1 of 15. Members of the Free Syrian Army pose with their weapons and a snowman at the Jouret al Shayah area in Homs January 10, 2013. Picture taken January 10, 2013.

BEIRUT/GENEVA | Fri Jan 11, 2013 10:30am EST

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) - Rebels seized control of one of Syria's largest helicopter bases on Friday, opposition sources said, in their first capture of a military airfield used by President Bashar al-Assad's forces.

Fighting raged across the country as international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi sought a political solution to Syria's civil war, meeting senior U.S. and Russian officials in Geneva.

But the two world powers are still deadlocked over Assad's fate in any transition.

The United States, which backs the 21-month-old revolt, says Assad can play no future role, while Syria's main arms supplier Russia said before the talks that his exit should not be a precondition for negotiations.

Syria is mired in bloodshed that has cost more than 60,000 lives and displaced millions of people. Severe winter weather is compounding their misery. The U.N. children's agency UNICEF says more than 2 million children are struggling to stay warm.

The capture of Taftanaz air base, after months of sporadic fighting, could help rebels solidify their hold on northern Syria, according to Rami Abdelrahman, head of the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

TACTICAL, NOT STRATEGIC GAIN

But Yezid Sayigh, at the Carnegie Middle East Centre in Beirut, said it was not a game-changer, noting that it had taken months for the rebels to overrun a base whose usefulness to the military was already compromised by the clashes around it.

"This is a tactical rather than a strategic gain," he said.

In Geneva, U.N.-Arab League envoy Brahimi's closed-door talks began with individual meetings with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov. He later held talks with both sides together.

A U.S. official said negotiations would focus on "creating the conditions to advance a political solution - specifically a transitional governing body".

Six months ago, world powers meeting in Geneva proposed a transitional government but left open Assad's role. Brahimi told Reuters on Wednesday that the Syrian leader could play no part in such a transition and suggested it was time he quit.

Responding a day later, Syria's foreign ministry berated the veteran Algerian diplomat as "flagrantly biased toward those who are conspiring against Syria and its people".

Russia has argued that outside powers should not decide who should take part in any transitional government.

"Only the Syrians themselves can agree on a model or the further development of their country," Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said.

REFUGEE MISERY

But Syrians seem too divided for any such agreement.

The umbrella opposition group abroad, the Syrian National Coalition, said on Friday it had proposed a transition plan that would kept government institutions intact at a meeting with diplomats in London this week. But the plan has received no public endorsement from the opposition's foreign backers.

With no end to fighting in sight, the misery of Syrian civilians has rapidly increased, especially with the advent of some of the worst winter conditions in years.

Saudi Arabia said it would send $10 million worth of aid to help Syrian refugees in Jordan, where torrential rain has flooded hundreds of tents in the Zaatari refugee camp.

A fierce storm that swept the region has raised concerns for 600,000 Syrian refugees who have fled to neighboring countries, as well as more than 2.5 million displaced inside Syria, many of whom live in flimsy tents at unofficial border camps.

Opposition activists report dozens of weather-related deaths in Syria in the last four days. UNICEF said refugee children are at risk because conditions have hampered access to services.

Earlier this week, another United Nations agency said around one million Syrians were going hungry. The World Food Programme cited difficulties entering conflict zones and said that the few government-approved aid agencies allowed to distribute aid were stretched to the limit.

The WFP said it supplying rations to about 1.5 million people in Syria each month, far short of the 2.5 million deemed to be in need.

(Additional reporting by Alexander Dzsiadosz in Beirut and Raissa Kasolowsky in Abu Dhabi; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

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Residents run along a street after an air strike by a fighter jet loyal to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Aleppo's al-Marja district December 31, 2012.

AZAZ, Syria | Thu Jan 3, 2013 8:50am EST

AZAZ, Syria (Reuters) - Rebels battled on Thursday to seize an air base in northern Syria, part of a campaign to fight back against the air power that has given President Bashar al-Assad's forces free rein to bomb rebel-held towns.

More than 60,000 people have been killed in the 21-month-old uprising and civil war, the United Nations said this week, sharply raising the death toll estimate in a conflict that shows no sign of ending.

After dramatic advances over the second half of 2012, the rebels now hold wide swathes of territory in the north and east, but are limited in exerting control because they cannot protect towns and villages from Assad's helicopters and jets.

