The ongoing battles between rebel and government forces are taking their toll on cities in the country. 
 
 The ongoing battles between rebel and government forces are taking their toll on cities in the country. 
 
 The ongoing battles between rebel and government forces are taking their toll on cities in the country. 
 
 Rumblings of discontent within Syria’s Alawite minority are presenting a new challenge to President Bashar al-Assad’s efforts to retain power in the face of an expanding armed rebellion, calling into question the loyalties even of his own sect in the conflict ravaging the country. 
 
 Assad has increasingly come to rely on the 2.5 million-strong Alawite community for support as Syria’s Sunni majority has flocked to join the rebellion, sharpening the sectarian dimensions of an uprising that began as a largely spontaneous quest for greater freedoms inspired by the revolts sweeping the Arab world. 
 
 Alawites, in turn, have rallied behind Assad’s leadership, spurred by fears for their future in a Syria they would no longer run and in which Sunni Islamists may play a major role should the rebels win. 
 
 But now, from the Alawite heartland of Syria’s northern coastal region, come whispers of intrigue and strains within the Assad clan itself. A shootout between members of the extended Assad family in the president’s ancestral home town of Qardaha late last month and the detention of a prominent Alawite activist by the regime offer hints of unease within the one segment of the population whose unwavering support for Assad has hitherto not been in question. 
 
 There is no indication that Alawites are on the verge of switching sides to join the fragmented and leaderless opposition, which has made little effort to welcome them. Indeed, many Alawites who initially welcomed demands for political reform fell silent long ago or lined up behind the Assad regime once the revolutionaries took up arms and Sunni extremists began to play a more prominent role, according to Alawite activists and residents of the Latakia region, where the minority community is concentrated. 
 
 As members of an obscure and little-understood offshoot of Shiite Islam, the Alawites endured centuries of persecution under Sunni rule before Assad’s father, Hafez, seized power in 1970 and propelled them into the ranks of the elite. Many fear being relegated again to second-class status or, worse, being killed by Sunnis exacting revenge for the months of bloodshed inflicted by the ­Alawite-dominated security forces, Alawites say. 
 
 The signs of tension within the community suggest at a minimum, however, that the pressures of the 19-month-old revolt are taking a toll on the cohesion of the Alawites. 
 
 “The Alawites are critical for Assad’s survival. He wouldn’t survive a day without their complete support, so the fact that we are seeing tensions is significant,” said Hilal Khashan, a professor of political science at the American University of Beirut. “Most Alawites are upset with the regime, and they feel Assad is dragging their sect into a conflict they can’t eventually win.” 
 
 Shootout in Qardaha 
 
 Exactly what happened in Qardaha over the last weekend of September is unclear, and accounts differ over whether the dispute was rooted in political or personal rivalries. But all agree that there was an exchange of fire between two members of the Assad family in a cafe in the mountainous town where Hafez al- 
 
 Assad was born and where his body is buried in a vast marble tomb. 
 
 One of the men, local strongman Mohammed al-Assad, pulled his gun after being insulted by another Assad relative, Sakher Osman, the accounts say. Both men were injured in the ensuing shootout, along with as many as six others. 
 
 Syria scholar Joshua Landis, who maintains close contact with the community through his Alawite wife, says the gun battle occurred only because Osman insulted Mohammed al-Assad, known locally as the “Sheik of the Mountain” for his role as the Assad family’s premier enforcer in the town. An e-mail from a relative in the area described how Bashar al-Assad intervened in the dispute, calmed tempers and restored order, said Landis, a professor of political science at the University of Oklahoma. 
 
 Mohammed al-Saleh, an Alawite activist in Syria, said the fight was over the lucrative smuggling trade in cigarettes, weapons and other contraband that has thrived among the coastal Alawite clans under the Assad family rule. Attempts to read more into the incident are “nonsense,” he said. 
 
 But suspicions that the quarrel reflected deeper political differences within the community were fueled by the fact that the shootout took place in a cafe owned by the prominent al-Khayer family, a longtime rival of the Assads; that one of those injured was a Khayer; and that the fight came days after the arrest of a prominent member of the family and a veteran dissident, Abdul Aziz al-Khayer. 
 
 Khayer was detained in Damascus upon his return from a trip to Russia and then China as a representative of the opposition National Coordination Board, the Damascus-based grouping that is tolerated by the regime for its relatively moderate stance. 
 
