Emirates suspends all flights; EgyptAir cancels Friday air trip; Nationwide Internet blackout BEIRUT – Syrian rebels battled forces loyal to President Bashar Al-Assad just outside Damascus Thursday, forcing the closure of the main airport road. The Dubai-based Emirates airline suspended flights to the Syrian capital. EgyptAir canceled its Friday flight to Damascus due to the “deteriorating situation” around the airport, a Cairo airport official said Thursday. Emirates said it was suspending daily flights to Damascus “until further notice.” An EgyptAir official, who asked not to be named, said the airline would hold an urgent meeting in the next few hours with Egyptian officials to discuss halting all flights between Egypt and Syria. Two US-based Internet-monitoring companies say Syria has shut off the Internet nationwide. Activists in Syria reached Thursday by satellite telephone confirmed the unprecedented blackout. Renesys, a US-based network security firm that studies Internet disruptions, says Syria effectively disappeared from the Internet at 12:26 p.m. local time. Akamai Technologies Inc., another US-based company that distributes content on the Internet, also confirmed a complete outage for Syria. Two Austrian peacekeeping soldiers were wounded Thursday when their convoy came under fire near the airport, the defense ministry in Vienna said. “The Austrian UN soldiers in the convoy and the two injured are already in safety at the airport in Damascus,” a ministry statement said. Austrian soldiers serve with the UN peacekeeping force on the Golan Heights. The past two weeks have seen rebels overrunning army bases across Syria, exposing Assad's loss of control in northern and eastern regions despite the devastating air power that he has used to bombard opposition strongholds. Rebels and activists said the fighting along the road to Damascus airport, southeast of the capital, was heavier in that area than at any other time in the conflict. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a opposition monitoring group, said clashes were particularly intense in Babbila, a suburb bordering the insurgent stronghold of Tadamon. Nabeel Al-Ameer, a spokesman for the rebel Military Council in Damascus, said that a large number of army reinforcements had arrived along the road after three days of scattered clashes ending with rebels seizing side streets to the north of it. “There are no clashes directly around the airport; the fighting is about 3 or 4 km away,” he said via Skype, adding that rebels had taken control of many secondary roads and were expected to advance toward the airport. He said that he hoped the proximity of the rebels to the airport would dissuade authorities from using it to import military equipment, but the priority now was to block the road. A Syrian security source said on condition of anonymity that the army had started a “cleansing operation” in the capital to confront rebel advances. Residents said the Internet in Damascus crashed in the early afternoon and mobile and land telephone lines were functioning only intermittently. Elsewhere in Damascus, warplanes bombed Kafr Souseh and Daraya, two neighborhoods that fringe the center of the city where rebels have managed to hide out and ambush army units, according to opposition activists. A senior European Union official said that Assad appeared to be preparing for a military showdown around Damascus, possibly by isolating the city with a network of checkpoints. “The rebels are gaining ground but it is still rather slow. We are not witnessing the last days yet,” the official said on condition of anonymity. “On the outskirts of Damascus, there are mortars and more attacks. The regime is thinking of protecting itself ... with checkpoints in the next few days ... (It) seems the regime is preparing for major battle on Damascus.” In the north of the country, rebel units launched an offensive to seize an army base close to the main north-south highway. – Agencies