Hundreds of fighters from rebel groups were attempting to storm the Taftanaz air base, near the northern highway that links Syria's two main cities, Aleppo and the capital Damascus.

Rebels have been besieging air bases across the north in recent weeks, in the hope this will reduce the government's power to carry out air strikes and resupply loyalist-held areas.

A rebel fighter speaking from near the Taftanaz base overnight said the base's main sections were still in loyalist hands but insurgents had managed to infiltrate and destroy a helicopter and a fighter jet on the ground.

The northern rebel Idlib Coordination Committee said the rebels had detonated a car bomb inside the base.

The government's SANA news agency said the base had not fallen and that the military had "strongly confronted an attempt by the terrorists to attack the airport from several axes, inflicting heavy losses among them and destroying their weapons and munitions".

Rami Abdulrahman, head of the opposition-aligned Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which monitors the conflict from Britain, said as many as 800 fighters were involved in the assault, including Islamists from Jabhat al-Nusra, a powerful group that Washington considers terrorists.

Taftanaz is mainly a helicopter base, used for missions to resupply army positions in the north, many of which are cut off by road because of rebel gains, as well as for dropping crude "barrel bombs" of explosives on rebel-controlled areas.

"WHAT IS THE FAULT OF THE CHILDREN?"

Near Minakh, another northern air base that rebels have surrounded, government forces have retaliated by regularly shelling and bombing nearby towns.

In the town of Azaz, where the bombardment has become a near nightly occurrence, shells hit a family house overnight. Zeinab Hammadi said her two wounded daughters, aged 10 and 12, had been rushed across the border to Turkey, one with her brain exposed.

"We were sleeping and it just landed on us in the blink of an eye," she said, weeping as she surveyed the damage.

Family members tried to salvage possessions from the wreckage, men lifting out furniture and children carrying out their belongings in tubs.

"He (Assad) wants revenge against the people," said Abu Hassan, 33, working at a garage near the destroyed house. "What is the fault of the children? Are they the ones fighting?"

Opposition activists said warplanes struck a residential building in another rebel-held northern town, Hayyan, killing at least eight civilians.

Video footage showed men carrying dismembered bodies of children and dozens of people searching for victims in the rubble of the destroyed building, shouting "God is greatest". The provenance of the video could not be independently confirmed.

In addition to their tenuous grip on the north, the rebels also hold a crescent of suburbs on the edge of Damascus, which have come under bombardment by government forces that control the center of the capital.

On Wednesday, according to opposition activists, dozens of people were incinerated in an inferno caused by an air strike on a petrol station in a Damascus suburb where residents were lining up for precious fuel.

The civil war in Syria has become the longest and bloodiest of the conflicts that rose out of uprisings across the Arab world in the past two years.

Assad's family has ruled for 42 years since his father seized power in a coup. The war pits rebels, mainly from the Sunni Muslim majority, against a government supported by members of Assad's Shi'ite-derived Alawite minority sect and some members of other minorities who fear revenge if he falls.

The West, most Sunni-ruled Arab states and Turkey have called for Assad to leave power. He is supported by Russia and Shi'ite Iran.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman and Dominic Evans in Beirut; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)

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Smoke is seen rising from a mountain in Kachin state in this still image taken from a video dated December 27, 2012.

YANGON | Thu Jan 3, 2013 6:38am EST

YANGON (Reuters) - Myanmar's military has used jets to attacks rebel fighters in northern Kachin state, the government said on Thursday, its first admission of an intensification of a conflict that has raised doubts about its reformist credentials.

Rebel sources have reported aerial bombings, shelling and even the use of chemical weapons since December 28 after the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) ignored an ultimatum to stop blocking an army supply route in the hilly, resource-rich state where more than 50,000 people have been displaced.

Official newspapers said that air support was used on December 30 to thwart KIA fighters who had occupied a hill and were attacking logistics units of the Tatmadaw, as Myanmar's military is known.

"The Tatmadaw troops cleared Point-771 hill and its surrounding areas where the KIA troops were attacking the Tatmadaw logistic troops," the New Light of Myanmar, a government mouthpiece, said. "The air cover was used in the attack."

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon voiced concern on Wednesday over reports of helicopters and fighter jets being used in the state bordering China. The KIA said the attacks were intended to clear the path for an assault on its headquarters in Laisa.

