Syria rebels push to seize air base

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NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin has more on one of the bloodiest weeks of the 22-month conflict.

By NBC News staff and wire services

Rebels battled on Thursday to seize an air base in northern Syria, part of a campaign to fight back against the air power that has given President Bashar Assad's forces free rein to bomb rebel-held towns.

More than 60,000 people have been killed in the 22-month-old uprising and civil war, the United Nations said this week, sharply raising the death toll estimate in a conflict that shows no sign of ending.

After dramatic advances over the second half of 2012, the rebels now hold wide swathes of territory in the north and east, but are limited in exerting control because they cannot protect towns and villages from Assad's helicopters and jets.

Hundreds of fighters from rebel groups were attempting to storm the Taftanaz air base, near the northern highway that links Syria's two main cities, Aleppo and the capital Damascus.

Rebels have been besieging air bases across the north in recent weeks, in the hope this will reduce the government's power to carry out air strikes and resupply loyalist-held areas.

Dozens killed in Syrian blast as UN says 60,000 dead in conflict

A rebel fighter speaking from near the Taftanaz base overnight said the base's main sections were still in loyalist hands but insurgents had managed to infiltrate and destroy a helicopter and a fighter jet on the ground.

The northern rebel Idlib Coordination Committee said the rebels had detonated a car bomb inside the base.

The government's SANA news agency said the base had not fallen and that the military had "strongly confronted an attempt by the terrorists to attack the airport from several axes, inflicting heavy losses among them and destroying their weapons and munitions".

Rami Abdulrahman, head of the opposition-aligned Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which monitors the conflict from Britain, said as many as 800 fighters were involved in the assault, including Islamists from Jabhat al-Nusra, a powerful group that Washington considers terrorists.

Taftanaz is mainly a helicopter base, used for missions to resupply army positions in the north, many of which are cut off by road because of rebel gains, as well as for dropping crude "barrel bombs" of explosives on rebel-controlled areas.

A bloody week
Syrian opposition activists said a Syrian fighter jet targeted a gas station near the capital Damascus Wednesday, killing and wounding dozens of people who were waiting in line to buy gasoline.

Amateur footage posted online but that could not be independently verified by NBC News shows disturbing images, including charred bodies.

This attack, activists say, is one of the latest in a string of deadly incidents that have made this week one of the bloodiest in the nearly 2-year-old conflict.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Source: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/01/03/16329743-syria-rebels-push-to-seize-air-base?lite

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