopters Sunday in a new offensive against rebels in Damascus, as clashes also raged in Syrias second city Aleppo, activists said.The Fourth Brigade headed by Maher al-Assad was leading the assault in the Damascus neighbourhood of Barzeh, triggering an exodus of residents, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.The Observatory, meanwhile, put at more than 19,000 the overall number of people killed during the 16-month uprising against the Assad familys four decades of iron-fisted rule.Activists on the ground reported heavy fire at Barzeh, in the northeast of the capital, as a rebel commander declared the battle to liberate the second-biggest city of Aleppo had begun.Regime forces are using helicopters to pound the Barzeh district, an activist who identified himself as Abu Omar told AFP via Skype.Families are trying to flee their homes, but it is difficult to get out of the neighbourhood. It is surrounded, and violence on the edges is intense.Abu Omar also said the army was raiding the nearby Rukn al-Din neighbourhood, while helicopters used machineguns to fire into the districts streets.This morning, regime forces dropped leaflets into the neighbourhood, telling people to evacuate. This is a way to get people to turn against the revolt.He added that several parts of Damascus were suffering from food and fuel shortages, and that clashes were continuing in the districts of Tadamon, Al-Midan and Nahr Ayshe.The Observatorys director Rami Abdel Rahman said the feared Fourth Brigade commanded by President Assads powerful younger brother had launched an operation in Barzeh.Troops have stormed the northwestern Barzeh district of Damascus with tanks and armed personnel carriers, he said, noting snipers had been deployed on rooftops.The official SANA news agency also said government forces had cleansed the Qaboon neighbourhood of terrorists, the regimes term for rebel fighters.State television aired footage reportedly from Qaboon showing dead bodies and weapons, communications equipment and money it said was captured from rebels.Regime forces also deployed in the outskirts of the Mazzeh district of the capital, he said, adding one person was killed there on Sunday and several were wounded.Meanwhile, fierce clashes engulfed the districts of Salaheddin and Sakhur in Aleppo, Syrias commercial hub in the north which has seen heavy fighting since Friday.In a video, Colonel Abdel Jabbar Mohammad Oqaidi, head of the Free Syrian Armys military council in Aleppo province, announced the start of the operation to liberate Aleppo from the hands of Assads gangs.An anti-regime activist in the city said the army began an assault on the Salaheddin district at dawn, in a bid to reclaim it from rebel hands.Violent clashes have been taking place since the early morning, he told AFP.On Syrias borders, rebels battled troops for control of crossing posts with Turkey, Iraq and Jordan.Fighters were able to hold onto the Albu Kamal crossing to Iraq, after capturing it Thursday, but regime forces regained hold of the Rabiyah crossing one day after it was claimed by opposition fighters.A Turkish diplomat told AFP that had also rebels taken over Al-Salama crossing early on Sunday.On Thursday, the Free Syrian Army claimed the Bab al-Hawa crossing with Turkey, but by Saturday evening, an AFP photographer said the post was controlled by 150 foreign fighters who identified themselves as Islamists from Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and a group called the Shura Taliban.On Saturday, rebels tried and failed to overrun the Nassib border crossing with Jordan.Fighting has intensified in Syria since a Wednesday bombing that killed national security chief General Hisham Ikhtiyar, Defence Minister General Daoud Rajha, Assads brother-in-law Assef Shawkat and General Hassan Turkmani, head of the regimes crisis cell on the uprising.