Ban called on Myanmar's government to "desist from any action that could endanger the lives of civilians" and reiterated demands for humanitarian aid groups to be granted access, U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said in a statement.

President Thein Sein's quasi-civilian administration insists it wants a ceasefire and political dialogue. It says troops have acted only in self-defense and on Thursday denied having plans to seize the KIA's stronghold.

DOMINANT MILITARY

The escalation of fighting has raised doubts about the sincerity of the reformist ex-generals running the government and the extent of their power in a country the size of Britain and France plagued by decades of internal conflict.

Some analysts and diplomats say central government is either not fully committed to peace with the KIA or unable to assert control over the military, which still dominates politics and the economy despite formally ceding power in March 2011.

Colonel James Lum Dau, a Thai-based spokesman for the KIA's political wing, said Kachin officials on the ground had reported up to 300 people killed in air strikes.

"We are in a defensive position. Right now more people are suffering not only bombings, but shelling and spraying of chemical weapons with helicopter gunships and jets," he said. "Only god knows what to do. We are praying."

It is difficult for journalists to independently verify accounts from the two sides.

Fighting erupted in Kachin in June 2010, ending a 17-year truce, and has continued even as government negotiators have agreed ceasefires elsewhere with ethnic Shan, Chin, Mon and Karen militias after decades of fighting in border areas.

Mistrust runs deep between the military and the KIA, which was once backed by China, and multiple rounds of talks aimed at reaching a ceasefire have gone nowhere. Analysts say a history of bad blood and a battle for control of resources, including highly lucrative jade, could be stoking the unrest.

Zaw Htay, a senior official in Thein Sein's office, told Reuters no air strikes had taken place but K-8 trainer jets had provided cover fire to protect ground troops from rebel attacks. The military, he said, had no intention of seizing the KIA's headquarters.

"The president has said this and at the same time he has invited KIA leaders to come and talk with him in Naypyitaw, but they still haven't responded," Zaw Htay said.

(Additional reporting by Paul Carsten in Bangkok; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Alan Raybould)

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1 of 12. A Free Syrian Army fighter fires an anti-aircraft gun as a Syrian Air Force fighter bomber fires rockets during an air strike in the village of Tel Rafat, some 37 km (23 miles) north of Aleppo, August 9, 2012.

ALEPPO, Syria | Thu Aug 9, 2012 5:19am EDT

ALEPPO, Syria (Reuters) - Syrian rebels said they had regained control over parts of a strategic district of Aleppo on Thursday after countering a sustained assault by President Bashar al-Assad's forces seeking to retake Syria's biggest city.

They said army tanks had pulled back from Salaheddine, the southern gateway to Aleppo, and pockets of fighting continued across the district which Syrian official media said on Wednesday had been "cleansed" of rebel fighters.

As the battle for Aleppo raged, Assad's key foreign backer Iran gathered ministers from like-minded states for talks about how to end the conflict. Russia, a key Assad ally, said its ambassador to Tehran would attend.

Assad must win the battle for Aleppo if he is to reassert his authority nationwide, although diverting military forces for an offensive to regain control there has already allowed rebels to seize large swathes of countryside in the north.

As part of a broader army offensive, Assad's forces attacked rebels on several fronts including a neighborhood near the airport in south-east Aleppo, several eastern districts, and a town on Aleppo's north-western outskirts, state media said.

Reuters journalists in Tel Rifaat, 20 miles north of Aleppo, watched a Syrian air force jet diving and firing rockets, causing villagers to flee in panic.

Abu Ali, a rebel brigade commander, told Reuters in Aleppo he had rallied 400 fighters of the Amr bin al-Aas brigade in response to Wednesday's army offensive in Salaheddine.

"We are here to be martyred," he told his men before joining them - despite being confined to a wheelchair by a recent wound - and coordinating their operations via walkie-talkie.

"In Salaheddine now there are certain areas controlled by the (rebel) Free Syrian Army and some by the Syrian army," said Abu Ali, adding that his men were in control of the main Salaheddine square.

Despite persistent rebel concerns about low levels of ammunition, Abu Ali said they were able to keep some supplies flowing to the fighters, though he would not give details.

