Jets and helicopters have continued to strike the northern suburbs of Aleppo as Assad forces reportedly battle opposition forces near the airport in the war-battered city.

A constant flow of casualties were rushed to a local hospital that had been allegedly targeted on Friday.

Syria's official SANA news agency said that "armed terrorist groups" - the regime's phrase for opposition forces - had been pushed out from areas on both sides of the airport, which is located about 15km southeast of Aleppo's historical centre.

The report on Friday was the first official acknowledgement that fighting has reached the doorstep of the strategic site in the country's largest city.

It did not make it clear whether the fighting was closer to the international airport or the adjacent military airfield, a hub for air strike missions on opposition sites in the north.

Opposition footholds in Aleppo have been the target of weeks of shelling and air attacks as part of wider offensives by Bashar al-Assad's forces.
In Damascus, the capital, activists said the army clashed with opposition forces near the main military airport and shelled southern parts of the city.

The latest reports of violence came as the UN said Lakhdar Brahimi, a veteran Algerian diplomat, will take over from Kofi Annan as the UN-Arab League Joint Special Representative in the Syria conflict.

Diplomatic deadlock

Meanwhile, former Syrian prime minister Riad Hijab, who defected earlier this month, was in Qatar for talks about how to unify opposition efforts to topple Assad, his spokesman said on Friday.

Hijab, who announced his defection on August 6 becoming the most senior serving official to quit Assad's administration, arrived on Thursday for a three-day visit.

Russia on Friday rejected a proposal to set up no-fly zones to help civilians flee fighting in Syria's border areas after the United States said it was ready to consider the move.

Russia and China have vetoed three Western-backed Security Council resolutions criticizing Damascus and threatening sanctions.

Civilians continue to be targeted, and on Thursday activists reported that Syrian forces shelled a group of people queuing outside a bakery in the Qadi Askar district of eastern Aleppo.

The news followed accusations by rights groups that the Syrian regime had committed another atrocity on Wednesday when around 40 people, including women and children, were killed in an air strike on civilians in the opposition bastion of Azaz, north of Aleppo.

On Friday, a Turkish diplomat said that more than 2,000 Syrians, including one defecting general, fled to Turkey after the violence in Aleppo.
The latest group of 2,204 people brought the number of Syrian refugees in Turkey to more than 62,000, the diplomat told AFP news agency on condition of anonymity.

PHOTO CAPTION

Demonstrators pray during a protest against Syria's President Bashar Al-Assad in Sermeen, near Idlib, August 17, 2012.

Al-Jazeera