Bashar Assad, Damascus | featured news

Syrian jets bombarded Sunni Muslim regions in Damascus and around the country on Sunday, activists said, as President Bashar al-Assad kept up air strikes against rebels despite a U.N.-brokered truce that now appears to be in tatters.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad performed Eid prayers in a Damascus mosque on Sunday, state television showed, in his first appearance in public since a July bombing in the Syrian capital that killed four top security officials.

Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab has defected to the opposition seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, a spokesman for Hijab said on Monday, marking one of the highest profile desertions from the Damascus government.

Government forces claimed to have retaken a pocket of Damascus, as state television reported that a fourth member of President Bashar al-Assad’s elite circle died of wounds from Wednesday’s rebel bombing.

Syrian state television said Wednesday that a bombing in Damascus killed Defense Minister Daoud Rajha and his deputy, Asef Shawkat, who was the brother-in-law and close confidante of President Bashar al-Assad.

A surprise assault by Syrian insurgents on a Republican Guard base in Damascus, just a few miles from the presidential palace, elicited a furious military response on Tuesday, with government forces shelling surrounding neighborhoods in an escalation that brought combat in the Syrian conflict close to the heart of the capital.

Security forces were out in force in Damascus on Sunday as rebels plan a repeat of protests that have threatened President Assad's grip on the capital.

The Syrian military launched an offensive to regain control of suburbs on the eastern edge of Damascus Sunday, storming neighborhoods and clashing with groups of army defectors in fierce fighting that sent residents fleeing and killed at least three civilians, activists said.

Security forces in the Syrian capital of Damascus intensify checkpoints and patrols to keep an overnight surge of protests from spreading into the heart of the city, a stronghold for President Bashar Assad.