Special to WorldTribune.com

NICOSIA — The Syrian opposition says the regime of President Bashar
Assad was using advanced munitions against Sunni rebel strongholds.

Opposition sources said the Syrian Army was dropping so-called fuel-air
bombs on rebel-held areas in northern Syria.

The sources said the bomb, also known as thermobaric, was designed to produce a large amount of casualties through sucking the air out of a targeted area.

“We haven’t seen these kinds of bombs until recently,” a source said.

The sources said fuel-air bombs were being fired from ground-based
rocket launchers and helicopters. They said the widest use of the bombs took place in Aleppo earlier this month.

The thermobaric weapons were believed to have been supplied to Syria by Russia. Israeli sources said some of these munitions had been transferred to the Iranian-sponsored Hizbullah in neighboring Lebanon.

The sources said Assad’s strategy called for heavy shelling of
rebel-held areas in Aleppo rather than an infantry advance. The London-based
Amnesty International released satellite images that showed scores of main
battle tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery around the city of
2.2 million.

“What we can see in the pictures from end of July are approximately 58
tanks, 45 other armored vehicles in and around Aleppo, and close to 50
artillery pieces, at the time deployed within existing Syrian military
positions,” Amnesty analyst Christoph Koettl said.

  Aleppo, Amnesty International, Bashar Assad, Rebels report Syria using thermobaric bombs, thermobaric bombs