Assad helicopters strafe Aleppo

Army readies troops,armoured columns for invasion; fear grips city as forces wait for reinforcements

Syrian Army helicopters fired on neighbourhoods in Aleppo on Friday morning,activists said,as the army readied assault troops and armoured columns for a possible invasion of the city,Syrias densely populated commercial capital,where insurgents have embedded themselves over the past week in preparation for a battle.

As Aleppo girded for fighting,opposition figures said on Friday that a member of the Syrian Parliament from the citys northern district had defected and crossed into Turkey. The lawmaker,Iklhas Badawi,was elected in May to a Parliament.

The Syrian military shelled rebel targets in urban enclaves on Thursday. Antigovernment activists reached by phone and Skype in Aleppo said that the citys civilian population was gripped by foreboding as government forces massed on the southern outskirts,and that fierce street clashes had sporadically erupted. But Syrian military commanders appeared to be awaiting reinforcements before issuing invasion orders.

Military experts have long speculated that President Bashar al-Assads army,which has been scrambling to crush rebel resistance in urban areas like Homs,Hama and more recently central and southern neighbourhoods of Damascus during the uprising,lacked the military resources to take on an armed rebellion in all major cities at once. That seemed to explain the delay in Aleppo.

The US expressed alarm about the possibility of mass civilian casualties in Aleppo.

A resident in the city named Ahmed,reached by Skype on Thursday afternoon,said Aleppo was convulsed with rumours that the armys elite Fourth Division,commanded by Assads brother Maher,was mobilising for an attack. We are terrified, he said.

Antigovernment fighters including foreign fighters were arriving or were preparing to travel to Aleppo from surrounding areas,activists said. Although the insurgents claimed to have destroyed police stations in two of the citys neighbourhoods,they were repulsed when they tried to take over two others,said Majed Abdel Nour,a spokesman in the city for the Shaam News Network,an antigovernment activist group.