Syria's government moved to defend Damascus as its military fought rebel troops outside the capital for a third day on Sunday, as the battle moved ever closer to President Bashar al-Assad's seat of power.
Rounds of fighting rocked at least four suburbs for most of Sunday, residents and activists said. They described a government offensive to regain control of restive towns around Damascus that have become the latest concentration of armed resistance against Mr. Assad's regime.
The sustained fighting appears to suggest the government is struggling to maintain control of some areas around the capital, 11 months into a conflict in which military and security forces had repeatedly crushed protests—and a gradually militarized opposition movement—across the country. Analysts said it likely also suggests the regime's loyal units were becoming severely overstretched, risking the government's defense of the capital itself as it increasingly deploys troops to the suburbs.
The fighting around Damascus, which has killed dozens of people in recent days, has come amid a surge in confidence by opposition fighters, just as Arab diplomacy on Syria's crisis appeared to reach another dead-end and Syria's political opposition made a new push at the United Nations Security Council for action against the regime.
At least 16 people were killed in areas around the capital Sunday, according to Local Coordination Committees, an activist network. Some 280 people have been killed across Syria since Monday, activist groups said, in one of the bloodiest bouts of the uprising, which has also seen the most definitive departure from a peaceful protest movement.
Activists said at least 50 tanks moved into al-Ghouta, the city's eastern agricultural belt, on Sunday, firing artillery and rockets while snipers shot from rooftops. Communications, electricity and water were cut off from a handful of towns, several activist groups said. Some activists said bodies lay in the street.
Closer to the capital, opposition fighters loosely organized under the dissident Free Syrian Army claimed some successes. In Douma, a suburb some nine miles from Damascus, they said they wrested control from the military. Less than four miles from Damascus's old city in Arbeen, dissident troops said they burned a tank and killed three government snipers.
The government said terrorists in the Damascus suburb of Sahnaya on Sunday remotely detonated a bomb that targeted a bus carrying soldiers, killing six and injuring six more. In Zabadani, the first Damascus suburb to slip out of government control last week, residents said government forces broke a cease-fire by shooting and killing a Free Syrian Army soldier, angering the resort town's remaining residents—many had already fled. In response, the dissident army attacked two security barricades on the outskirts.
The U.S. State Department said it would have no comment on Syria until Monday.
Damascus was wrenched from its relative insulation from the violence roiling Syria's other cities some 10 days ago, when government troops pulled out of Zabadani, a mountainous resort town about 20 miles northwest of Damascus, after days of fighting with dissident troops. The retreat, followed by a cease-fire negotiated by Assef Shawkat—Syria's deputy defense minister and the president's brother-in-law—marked a surprising first for Syria's opposition.
It left the town under the control of rebel troops and town councils that sprang up, with just state police allowed to stay under the negotiated cease-fire, residents said. That agreement broke down on Sunday when government forces killed a dissident soldier on a road out of town. But as both sides held their fire at nightfall, Zabadani hung in what one resident described as a "cautious calm."
Zabadani's mountainous terrain made it easier for dissident soldiers to launch attacks on the military, some soldiers said. The military pounded a string of suburbs as it fought to push back rebels and the armed fighters—mostly residents—backing them, activists said.
Leaders from the opposition Syrian National Council were due on Sunday to brief officials at the U.N., where Arab League Secretary-General Nabil al-Araby and Qatar's deputy prime minister are also seeking support for an Arab plan to end Syria's crisis. The plan, which calls on Mr. Assad to delegate power to a vice president pending elections, has been rejected by Russia, Syria's Security Council ally.
As often in Syria's crisis, the conflict on the ground outpaced the diplomacy. "We can finally say the military balance is starting to shift in our favor," said a senior commander with the dissident army near Syria's border with Lebanon. In another show of force, dissident troops said they were positioned in a suburb no more than five miles from the presidential palace in Damascus.
Their accounts couldn't be independently verified, but residents of two suburbs less than four miles from the center of Damascus's old city confirmed opposition fighters continued to fight the army Sunday night. Activists reporting fighting in Ain Tarma, 2½ miles from Damascus.
On Saturday, the Arab League suspended its monitoring mission, saying a spike in violence hampered the mission's work, criticizing the government for not holding up its end of a deal to stop the violence. Syria's government said it was "surprised" by the decision. Last week, it said it wouldn't give up a military campaign to root out who it describes as armed terrorists.
On Sunday in Damascus, reports of the two, often conflicting faces of the capital were stark. Activists reported tanks guarding central squares across the capital and the sounds of shooting and explosions near the city center. Security around the city has been tight, but the military has yet to deploy around large public squares. Residents in nearby parts of the capital said the streets appeared to be calm.
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