Syrian government forces killed at least 20 people on Tuesday when they shelled a bakery in a neighborhood under rebel control in the contested northern city of Aleppo, opposition activists said.

The dead included women and children, they said. Video footage, which could not be immediately verified, showed decapitated bodies amid scattered bread loaves.

Two shells hit the bakery, located in the eastern Hananu neighborhood, in the early afternoon, said Majd Nour, an opposition campaigner in Aleppo. Free Syrian Army fighters were guarding it at the time, he said.

Aleppo is Syria's biggest city and commercial hub. Rebels trying to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad launched an offensive to capture it last month and street fighting has taken place on a daily basis since then.

Shell lands in Turkey
Earlier in the day an anti-aircraft shell fired from Syria hit a health center across the border in Turkey's Hatay province but there were no immediate reports of injuries, CNN Turk television reported.

Turkey has bolstered its military presence along its 560-mile border with Syria and has been responding to gunfire and mortar shells hitting its territory from fighting between Syrian rebels and government forces.

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The district governor's office said it had no immediate information on the incident.

Tension between the two neighbors, once close allies, is at its highest since Ankara turned against Assad last year over his violent crackdown on anti-government protests.

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International mediator Lakhdar Brahimi, who ended a four-day visit to Damascus on Tuesday, has pushed for a ceasefire to mark the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha, which starts on Friday, hoping for a respite from daily death tolls of around 150.

But he did not win a public commitment to a truce in his talks with Assad, and the rebels say there is little point to a ceasefire that cannot be monitored or enforced.

Report: Several killed in Damascus car bomb ahead of Syria truce talks

The Turkish military has fired on Syria 87 times, killing 12 Syrian soldiers and destroying several tanks in retaliation for Syrian shells and mortar bombs landing inside Turkey, the Turkish newspaper Milliyet reported on Saturday.

In Syria, fighting raged on Tuesday as rebels battled to seize an army base close to the main north-south highway. The rebels say its capture would be a big step toward creating a "safe zone" allowing them to focus on Assad's southern strongholds.

Battle for Wadi al-Deif
Assad is fighting an insurgency that grew out of protests 19 months ago and has escalated into a civil war in which 30,000 people have been killed. His overstretched army has lost swathes of territory and relies on air power to keep rebels at bay.

For two weeks Assad’s forces have been tied down, battling rebels in Wadi al-Deif, east of the town of Maarat al-Numan. If the town fell to rebels, who already control northern border crossings to Turkey, Assad would be dependent on a single land route - from the Mediterranean port of Latakia - to supply his forces fighting to win back Aleppo.

"The battle started 11 days ago. At first we sent small groups to liberate (the base) and we were surprised by the resistance the regime forces showed," said Lieutenant-Colonel Khaled Hmood, a former army officer who defected to fight Assad.

"The regime is fighting fiercely. It seems that it doesn't care if it loses thousands of troops in order to keep its control over the compound."

Syrian opposition skeptical of 'feeble' ceasefire plan

Hmood said he believed around 400 soldiers were defending Wadi al-Deif - a group of barracks barely 500 yards from the Damascus-Aleppo road and backed by air power that Assad has deployed against rebels and residents of a nearby town.

The base may also be an important fuel depot, holding at least five million liters of kerosene in five underground bunkers, according to Hmood.

Anti-Assad activists say 40 civilians were killed in air strikes on the town last Thursday in one of the most intense air offensives of the Syrian conflict.

But its efforts to send military reinforcements have been repulsed by the besieging rebels. The last attempt on Sunday ended when four tanks were destroyed and the remnants of an army column had to pull back. "We have noticed that the best strategy is to hit its supply line. We have been harming the regime a lot by hitting the reinforcements it is sending."

The rebels still face challenges to take the base. Although they have acquired increasingly deadly arms, including artillery and anti-aircraft weapons, they have regularly complained that they have only limited supplies to keep up the fight.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Updated at 8:31 p.m. ET: As Syrian President Bashar Assad appeared on television for the first time in two weeks on Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that the high-profile defection of the Syrian prime minister increased the urgency of planning for the ouster of Assad's regime.

In South Africa's capital, Pretoria, Clinton said the United States and other countries needed to make sure that Syrian state institutions remain intact once Assad loses his grip on power.

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"The intensity of the fighting in Aleppo, the defections, really point out how imperative it is that we come together and work toward a good transition plan," Clinton said.

"I do think we can begin talking about planning for what happens next: the day after the regime does fall. I am not going to put a timeline on it, I can't possibly predict it, but I know it's going to happen as do most observers around the world," Clinton said.

Clinton also warned against "proxies or terrorist fighters" being sent in to join the 17-month-old conflict.

The escalating war in Syria has increasingly divided the region along its sectarian faultline, pitting the mainly-Sunni rebels, who are backed by regional Sunni-led powers Turkey and the Gulf Arab states, against Assad's government that is backed by Shiite Iran.

