Rebel attack: bombing and fighting in the heart of Damascus

The rebel forces resumed the offensive in Damascus, the Syrian capital, with an attack on the army and a rifle and grenade attack on regime troops around the headquarters of the Government. At least five people were injured in the explosion this morning of a device placed in an oil tanker behind the hotel "Lady Rose", which houses the United Nations observers. But the goal was not they, but an Army building where there was a meeting of officers loyal to the regime. The opposition Free Syrian Army (SLA) took up the attack. "This operation was a response to the killings by security forces across the country," a military spokesman said the broadcaster Al Jazeera.  The explosion took place in an area considered high security, where the headquarters of the State television and several local military apparatus of President Bashar al Assad. then began a fierce firefight behind the building that houses the offices of the government headquarters. "There is an ongoing firefight between the military and rebels in the Mazzeh neighborhood, around the offices of Prime Minister and a new building under construction in the Iranian embassy," the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OSDH). Rebel fighters attacked two buildings with RPGs and fought against government forces. Clashes are concentrating behind the Iranian Embassy, ​​one of the main allies of the regime in Damascus, according to activists They specified Local Coordination Committees. In the early to middle of last month the rebel forces had managed to take several neighborhoods in the suburbs of Damascus, but a powerful attack government troops, accompanied by helicopters, planes and tanks, made them withdraw.