Heavy gunfire in heart of Damascus as U.N. council heads for Syria showdown.

Heavy gunfire in heart of Damascus as U.N. council heads for Syria showdown.(AA).Heavy machinegun fire rocked the Sabah Bahrat square in central Damascus on Tuesday, witnesses said. “Machinegun fire was heard in the Sabah Bahrat square, and members of the security forces, armed with Kalashnikovs, ran across the square,” site of the country’s Central Bank, witnesses told AFP. Shooting was also reported in Baghdad Street, a main road near the square. As many as 14 people have been killed by Syrian forces across the country on Tuesday, Al Arabiya reported citing activists at the Syrian Revolution Commission. The Local Coordination Committees, earlier, denied the presence of any massacres inside a Falouja School at the Palestinian Yarmouk refugee camp, following reports by activists that the Syrian regime troops had stormed the camp, Al Arabiya reported on Tuesday. Syria’s military deployed armored vehicles near central Damascus on Monday as troops battled rebels around the capital in what activists said could be a turning point in the 16-month uprising. Rebels late Monday announced the launch of a full-scale attack operation. The Free Syrian Army’s central-Homs Joint Command said its operation was launched “in response to massacres and barbaric crimes” committed by the Assad regime. The FSA, the statement said, started to conduct “attacks on all security stations and branches in the cities and the countryside, to enter into fierce clashes (with their forces) and to call on them to surrender.” The FSA called for all international roads to be cut off, “from (northern) Aleppo to (southern) Deraa and from (eastern) Deir Ezzor to (coastal) Lattakia, to cut off and seize the supply lines.” As battles raged around Damascus for a second straight day, troops deployed armored vehicles near the historic neighborhood of al-Midan. “When there is fighting in the capital for several hours, even days, and troops are unable to control the situation, that proves the regime's weakness,” Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP. Online videos showed street battles in the capital, with fighters firing off rocket-propelled grenades from behind sandbags.
An activist on the ground, identifying himself as Abu Musab, said the army was trying to overrun al-Midan and called the fighting a “turning point” in the revolt against Assad's autocratic regime. Damascus -- and Syria’s largest city, Aleppo -- are both home to elites who have benefited from close ties to Assad’s regime, as well as merchant classes and minority groups who worry their status will suffer if Assad falls. But for months, rebels have been gaining strength in poorer towns and cities in the Damascus countryside. Some activists suggested Monday that recent government crackdowns in those areas had pushed rebels into the city, where they were determined to strike at the heart of the regime.
“It seems there is a new strategy to bring the fighting into the center of the capital,” activist Mustafa Osso told The Associated Press. “The capital used to be safe. This will trouble the regime.”In Geneva, the International Committee of the Red Cross said Syria is in a state of all-out civil war and that all sides must respect humanitarian law or risk war crimes prosecutions. “Each time there is fighting we can see conditions that can be defined as a non-international armed conflict,” ICRC spokesman Alexis Heeb told AFP, adding “international humanitarian law applies” in such circumstances.
Nawaf Fares, the first Syrian ambassador to defect, warned Assad will use chemical weapons against opposition forces and may have already deployed them. Fares, the most prominent politician to defect since the uprising against Assad began, insisted the president’s days were numbered but warned he would be prepared “to eradicate the entire Syrian people” to remain in power. When asked by the BBC’s Frank Gardner whether that would mean the use of chemical weapons, Fares said: “I am convinced that if Bashar al-Assad’s regime is further cornered by the people, he would use such weapons.”Read the full story here.