 The arrest came amid widespread speculation in the capital that Khayer was being groomed by Moscow for a potential role in a future government, according to a Damascus analyst who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he fears for his safety. Activists who believe the gunfight signaled the emergence of a political split within the ruling Alawite clans say Osman was meeting with representatives of the Khayer family to mull a response to the arrest when Mohammed al-Assad strode into the cafe to break them up. 
 
 The specter of a full-blooded Alawite feud seems remote, if only because the challenges to their survival are so immense that most Alawite clans understand they have to stick together, Landis said. A split within the ruling family would “be totally new, a paradigm shift” in the narrative of Syria’s revolt, he said. 
 
 “I don’t believe it’s happening,” he said. “But it’s clear there’s a dynamic in Qardaha that is not in favor of Assad. There’s just so many tensions.” 
 
 Exploiting fears 
 
 Indeed, assumptions of Alawite loyalty to the regime mask a far more complex reality in which traditional clan rivalries are becoming tangled in deep frustrations among the many members of the community who have misgivings about the direction in which Assad is leading them, according to Alawite residents of the coastal region and exiled activists. 
 
 A steady stream of coffins arrives daily in Alawite loyalist villages, containing the bodies of Alawite men killed in the fight against the rebels. Women wearing black are a common sight on streets festooned with Assad’s portraits. The government has not released casualty figures for its security forces, but if the widely touted number of at least 10,000 Alawite deaths is true, it would mean that Alawite loyalists are dying at a greater rate than Sunnis. 
 
 A story, perhaps apocryphal but told often enough to lend it an air of authenticity, goes that a mother, upon being presented with the body of her third and last son to die fighting the rebels, asked the officer: “Are you going to kill every one of us just so that one man may survive?” 
 
 Complaints that Alawite fears are being exploited by the regime to protect Assad and his family are growing steadily louder as the death toll mounts, according to an Alawite doctor from Latakia, who spoke on the condition of anonymity while on a trip to Beirut because he fears for his safety. 
 
 “Assad is not representing the Alawites; he is using them,” he said. “If Alawites are prepared to die for Assad, it is because they fear for themselves, not because they love him.” 
 
 Most impoverished Alawite communities benefited little from the ascent of the Assads, and they have historically formed an important component of the opposition to Assad’s rule, said an Alawite activist in Latakia who spent a decade in jail in the 1990s and did not want to be identified. 
 
 But they were heavily recruited into the security services, and they have since been propelled onto the front lines as the accelerating defections of Sunni soldiers call into question the reliability of Sunni units, military experts say. The army is also increasingly relying on groups of armed irregulars known as the shabiha, drawn mostly from the Alawite community, and has been organizing them into local militias. 
 
 Sunnis also serve in the shabiha in predominantly Sunni parts of the country such as Aleppo, Daraa and Deir al-Zour, confounding simple interpretations of the conflict as sectarian, Alawite and Sunni activists note. 
 
 Many of the large-scale massacres of civilians known to have taken place, such as those in the villages of Houla and Qubair this summer, were blamed on Alawite shabiha, however. And though there have not been any recorded retaliatory massacres of Alawite civilians by the rebels, “the danger of widespread sectarian reprisals . . . is frighteningly real,” the International Crisis Group said in a recent report. 
 
 Those fears, above all, are likely to continue to bind Alawites to Assad in what they have come to see as a fight for their survival, said Khashan, the professor. 
 
 “He has left them with no option but to stay with him,” Khashan said. “He has succeeded in linking the fate of the Alawites to the fate of the regime.” ||||| BUKULMEZ, Turkey Syrian warplanes bombed two rebel bases near the Turkish border on Monday sending hundreds of people fleeing across the frontier. 
 
 The attacks on the Free Syrian Army positions (FSA) in Atima and nearby Bab al-Hawa came a day before NATO and Ankara were due to start assessing where to station surface-to-air missiles on the Turkish side of the 900-km (560-mile) boundary. 
 
 Turkey, a big supporter of rebels fighting to oust Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, has repeatedly scrambled jets along the border. It has also responded in kind when shells from the conflict have landed inside Turkey, underlining fears Syria's 20-month-old revolt could spread to destabilize the region. 
 
