ALEPPO: Fighting raged in Syria's second city on Thursday as troops and rebels prepared for a head-on confrontation and pro-regime media warned of a looming "mother of all battles."
A security source said the army was preparing for an all-out assault as clashes also shook parts of Damascus and other areas, with at least 114 people reported killed on Thursday -- 61 civilians, 32 regime troops and 21 rebels.
"The special forces were deployed on Wednesday and Thursday on the edges of the city, and more troops have arrived to take part in a generalised counter-offensive on Friday or Saturday," the security source said of Aleppo.
Rebels also brought in reinforcements, with the source estimating that between 1,500 and 2,000 opposition fighters had arrived from outside Syria's most populous city to reinforce some 2,000 already fighting inside Aleppo.
"They are mainly present in the southern and eastern suburbs of the city, mainly Salaheddin and nearby districts," he said.
The airport is currently cut off from the city, as four of the five roads leading to it are under rebel control, he added.
Rebels also said a regime assault appeared imminent.
"The army's reinforcements have arrived in Aleppo," Colonel Abdel Jabbar al-Okaidi, a spokesman for the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA), said via Skype.
"We expect a major offensive at any time, specifically on areas across the southern belt, from east to west."
Okaidi added that some 100 tanks and a large number of military vehicles had arrived in Aleppo, the country's commercial hub.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that regime forces pounded the Salaheddin neighbourhood in the south and Jazamati in the east.
On July 20 the rebels launched an all-out assault to overrun Aleppo a move analysts say is aimed at establishing a bastion close to the rebel military headquarters in neighbouring Turkey.
The newspaper Al-Watan, which is close to the regime, led on Thursday with the headline "Aleppo, the mother of all battles," adding that "the army continues to chase terrorists in the outskirts of Damascus and the province."
Citing an Arab diplomatic source, it added: "Aleppo will be the last battle waged by the Syrian army to crush the terrorists and after that Syria will emerge from the crisis."
n Street battles –
Intermittent clashes were also reported in the Damascus area, with seven people killed there and 16 others, including five children, killed in shelling on Yalda village just south of the capital, the Observatory said.
It reported clashes in the Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp, where a resident reached by phone confirmed the fighting.
Troops also pounded several other districts in southern Damascus, and heavy clashes were under way in Al-Hajar Al-Aswad neighbourhood as regime helicopters strafed the area, activists and residents said.
"Last night was quiet but people woke up to the sound of explosions and shelling from seven o'clock in the morning," an activist calling himself Abu Qais al-Shami said.
After a week of heavy clashes, activists say regime forces have largely regained control of Damascus, with just a few pockets of resistance remaining. (AFP)
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