IRAN MEETING

Though sympathetic to the rebels, Western powers, Turkey and Sunni Muslim Arab states have not intervened militarily. Russia has given Assad diplomatic backing which has blocked U.N. action against him, while Iran has tried to bolster the Syrian leader in an Arab world where many view non-Arab, Shi'ite Iran as a menace.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has billed the Tehran meeting of a dozen countries as an opportunity "to replace military clashes with political, indigenous approaches to settle the disputes". Those attending would have "a correct and realistic position" on the Syrian conflict, a senior Iranian diplomat said this week, indicating a one-sided discussion.

"The Islamic Republic's support for Assad's regime is hardly compatible with a genuine attempt at conciliation between the parties," said one Western diplomat based in Tehran. It showed Iran was "running out of ideas", he added.

Another Western diplomat said Tehran was trying to broaden the support base of the Syrian leader.

ALEPPO BATTLE

Aleppo, at the heart of Syria's failing economy, has taken a fearful pounding since the 17-month-old uprising against Assad finally took hold in a city that had stayed mostly aloof.

The intensity of the conflict in Aleppo suggests that Assad remains determined to cling to power, with support from Iran and Russia, despite setbacks such as this week's defection of his newly installed prime minister.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based opposition watchdog, said more than 170 people had been killed across Syria on Wednesday, including 33 civilians in Aleppo. It put Tuesday's death toll at more than 240 nationwide.

The military's assaults in Aleppo follow its successful drive to retake neighborhoods seized by rebels in Damascus after a July 18 bomb attack that killed four of Assad's closest aides, the biggest strike by Assad's foes so far.

On Monday, Assad suffered the embarrassment of seeing his prime minister, Riyad Hijab, defect after only two months in office. Hijab fled to Jordan with his family.

Yet even such high-profile defections and outside diplomatic pressure seem unlikely to deflect Assad from what has become a bitter struggle for survival between mostly Sunni Muslim rebels and a ruling system dominated by the president's minority Alawite sect, an esoteric offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

Syrian rebels, who have accused Iran of sending fighters to help Assad's forces, seized 48 Iranians in Syria on August 4, saying they were members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

An Iranian Foreign Ministry official said on Thursday that all the Iranian captives were alive and well, contrary to statements by rebels holding them that three had been killed in an air attack.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi acknowledged that some of the men were retired soldiers or Revolutionary Guards, but said they were religious pilgrims, not on active service.

Damascus and Tehran accuse Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Western nations of stoking violence by backing Syrian rebels.

The violence in Syria has forced tens of thousands of people to flee into neighboring countries, and about 2,400 refugees, including two generals, arrived in Turkey on Tuesday night.

Near the Syrian border town of al-Dana, a crowd of refugees from Aleppo crammed through a frontier fence as Turkish soldiers tried to keep order: "We could not endure anymore," Ahmad Shaaban, a grocer from Aleppo's Salaheddine district told a Reuters correspondent at the border.

"We have been deprived of everything. They have burnt our homes and have deprived us of our livelihood."

(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in al-Dana, Syria and Yeganeh Torbati in Dubai; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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* Rebels use captured tank to attack airbase

* Military airfield could be used to reinforce Aleppo

* Damascus district under government attack

By Hadeel Al Shalchi

ALEPPO, Syria, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Syrian rebels turned the gun of a captured tank against government forces on Thursday, shelling a military airbase expected to be used as a staging post for army reinforcements in the battle for Aleppo.

President Bashar al-Assad's troops meanwhile bombarded the strategic Salaheddine district in Aleppo itself with tank and artillery fire while rebels tried to consolidate their hold on areas they have seized.

In the capital Damascus, troops overran a suburb on Wednesday and killed at least 35 people, mostly unarmed civilians, residents and activist organisations said.

The fighting for Syria's two biggest cities highlights the country's rapid slide into full-scale civil war 17 months on from the peaceful street protests that marked the start of the anti-Assad uprising.

World powers have watched with mounting concern as diplomatic efforts to find a negotiated solution have faltered and violence that has already claimed an estimated 18,000 lives worsens.

More than 180 people were killed in Syria on Wednesday, 133 of them civilians and 45 of them members of Assad's forces, according to the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The rebels' morale was boosted when they turned a government tank's gun on the Menakh airbase 35 km (25 miles) north of Aleppo - a possible staging post for army reinforcements.