In a possible sign of increasing American pressure on Assad’s government, Clinton's remarks come a day after three U.S. senators warned about the risks of American failure to provide assistance to Syrian opposition fighters.

Clinton also spoke a day after the defection of Prime Minister Riyad Hijab, the latest in a string of high-level departures from the Assad regime.

US makes plans to keep post-Assad Syria intact

TV appearance
Assad appeared on Syrian state TV on Tuesday meeting with Iran's Supreme National Security Council in Damascus.

Assad's absence had fueled rumors about his health, including a hoax Twitter message Monday that quoted Russia's ambassador to Damascus as saying Assad might have been killed.

Russian officials quickly denied the report.

Three US senators warn about risks of inaction in Syria

In the week after a July 18 bombing that killed four members of his inner circle, Assad was shown twice in silent footage on television, swearing in a new defense minister and meeting military officials.

During Tuesday's Damascus meeting, Saeed Jalili, head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said Iran would not let its close partnership with the Syrian leadership to be shaken by the uprising or external foes.

"Iran will not allow the axis of resistance, of which it considers Syria to be an essential part, to be broken in any way," Syrian television quoted Jalili as saying.

The "axis of resistance" refers to Shiite Iran's anti-Israel alliance with Syria's rulers - from the Alawite faith which is an offshoot of Shiite Islam - and the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah, which fought a month-long war with Israel in 2006, with Iranian and Syrian support. 

Damascus and Tehran have held Sunni Muslim Gulf Arab states and Turkey, all allies of the United States and European powers, responsible for the bloodshed in Syria by supporting the overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim rebels. Western powers sympathetic to the rebels are concerned that anti-Western Sunni Islamists could benefit from a victory for the anti-Assad forces. 

Iran's Fars news agency said Jalili told Assad that Iran was prepared to provide humanitarian aid to Syria. 

As estimated 18,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict, as rebels battle government forces in an attempt to wrest control from the Assad family's four-decade grip on power.

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On a fence-mending visit to Turkey, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said he wanted to work with Ankara to resolve the crisis. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan described as "worrying" a comment on Monday by Tehran's top general, who blamed Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar for bloodshed in Syria. 

Iran has expressed fears for more than 40 Iranians it says are religious pilgrims kidnapped by rebels from a bus in Damascus while visiting Shiite shrines. Salehi wrote to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon seeking his help to free them. 

Rebels say they suspect the captives were troops sent to help Assad. A rebel spokesman in the Damascus area said on Monday three of the Iranians had been killed by government shelling. He initially said the rest would be executed if the shelling did not stop but later said they were being questioned. 

Fighting rages in Aleppo
On Tuesday, rebels trying to fight off an army offensive in Aleppo said they were running low on ammunition as government forces encircled their stronghold at the southern entrance to the country's biggest city.

Assad has reinforced his troops in preparation for an assault to recapture rebel-held districts of Aleppo after repelling fighters from most of Damascus.

Related: Official: Syria PM defects to anti-Assad opposition

"The Syrian army is trying to encircle us from two sides of Salaheddine," said Sheikh Tawfiq, one of the rebel commanders, referring to the southwestern neighborhood which has seen heavy fighting over the last week.

Mortar fire and tank shells exploded across the district early Tuesday, forcing rebel fighters to take cover in crumbling buildings and rubble-strewn alleyways.

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Tanks have entered parts of Salaheddine and army snipers, using the cover of heavy bombardment, deployed on rooftops, hindering rebel movements.

Another rebel commander, Abu Ali, said snipers at the main Saleheddine roundabout were preventing the rebels from bringing in reinforcements and supplies. He said five of his fighters were killed on Monday and 20 wounded.

But rebels said they were still holding the main streets of Salaheddine which have been the frontline of their clashes with Assad's forces.

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A fighter jet pounded targets in the eastern districts of Aleppo and artillery shelling could be heard in the early morning, an activist in Aleppo said.

"Two families, about 14 people in total, were believed killed when a shell hit their home and it collapsed this morning," the activist said. The house was one street away from a school being used by rebels, he said.

Reuters, The Associated Press and NBC News' staff contributed to this report.

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NORTHERN SYRIA – Every war has its demons. The chaos of bullets and bombs gives rise to a certain breed of men who join the fight for the thrill of killing, and to stand before begging prisoners and cowering women in damp tattered clothing. 

In Syria these monsters in civilian clothing who are the enforcers for President Bashar Assad’s regime are called the “shabiha.”

I’m staying in one of their family’s homes.

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Syria’s ghost-like devils
It’s a small house with a vaulted stone ceiling. The shower is a bucket on the floor that slopes into a drain. There’s an outhouse in the garden with a fig tree.  The house looks like many in this rural village flanked by olive, walnut and almond groves.  

