Fierce fighting rages in Aleppo

BEIRUT: Syrian rebels fired around 1,000 rockets, mortar shells and homemade projectiles at two besieged towns in Idlib province, a monitor said on Monday.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there were reports of dead and injured in the heavy fire on Fuaa and Kafraya that started on Sunday night, but it had no confirmed toll.
Fuaa and Kafraya are among the last regime-held outposts in the northwestern province of Idlib, most of which has been captured by an alliance that includes al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front.
The alliance, known as the Army of Conquest, began an attack against the villages on July 15, saying it was retaliation for a regime offensive on Zabadani, the last rebel-held bastion along Syria’s border with Lebanon.
It said the attack would “give you a taste in the north of what our people are tasting in Zabadani”.
Elsewhere, the Observatory and Syrian state media reported deaths in rebel fire on the government-controlled portion of Aleppo city in northern Syria.
The Observatory said several people were killed, among them two children, and 20 others were wounded in the rebel shelling.
State media put the toll at three dead in the city, which has been divided between government control in the west and rebel control in the east since shortly after fighting erupted in Aleppo in mid-2012.
More than 240,000 people have been killed in Syria since the conflict began with anti-government demonstrations in March 2011.
Meanwhile, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has vowed to punish a cousin who is accused of killing a military officer, the family of the victim told the Syrian daily Al-Watan on Monday.
Suleiman al-Assad, a first cousin once removed of the president, is accused of shooting dead Colonel Hassan al-Sheikh in an apparent road rage incident on Thursday evening.
Sheikh’s wife Mayssa Ghanem told Al-Watan, which is close to the government, that she had “received a promise from President Assad to punish the perpetrator, whoever he is.”
The pledge was passed to her by “official delegations that came to Latakia to express their sympathies,” she said.
“I have confidence in the word of the president, who is personally taking charge. We will get our rights.”