 Ankara has rejected Syrian complaints that the NATO Patriots were "provocative" and stressed they would be used only to defend Turkish territory, not to create a no-fly zone inside Syria that rebels have long demanded as a way to neutralize Assad's massive air power. 
 
 Syrian planes dropped around six bombs on a rebel base near the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, said activists. 
 
 "There were lots of people injured ... I saw many wounded people on the border before I was brought here," FSA member Mahmoud Ahmad told Reuters after arriving in Turkey for treatment. 
 
 The attack also flattened tents being set up nearby for displaced people inside Syria by a Turkish charity, but no one was inside them at the time, Turkey's state-run Anadolu agency reported. Reuters television footage showed tattered shelters and a bomb crater near a line of tanks. 
 
 Two Syrian jets fired five rockets at an FSA base in Atima, around 2km (1 mile) from the border, said opposition activist Ahmed, who lives nearby. "Three have hit farm areas and another two hit buildings near the base." 
 
 Rebels fired anti-aircraft guns at the jets but they were flying too high to be hit, activists said. "I think the reason for the raid may have something to do with increased weapons movements (from Turkey)," Ahmed said. 
 
 Several hundred Syrians fled into Turkey after the Atima raid and were being taken care of by the Turkish army. 
 
 The Turkish Anatolian news agency said an anti-aircraft shell fired during clashes in another Syrian border town, Harem, hit the roof of a house in the Turkish district of Reyhanli but caused no casualties. 
 
 Syrian rebels have been tightening their hold on farmland and urban centres to the east and northeast of Damascus, and have seized a string of military bases in the past 10 days. 
 
 PATRIOT DEPLOYMENT 
 
 A joint Turkish-NATO team will start work on Tuesday assessing where to put Patriot missiles, how many will be needed and the number of foreign troops to be sent to operate them. 
 
 Turkey is reluctant to be drawn into the fighting, but the proximity of Syrian bombing raids to its border is straining its nerves. It is worried about its neighbor's chemical weapons, the refugee crisis on its border, and what it says is Syrian support for Kurdish militants on its own soil. 
 
 Activists say more than 40,000 people have been killed in Syria's civil war, which started with peaceful demonstrations for reform but grew into demands for the overthrow of 42 years of dynastic rule by Assad and his late father, Hafez al-Assad. 
 
 U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, speaking to the Austrian paper Der Standard, urged Assad to consider a political settlement with the opposition. 
 
 "The military option is not sustainable. The conflict should be resolved via a political process. (Assad) should realize that he has gone too far, too deep, and how can he continue this way? He should listen to what his people would like," he said. 
 
 Attacks by mainly Sunni Muslim rebels against Assad's forces have become increasingly effective and deadly. The president, from Syria's Alawite minority which is linked to Shi'ite Islam, has responded with devastating artillery and air bombardment. 
 
 Hundreds of thousands of Syrians have fled their country and more than 2 million more have been displaced. The opposition said last week $60 billion would be needed for reconstruction. 
 
 With winter coming, the suffering will grow as displaced families seek food, medicine and shelter. The U.N. chief said only 40 percent of needed humanitarian aid has been made available. 
 
 EUPHRATES DAM CAPTURED 
 
 The military installations rebels have captured in the last 10 days include a major facility in the northern province of Aleppo and several bases around the capital Damascus. 
 
 On Monday activists said rebels took control of the Tishreen dam on the Euphrates river, east of the city of Aleppo. Internet video footage showed gunmen inside what appeared to be the control room, undamaged following the rebel capture. 
 
 Other footage showed rebels opening up ammunition boxes, including one marked RPG (rocket-propelled grenades), which they said were seized from Assad's forces holding the dam. 
 
 On Sunday rebels said they had captured a helicopter base east of Damascus, their latest gain in a battle that is drawing nearer to Assad's seat of power in the capital. 
 
 The Marj al-Sultan base, 15 km (10 miles) from Damascus, is the second military facility on the outskirts of the city reported to fall to Assad's opponents this month. Activists said rebels destroyed two helicopters and taken 15 prisoners. 
 
 "We are coming for you Bashar!" a rebel shouted in an internet video of what activists said was Marj al-Sultan. Restrictions on non-state media meant it could not be verified. 
 
