Severe water shortage in Aleppo after pipe destroyed as death toll mounts

Aleppo was suffering from severe drinking water shortages on Saturday after a main pipeline was destroyed in a northern district of the city, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

"A main water line was destroyed near the water department in Bustan al-Basha. This is very important because it provides drinking water to the whole city," Observatory director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP by phone.

"We cannot say how it was ruptured, but there were air strikes and clashes between the army and rebels in the area," he added.

As many as 172 people have been killed by the fire of Syrian forces across the country on Saturday, inclusing 89 in Aleppo, Al Arabiya reported citing activists at the Local Coordination Committees.

As many as 17 dead bodies of executed Syrians were found in Aleppo, activists at the General revolution Commission said.

Syrian troops storm Damascus refugee area

Syrian troops stormed into a Palestinian refugee district in Damascus, opposition activists said earlier, after a four-day artillery assault on the southern suburb where rebels fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad have dug in, as mortar rounds or rockets fired from Syria killed a young Iraqi girl and wounded four people in a border town in western Iraq.

Assad’s forces have preferred to use air power and artillery to hit areas where rebels are positioned and infantry raids normally occur only once many have fled. Activists said they feared for civilian inhabitants in the latest offensive.

Assad’s use of military force to quell an uprising that began almost 18 months ago as a peaceful pro-democracy movement has cost him many allies in the Arab and Muslim world and caused a trickle of defections from Syrian government and army ranks.

Two Syrian diplomats in Malaysia announced late on Friday that they had joined the opposition, according to a report by Al Arabiya.

Two men identifying themselves as First Secretary Imad al-Ahmar and Diplomatic Attaché Mahmoud Obedi from Syria’s Kuala Lumpur embassy read out a statement on Al Arabiya declaring their “support for the Syrian people’s revolution against the tyrannical regime.”

But the defections so far are seen largely as symbolic and Assad has increasingly relied on a close circle of relatives and senior members of his minority Alawite sect dominating the ruling elite to maintain his grip on power.

Syrian activist Abu Yasser al-Shami said that his friends living in Yarmouk, a densely populated Palestinian refugee camp where 10 people were killed on Friday in shelling, had fled the area on Saturday morning after government troops swept in.

“Assad’s forces stormed al-Basel hospital in Yarmouk Camp and arrested many of the injured civilians,” he said over Skype, according to Reuters.

When insurgents thrust into central parts of the capital in July, they were swiftly pushed back to southern districts, like Yarmouk, where there is a thinner state security presence.

But residents complain that the army uses indiscriminate artillery and air strikes. Palestinians have been divided over whether or not to support Assad, but there are signs that more and more are now starting to back the uprising.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition watchdog based in London, said shells rained down on Hajar al-Aswad district, which neighbors Yarmouk, on Saturday.

It said 170 people were killed in bloodshed on Friday across the country, many of them in Damascus and northern Aleppo, where rebels say they control more than half of what is Syria’s most populous city and commercial center.

The Observatory says more than 23,000 people have died in an uprising that has lasted more than 17 months. Around 200,000 Syrians have fled to neighboring Turkey, Jordan and Iraq.

The conflict is spilling over Syrian borders and has raised sectarian tension in the region given that the revolt has been led by majority Sunni Muslims against a president who is Alawite, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Border fighting spills over

Mortar rounds or rockets fired from Syria killed a young Iraqi girl and wounded four people in a border town in western Iraq, an army officer and the interior ministry said on Saturday, according to AFP.

Captain Ali Juwayir from Anbar Operations Command said four mortar rounds hit al-Qaim shortly before midnight on Friday, adding that two homes in the town were struck.

Juwayir said a four-year-old girl was killed and four other people were wounded, a toll confirmed by Dr Mustafa Shawki of al-Qaim hospital.

The Iraqi interior ministry, meanwhile, said in a statement that “four rockets launched from the Syrian side... resulted in the wounding and martyrdom of some of our citizens.”

It did not provide details on the casualties.

“Iraq has maintained a stance of neutrality on the Syrian conflict,” the statement said, but “our brave forces are ready to... respond in the event of a repetition such as this aggression.”

Al-Qaim lies across the border from Albu Kamal, which has been the scene of fighting between Syrian soldiers and fighters opposed to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Lebanon kidnapper arrested

Meanwhile, Lebanon’s army forces raided a southern district of Beirut late on Friday and arrested a member of a powerful Shiite clan which has claimed responsibility for the kidnapping of 20 Syrians and a Turkish businessman.

The army arrested Hassan Meqdad, from the Meqdad clan, which abducted the men on Aug. 15 in what they said was a response to the capture of one of their kinsmen in Damascus by the rebel Free Syrian Army.

Damascus continues to exert influence over is smaller neighbor and even had troops garrisoned in Lebanon until 2005.

The Meqdads are one of many armed groups in Lebanon which continue to exert power. The northern port city of Tripoli has seen sporadic clashes between Assad’s supporters and his foes.

The United States has accused Russia and China of effectively prolonging Syria’s bloodletting by blocking efforts at the U.N. Security Council to approve tough sanctions aimed at reining in the Assad government.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said at a summit of Pacific rim states that Moscow and Western powers remained at loggerheads over how to defuse the conflict -- a diplomatic impasse in which Western officials say violence has flourished.

Washington has angered Russia by going outside the United Nations to work with allies on the Syrian opposition's behalf. But U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told Lavrov it was possible to return to the United Nations if Moscow and Beijing were ready to forego their vetoes and back stronger measures.