"We hit the airport using a tank that we captured from the Assad army. We attacked the airport a few times but we have decided to retreat at this time," a rebel fighter named Abu Ali told Reuters.

The pro-opposition Observatory said government forces at the airbase had used artillery and rocket launchers to bombard the town of Tel Rifaat, which lies between the airbase and Aleppo, Syria's commercial centre.

Reuters correspondents heard heavy weapons fire on Thursday morning from Salaheddine in southwest Aleppo, a gateway to the city of 2.5 million people that has been fought over for the past week.

Heavily armed government troops are trying to drive a force of a few thousand rebel fighters from the city in battle whose outcome could be a turning point in the conflict.

Although government forces have made concerted efforts to take Salaheddine, a full-out assault on the city as a whole has yet to take place.

Mobile phone connections have been cut since Wednesday evening, leading to speculation among residents that an increase in military action might be imminent.

The rebels are consolidating areas they control in Aleppo, attacking police posts and minor military installations with some success. They claim to have seized three police stations this week.

NEW ATROCITIES ALLEGED

In Damascus, still a government stronghold but a scene of combat in the past two weeks, government troops faced new accusations of atrocities after they overran a suburb on Wednesday.

"When the streets were clear we found the bodies of at least 35 men," a resident, who gave his name as Fares, said by phone from Jdeidet Artouz, southwest of Damascus.

"Almost all of them were executed with bullets to their face, head and neck in homes, gardens and basements."

Syrian state television said "dozens of terrorists and mercenaries surrendered or were killed" when the army raided Jdeidet Artouz and its surrounding farmlands.

In a rallying cry to his troops on Wednesday, Assad said their battle against rebels would decide Syria's fate.

But his call-to-arms, in a written statement, gave no clues to his whereabouts two weeks after a bomb attack on his inner circle.

Assad, who succeeded his late father Hafez 11 years ago to perpetuate the family's rule of Syria, has not spoken in public since the bombing in Damascus killed four of his close security aides, although he has appeared in recorded clips on television.

His low public profile has fuelled speculation about his grip on power since the attack in which his brother-in-law died.

FOOD RUNNING SHORT

The fighting in Salaheddine district, part of a rebel-held arc stretching to the northeast of Aleppo, has left neither side in full control.

On Al-Sharqeya Street, residents and shop owners looked in awe at the damage. Some searched through what was left of their buildings - huge piles of concrete and twisted metal.

"I saw death before my eyes," said Abu Ahmed as he abandoned his home. "I was hiding in the alleyway of my building when I heard the whiz of the artillery. Look at my street now."

They said the damage was caused by helicopter fire targeting a rebel brigade based in a school. It missed the school and hit the residential buildings instead.

"This dog Assad and his men are so blind they can't even target a brigade properly," said Abu Ahmed, waving a plastic bag with his meagre belongings inside.

State television said on Wednesday the army was pursuing remaining "terrorists" in one Aleppo district and had killed several, including foreign Arab fighters.

Some foreign fighters, including militant Islamists, have joined the battle against Assad, who accuses outside powers of financing and arming the insurgents.

Aleppo had long stayed aloof from the uprising but many of its 2.5 million residents are now caught up in battle zones, facing shortages of food, fuel, water and cooking gas. Thousands have fled and hospitals and makeshift clinics can barely cope with casualties after more than a week of combat.

"The humanitarian situation is deteriorating in Aleppo and food needs are growing rapidly," said the World Food Programme, announcing plans to send emergency food supplies for up 28,000 people.

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation said up to three million Syrians are likely to need food and other aid in the next 12 months because the conflict has prevented farmers from harvesting their crops.

U.S. SUPPORT

In a shift toward increased foreign involvement in the war, U.S. President Barack Obama signed a secret order authorizing American support for the rebels, according to U.S. sources familiar with the matter.

The order, approved earlier this year, broadly permits the CIA and other U.S. agencies to provide support that could help the rebels oust Assad.

The lightly armed insurgents are battling a well-equipped army that has overwhelming superiority on paper. But the rebels have managed to capture some tanks and heavy weapons and their ranks are swelled by army defectors.

The rebels, however, are united mostly by loathing of Assad, and have failed to come together despite pressure from the West, Turkey and Sunni-ruled Arab states who back their cause.

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