‘Fighters from the Syrian opposition guard a checkpoint during clashes’ The United States on Wednesday confirmed the defections of two more senior Syrian diplomats, describing the moves as further evidence that President Bashar al-Assad's days are "numbered." "We can confirm the defections of Syrian ambassadors to both the UAE and Cyprus," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters aboard Air Force One. Earlier, sources had told AFP the two envoys had defected from the regime.
Carney said the move showed that "senior officials around the Assad inner circle are fleeing the government because of the heinous actions taken by Assad against his own people, and the recognition that Assad's days are numbered."
Earlier, a high-level source told AFP on condition of anonymity that Syria's charge d'affaires in Cyprus, Lamia Hariri, has defected from the regime.
An opposition activist in the country confirmed that Hariri's husband, Syria's ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, Abdel Latif al-Dabbagh, had also defected.
Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television said on Wednesday that Dabbagh had defected, though it did not say where he was.
But a senior State Department official confirmed to AFP that "Dabbagh has defected to Qatar and has joined the growing number of Syrians who are doing what is right for the Syrian people."
"These defections serve as a reminder that the bottom is starting to fall out of the regime. It is crumbling and losing its grip on power," the official added, asking to remain anonymous.
The string of defections come after Nawaf Fares, Syria's ambassador to Iraq, left for Qatar this month after publicly renouncing his post.
Meanwhile the Syrian military is continuing to use planes and helicopters to bombard areas where opposition fighters are mounting strong resistance.
There was report of government forces attacking rebel positions in the capital Damascus, the city of Aleppo and areas of Homs province on Wednesday.
Syrian troops and rebels sent reinforcements to the intensifying battle in the second city Aleppo.
Clashes raged on Wednesday in Aleppo's central al-Jamaliya neighbourhood, near the local headquarters of the ruling Baath party. In Kalasseh in the south of the city, rebels set a police station ablaze, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Helicopter gunships strafed several neighbourhoods of the commercial capital, causing deaths and injuries, according to the Britain-based watchdog group.
A rebel spokesman told the AFP news agency via Skype that a "large number" of troops have been moved from the northwestern province of Idlib to Aleppo.
A Syrian newspaper journalist confirmed that the rebels were also reinforcing.
Herve Ladsous, the UN peacekeeping chief, said he had told Syrian officials that without a significant reduction in violence, the remaining 150 UN observers would leave on the expiry of the "final" 30-day extension of the mission's mandate, agreed by the Security Council on July 20.