Aleppo air strikes entrench civil war as Turkey closes borde

THE Assad regime has launched a massive counter-attack to recapture Syria's second-largest city, Aleppo, as fighting raged across the country.  

The regime used fixed-wing aircraft for the first time to bomb rebel positions in Aleppo, the country's commercial centre.

The civil war deepened yesterday as the regime moved thousands of troops from the northern province of Idlib to Aleppo, near the Turkish border, for what appeared to be its biggest counter-attack. Turkey last night said it had closed its border with Syria for security reasons.

Although the decision was directed primarily at the movement of trucks, it will also restrict ordinary Syrians who have been hoping to join the tens of thousands of refugees already in Turkey. State-run TRT television quoted Customs and Trade Minister Hayati Yazici as saying the 13 border gates along Turkey's 911km border with Syria would be closed to trucks as of last night.  Trucks travelling to and from Syria would not be allowed through unless they were travelling on to a third country, he said.

Dozens of Turkish trucks were either looted or torched when the rebels captured the border crossing of Bab al-Hawa last week.

Israel said yesterday it would not hesitate to declare war on Syria if it saw evidence of chemical or biological weapons being transferred to Hezbollah in Lebanon.We will act decisively and without hesitation or restraint," Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said. "It will be a completely different ball game and we hope for the understanding of the international community.

Israel's military chief, Lieutenant General Benny Gantz, said: "To the best of my judgment, for now, Assad has control over his chemical weapons stockpiles and he has upgraded the protection around them. "These weapons have not yet been transferred into negative hands, but that doesn't mean it won't happen.

General Gantz said the situation created a dilemma for Israel over whether to operate in "an isolated way", which appeared to be a reference to a single attack on any convoy moving the weapons, or to "operate broadly in a way that we could find ourselves very quickly in a larger-scale conflict than anticipated.

The Syrian government confirmed on Monday night it had stockpiles of chemical weapons, but said that they were "meant" to be used only against "external aggression." That comment has led to waves of condemnation, including from Syria's strongest ally Russia, and Germany, which described the comment as "monstrous".US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said it was not too late for President Bashar al-Assad to be involved in a transition.

One of Syria's highest-ranking defectors, Brigadier General Manaf Tlas, called on government troops to defect. "I speak to you not as an official, but as a son of Syria, as a son of the Syrian Arab army that has rejected the criminal program of this corrupt regime," he said in a television address. The regime yesterday appeared to have regained control of most parts of Damascus.

Each time the regime has deployed resources to a flashpoint in the 17-month uprising, rebels have made advances in others.  While the regime was concentrating in recent days on repelling the rebels from Damascus the rebels took control of parts of Aleppo.