Syria Live: A Cease-Fire in Aleppo.... But Just to Gather the Bodies

The Red Crescent gathers 31 bodies, some lying for months, from the streets of Aleppo during a cease-fire

See also Syria Analysis: US Arms to Insurgents, "Al Qa'eda", and Muddled Reporting
Bahrain (and Beyond) Live: Stepping Up the Formula 1 Protests
Tuesday's Syria Live Coverage: Airstrikes Continue Around Damascus

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2020 GMT: Assad Interview

More on President Assad's defiant appearance on pro-regime Al-Ikhbariya tonight....

"We have no choice but victory. If we don't win, Syria will be finished and I don't think this is a choice for any citizen in Syria," Assad said. "The truth is there is a war and I repeat: no to surrender, no to submission."

The President said that the West was "supporting al-Qaeda in Syria, Libya and other places and [would] pay the price later in the heart of Europe and in the heart of the United States."

Assad addressed the effort --- including the US, Britain, France, and Arab States --- to arm insurgents from a base in Jordan:

We cannot believe that thousands of insurgents are entering Syria with their weapons, at a time when Jordan was capable of stopping and arresting one person carrying a simple weapon for the Palestinian resistance.

"The fire will not stop at our border and everybody knows that Jordan is exposed as Syria is.

1856 GMT: Assad Interview

In an interview on a pro-regime TV station tonight, President Assad has said, "We are facing a campaign designed to subjugate Syria," as powers like the US do not intend to let Damascus preserve its independence."

Assad, saying he is counting on the "awareness" of the Syrian people to end the crisis, declared that the situation is better than at the start of the uprising in March 2011.

1743 GMT: Damascus

Al-Akhbar puts out the regime line on how it is winning the fight for the capital, "Regime Fights on Four Fronts":

At the beginning of March, everyone was wondering who was going to launch their battle for Damascus first, the opposition or the regime. For the opposition, their route to the center of the capital was from their Jobar stronghold headed east, reaching Abaseen Square.

The regime had no choice but to take on the armed opposition in Jobar, which is but 700 meters from Abaseen Square.

Since the the last week of March 2013, the opposition made several attempts to deliver a surprise blow by using sleeper units in the Barzeh area to infiltrate Mount Qasioun. The Syrian army maintains a sizable arsenal of rockets and cannons on the mountain that overlooks Damascus.

According to security sources, the opposition’s plan would have succeeded had the army not gotten wind of their plans from intelligence sources and moved to stop it.

In anticipation of a surprise attack on Damascus, the Syrian army took all the necessary precautions by organizing its forces on four fronts.

1503 GMT: Oil and Insurgents

European Union diplomats have said that EU Foreign Ministers will agree to lift restrictions on selling equipment for the oil industry to the opposition and investing in the oil sector.

Conditions will apply to ensure that no business is done with supporters of Assad.

The EU imposed a ban on purchases of Syrian oil by European companies in 2011 in response to an uprising against Assad.

The latest U.S. government data indicate that oil production in Syria was 153,000 barrels per day in October 2012, a nearly 60% decline from March 2011.

1344 GMT: Arms to the Insurgents

Eliot Higgins points to video of insurgents, with Croatian weapons, near the town Khirbet Ghazaleh, north-east of Daraa.

Activists have reported heavy clashes between insurgents and regime forces in the area in r4ecent days.

1044 GMT: Arms to the Insurgents

Blogger Eliot Higgins claims to have seen Czech-made anti-tank weapons in the hands of insurgents in Aleppo.

Higgins says the faction Ghorabaa Sham bought eight RPG-75s from another opposition group.

1040 GMT: Arms to the Insurgents

The Wall Street Journal has a featured article, "U.S. Fears Syria Rebel Victory, for Now".

The significance of the story, however, is not what it reveals --- which is not really that much --- but what it gets badly wrong. We explain why in an analysis in a separate entry.

0515 GMT: Casualties

The Local Coordination Committees claim 119 people were confirmed killed on Tuesday, including 19 women and 21 children.

The LCC, declaring 49 deaths in Aleppo Province, included the recovery of 31 bodies --- some lying for months --- from streets in the al-Sakhour neighbourhood of Aleppo city.

The Violations Documentation Center reports 57,004 people killed since the beginning of the conflict in March 2011, an increase of 118 from Monday. Of the dead, 45,176 are civilians, a rise of 88 from yesterday.

0505 GMT: A Brief Cease-Fire in Aleppo

In the first truce in months of warfare, both sides stopped firing in Syria's biggest city on Tuesday to let aid workers collect 31 bodies rotting amid the rubble of the front line.

Red Crescent workers and members of an opposition local council drove into the edge of the working class al-Sakhour district in north Aleppo to pick up the mostly civilian dead, many of them hit by army sniper fire, activists and insurgents said.

Some of the dead had been lying in the streets and between buildings for months. Three bodies were found with their hands tied and four were burnt beyond recognition, it was claimed.

Video footage taken by the centre showed blue, grey and white body bags being unloaded into a schoolyard by men wearing masks and gloves.

"They were lying in no man's land and rotting. With the weather changing, I think the other side was worried about disease spreading and allowed the truce," one rebel commander said.

"They were mostly inhabitants of the area. Some had fled and came back to check their houses on the front line, and were hit by the government's snipers."

Al-Sakhour, many of whose residents work in nearby stone quarries and cotton mills, was among the first areas in Aleppo to hold mass demonstrations against President Assad.

Opposition campaigner Abu Louay al-Halabi said the one-day truce appeared to have been agreed to by a regime commander on the ground: "It seems that one man on the battlefield wanted to make a gesture of after nine months of fighting and no advance by either side."

Elsewhere in the city, activists reported heavy fighting near Aleppo International airport and army sniper fire in the central Bab Jenin districts, where they said one man had been killed.