Syrian helicopter gunships strafe Aleppo rebels

Regime forces on Monday strafed rebel-held districts in Aleppo with helicopter gunships and pounded them with shelling on the third day of a pitched battle for Syria's most populous city. The fighting has sent some 200,000 civilians fleeing the northern city, according to the UN which warned of a looming humanitarian catastrophe, while France said it would call an urgent UN Security Council meeting on Syria. The shelling was focused on the southwest district of Salaheddin, a stronghold of the rebel Free Syrian Army, made up of deserters and armed civilians, said the Syrian Revolution General Commission. Colonel Abdel Jabbar al-Oqaidi, head of the FSA military council of Aleppo, said that "several quarters of Aleppo are being bombed with MiG (fighter jets) and helicopters." The Local Coordination Committees, made up of activists on the ground, said the eastern neighbourhood of Sakhur was also hit by shells and by machinegun fire, with regime forces deploying helicopter gunships against the rebels. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, meanwhile, said that clashes between troops and rebels erupted early morning near the air force intelligence headquarters in Aleppo's Zahraa district. Just outside of Aleppo, the country's most populous city, rebels seized a strategic checkpoint after a 10-hour battle, a FSA commander and an AFP journalist said. "The Anadan checkpoint... was taken this morning at 5:00 (0200 GMT) after 10 hours of fighting," said General Ferzat Abdel Nasser, a rebel officer who deserted the Syrian army a month ago. By securing the checkpoint, about five kilometres (3.8 miles) northwest of Aleppo, the rebels now control a direct route between the Turkish border and the commercial capital. An AFP journalist on the ground said that the rebels captured seven tanks and armoured vehicles, and destroyed an eighth vehicle. Six soldiers were killed and 25 were taken as prisoners, General Ferzat told AFP by phone, adding that four of his own men died in the fighting. The Syrian army, meanwhile, claimed to have during the night overrun part of Salaheddin, the rebels' main bastion in Aleppo, but the claim was denied by the FSA's Colonel Oqaidi. "The Syrian army took control of part of Salaheddin district and continues its offensive," a security source in Damascus told AFP. However, Oqaidi insisted government troops had "not progressed one metre." "We launched a new assault from Salaheddin during the night, and we destroyed four tanks," the rebel commander told AFP. Since the launch on Saturday of the regime assault on Aleppo, the FSA "has already repelled three offensives" against Salaheddin, he said, adding that the rebels controlled "between 35 to 40 percent of Aleppo." Rami Abdel Rahman, the head of the Britain-based Observatory, said that regime forces were on Monday "just reaching the outskirts of the (Salaheddin) neighbourhood." Monday's violence followed a bloody day in which 125 were killed across Syria -- 46 civilians, 45 soldiers and 34 rebels -- according to the Britain-based Observatory. UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos said in a statement that an estimated 200,000 people had fled from Aleppo in two days and an unknown number were still trapped in the city. Amos said in New York on Sunday that she was "extremely concerned by the impact of shelling and use of tanks and other heavy weapons" on civilians in Aleppo, Damascus and other locations. She said that many people in Aleppo had sought shelter in schools and other public buildings. "They urgently need food, mattresses and blankets, hygiene supplies and drinking water." US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad that the assault on his own population in Aleppo would be a nail in his coffin. "It's pretty clear that Aleppo is another tragic example of the kind of indiscriminate violence that the Assad regime has committed against its own people," Panetta told reporters on a military plane en route to Tunisia. "And in many ways, if they continue this kind of tragic attack on their own people in Aleppo, I think ultimately it will be a nail in Assad's coffin," he said. "He's just assuring that the Assad regime will come to an end by virtue of the kind of violence they're committing against their own people." French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said in Paris on Monday that France, which is taking over the UN Security Council's rotating presidency in August, will call an emergency ministerial meeting on Syria. Fabius told French radio station RTL he would chair the meeting himself and that it had to be held urgently to stop Assad's regime carrying out massacres in Syria. More than 20,000 people have been killed in Syria since the anti-Assad revolt began in March 2011, according to the Observatory. There is no way to independently verify this figure, while the UN has stopped keeping count.