 The rebels have been tightening their hold on farmland and urban centres to the east and northeast of Damascus while a major battle has been under way for a week in the suburb of Daraya near the main highway south. 
 
 "We are seeing the starting signs of a rebel siege of Damascus," opposition campaigner Fawaz Tello said from Berlin. "Marj al-Sultan is very near to the Damascus Airport road and to the airport itself. The rebels appear to be heading toward cutting this as well as the main northern artery to Aleppo." 
 
 Assad's core forces, drawn mainly from his Alawite sect, are entrenched in the capital. 
 
 (Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman, Erika Solomon in Beirut, Jonathon Burch in Ankara and Michael Shields in Vienna; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Mark Heinrich) ||||| AMMAN/BEIRUT Syria sent thousands of troops surging towards Aleppo in the early hours of Wednesday, where its forces have been pounding rebel fighters from the air, engulfing the country's largest city in total warfare to put down a revolt. 
 
 Recent days have seen Syria's 16-month-old uprising transformed from an insurgency in remote provinces into a battle for control of the two main cities, Aleppo and the slightly smaller capital Damascus, where fighting exploded last week. 
 
 President Bashar al-Assad's forces have launched massive counter assaults in both cities. They appear to have beaten rebels back from neighborhoods in the capital and are turning towards Aleppo, a commercial hub in the north. 
 
 Opposition activists said thousands of troops had withdrawn with their tanks and armored vehicles from the strategic Jabal al-Zawiya highlands in Idlib province near the Turkish border and were headed towards Aleppo. 
 
 Rebels attacked the rear of the troops withdrawing from the region at the villages of Orom al-Joz and rami near the main Aleppo-Latakia road and at the village of al-Bara west of the Aleppo-Damascus highway, actives Abdelrahman Bakran said from the area. 
 
 In Aleppo, helicopters swirled overhead firing missiles throughout Tuesday, residents said. Rebels were battling government forces by the gates of the historic old city. Troops fired mortars and shells at rebels armed with rifles and machineguns. 
 
 "I heard at least 20 rockets fired, I think from helicopters, and also a lot of machinegun fire," a resident near one of the areas being shelled, who asked to be identified only by his first name Omar, said by telephone. 
 
 "Almost everyone has fled in panic, even my family. I have stayed to try to stop the looters; we hear they often come after an area is shelled." 
 
 Residents said fixed-wing jets had also flown over the city, followed by loud noises, although there were contradictory reports as to whether they had fired. 
 
 Some residents said they believed the planes had dropped bombs, but others said booming sounds could have been caused by supersonic jets breaking the sound barrier. A correspondent for Britain's BBC television said the jets had fired. 
 
 Assad's forces have occasionally launched air strikes from fixed-wing jets on other cities during the uprising, but tend to rely on helicopters for air strikes in urban areas. 
 
 The 16-month-old uprising has entered a new and far more violent phase in the past 10 days since rebels poured into Damascus in large numbers. 
 
 Last Wednesday an explosion killed four members of Assad's closest circle inside a security headquarters, a blow that wiped out much of the top echelon of his military command structure and shattered the reputation for invulnerability that his family has held since his father seized power in a 1970 coup. 
 
 Western powers have been calling for Assad to be removed from power for many months, and now say they believe his days are numbered. But they fear that he will fight to the bitter end, raising the risk of sectarian warfare spreading across one of the world's most volatile regions. 
 
 Syria raised the alarm even further on Monday by confirming that it had chemical and biological weapons. In a statement that may have been intended to reassure the world but seemed to have the opposite effect, it said it would not use poison gas against rebels, only against external threats. 
 
 Assad's international protector Russia added its voice on Tuesday to those of Western countries warning him not to use chemical weapons. Western diplomats said Russia may have pressed Syria to make Monday's statement after the United States and Israel openly discussed their worries about chemical weapons. 
 
 U.S. President Barack Obama said the world would hold Assad and his entourage accountable "should they make the tragic mistake of using those (chemical) weapons". 
 
 Brigadier General Manaf Tlas, a member of Assad's inner circle who fled Syria this month, appeared on al Arabiya television in his first public comments since defecting. He called on troops to abandon the government. 
 
 "I address you... as one of the Syrian Arab Army's sons who reject the criminal behavior of this corrupt regime. The honourable people in the military would not accept these crimes," he said on al-Arabiya television. 
 
