Fierce fighting is now occurring in Syria around the airport in Aleppo, as the opposition and the regime battle over its control, the U.S. State Department said Friday. “There's now fierce fighting around the Aleppo airport," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters. “The opposition appears to have overrun the airport security brigade. The regime is fighting back now with aerial bombardment. Not only are they hitting civilians with that, they apparently have hit some of their own forces in the kind of indiscriminate response which shows their desperation." “There's also been very fierce fighting throughout the week not only south of Damascus but also now to the east, so the opposition is coming at the city from two directions. And then there was the fall of Shaddada in the east to opposing fighters. So obviously Al-Assad regime is under considerable pressure and fighting on multiple fronts now," Nuland said. The gains made by the opposition speaks to the points that Secretary of State John Kerry made earlier in the week that Bashar Al-Assad “seriously miscalculates" his time remaining in office, Nuland said.