 Tlas is a member of the Sunni Muslim majority, and his defection was seen as a sign that the Sunni establishment had abandoned Assad, a member of the Alawite minority sect. 
 
 MOSQUE ATTACK 
 
 Elsewhere in the country, activists said government troops and pro-Assad militia known as shabbiha had attacked a mosque in a village northwest of the city of Hama. 
 
 "Troops and shabbiha left the roadblock on the edge of Shariaa and crossed the main road and began firing automatic rifles on the worshippers as they were entering the mosque," activist Jamil al-Hamwi said by telephone from the area. 
 
 "We have confirmed the names for 15 bodies and it is estimated there is a similar number still to be collected from the streets," said Hamwi, who uses a pseudonym for security reasons. The account, like others from activists, could not be confirmed. Syria restricts access by international journalists. 
 
 At least nine people were killed in army shelling of al-Herak, a town south of Deraa, the cradle of the revolt against more than four decades of Assad family rule, activists said. 
 
 Video posted on the Internet showed the shattered bodies of a veiled woman and six children in colorful pajamas, some of them very young. Four lay on one doctor's table. 
 
 TROOPS TIGHTEN GRIP ON CAPITAL 
 
 In Damascus, troops were trying to snuff out rebel resistance in several areas, including Barzeh, near the center, and the southern districts of Hajar al-Aswad, Asali and Qadam. 
 
 Tanks prowled the streets of Midan, a neighborhood recaptured by the army from rebels on Friday. 
 
 Assad reshuffled his security team on Tuesday, according to a Lebanese security source. He said Ali Mamlouk had been named intelligence chief in place of Hisham Bekhtyar, one of four top Assad security aides killed in last week's blast. ID:nL6E8IOETI] 
 
 Israel, which has publicly discussed military action to keep Syrian chemical arms or missiles out the hands of Assad's Lebanese militant allies Hezbollah, said there was no sign any such diversion had occurred. 
 
 "At the moment, the entire non-conventional weapons system is under the full control of the regime," a senior Israeli defense official, Amos Gilad, told Israel Radio. 
 
 The ferocity of the Syria conflict has only worsened, with 1,261 people killed since fighting intensified in Damascus on July 15, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which compiles reports from anti-Assad activists. 
 
 That made last week by far the bloodiest in an uprising in which activists say at least 18,000 people have been killed. 
 
 Civilians are suffering, with three-quarters of medical facilities in Damascus closed and displaced people sheltering in schools or parks, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said. 
 
 A UNHCR spokeswoman said that the number of displaced people within Syria had risen to about 1.5 million. 
 
 (Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Michael Roddy)
– This could change things: Some Syrian rebels now have antiaircraft missiles, rebels and regional officials say. Video footage appears to show the rebels using such weapons, which have been smuggled into the country, the Wall Street Journal reports. Rebels say they downed a military helicopter yesterday, one of at least four aircraft reportedly shot down this week—if true, that's a quicker pace since the summer, although it's not clear how the copters and jets were brought down. Despite the fact that this could be good news for the rebels, it's bad news for the US, which worries such weapons could end up with anti-Western militias. More from Syria: The rebels today blew up one oil pipeline and one gas pipeline near Deir al-Zour, the AP reports, citing state media. Meanwhile, at least 20 people were killed in government airstrikes on rebel areas last night and this morning, activists say. Though Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has tried to shield Damascus, war has now reached the capital, the New York Times reports. The fighting isn't as intense as in other cities like Aleppo or Homs, but it's drastically increased since a few months ago: Checkpoints abound, kidnappings are common, bombings are increasing, and it's not safe to go out after dark. "How soon before our city, our markets, are destroyed?" wonders one resident. Similarly, Syria's wealthy—many of whom back the president—are now seeing their businesses hurt by the war, and some are losing faith in Assad, the AP reports. Many have seen factories burned or otherwise affected by fighting, and others have had their money restricted by sanctions. Yet more trouble for Assad: Even his own sect, the Alawite minority, is growing discontent, the Washington Post reports. Alawites had been strong backers of Assad, as the Sunni majority backed the rebellion, because they feared losing power to Sunni Islamists. But, though there is no indication that Alawites plan to join the rebellion, there are reports of rifts even within Assad's own extended family.