Syrian troops withdraw from 'secondary towns' and pound Aleppo

The shabiha left this village when the army pulled out to re-group and attack Aleppo, Syria’s commercial capital and the focus of the battle to control the north of the country. Before they left, there were about 50 shabiha in the village by most rebel counts.  

Some lived among the rebels as spies. Others operated as plainclothes commandoes, arresting rebels or just shooting them and their families. I’ve seen a video of shabiha using a chainsaw to cut off a rebel’s head.  I saw a shabiha prisoner tied up with wires. The rebels accused him of raping 10 girls. The youngest girl was said to be just 14.  

Shabiha is a difficult word to translate into English. It comes from the word Syrians used to describe the luxury Mercedes favored by the Assad family’s operatives that the enforcers of the regime used to move money, smuggle weapons and intimidate opponents.

Whenever someone in a flashy Mercedes with tinted window passed by, Syrians would say the car was a ‘shabah.’  It literally means the car was a ‘ghost,’ mysterious and not to be trifled with. The thugs who drove these phantom cars became known as shabiha – the ghosts who worked in the dictatorship’s deep shadows.  

After the fighting started here the Assad government turned the shabiha into a militia. It armed them and sent them to infiltrate, execute and spy on the rebels. Now the shabiha are more feared than Syrian troops. Their evil has become legendary.  

Rebels talk of the shabiha like devils, deadly as the regime’s chemical gas.  But herein lies the danger. 

Engel: Myth vs. truth in the Syrian conflict

Who is really who?
I’m not sure if this house was really owned by any shabiha or their relatives. The owner’s son is accused of being shabiha, but the rebels have no solid proof that he did anything wrong at all. And there’s no proof either that the young man I saw tied up with wires, his eyes covered with a bandana, actually raped any girls.  

Every war has revolutionary justice. Here that justice is carried out in the name of fighting shabiha.  

No one knows exactly how many shabiha work for the regime. If the Assad government falls, the rebels will likely – almost certainly – carry out executions of suspected shabiha.  

A man I spoke to this morning said all shabiha should be executed without mercy, and their property sold and distributed among their victims. The man’s own cousin is among those accused of being shabiha.

CFR.org: What you need to know about the Syria crisis

Slippery slope 
But how will Syrians know when justice is being served or miscarried?  

There’s also a disproportionate number of Alawites, accused of being shabiha. The Alawites are the minority Shiite Muslim sect to which Assad belongs and which has held a disproportionate amount of power since his family came to power in 1970. But the Alawites make up only 10 percent of the population, sowing resentment among the country’s Sunni population, who make up the majority of Syria’s 22 million people. 

PhotoBlog: Who are the Syrian rebels? 

Syrians need to prepare for the aftermath if the Assad regime falls. Atrocities that could be considered war crimes have been committed in this country and Syrians should rightly demand that the perpetrators be held accountable.  

But Syrians must be careful not to engage in a murderous campaign of hunting ghosts. The shabiha are real, but they can’t be everywhere.

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News Analysis

NORTHERN SYRIA – The rebels call this Free Syria. 

I am writing from a village that was occupied by Syrian soldiers four hours ago – the tracks of retreating tanks are freshly pressed into the pavement.

Grape vines hang in the small garden of the two-room stone house I’m in.  There’s no electricity, but there is fresh water from rural wells.  Bullet holes – some as small as grapes, others big as oranges – pierce the house’s walls. 

Still, the people in this village are celebrating.

“Free Syrian army! God protect them!” they shout, index and middle fingers splayed into a “v” for victory. 

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The 200 Syrian troops who’d been shelling this village of 8,000 olive and walnut farmers withdrew under fire Wednesday night.  Women and children who had been hiding in other villages within walking distance stream in, loaded with vegetables and yogurt. 

The returning families sift through the debris of their homes.  The villagers find that many houses were burned by Syrian troops.  The Syrian army appears to have carried out a deliberate scorched-earth campaign here. 

The troops burned every home with a son, son-in-law or even cousin among the rebels, residents tell us.  There can be little doubt that this is government policy (and what appears to be a war crime) because the same thing has happening in every village we’ve visited. 

A man who returned to this village had a leg cut off under torture by Syrian forces.  He’s 74 years old.

Another man who escaped Damascus five days ago says the fighting in the capital is now so bad that President Bashar Assad isn’t sending ground forces into rebel neighborhoods anymore and is only shelling them from afar.  He doesn’t want to send foot patrols out of fear the troops will defect, people say.

The regime is on the ropes.  

Total war: Syria sends armored column to Aleppo

The Assad goverment is concentrating its firepower on big cities like Damascus and Aleppo.  Government troops left this village last night to join the attack on Aleppo.  But the rebels, and Syria, need urgent help to prevent huge losses of life, both among fighters and civilians – Sunni, Allawite and Christian.

Many myths circulate in Washington and in the media about the Syrian opposition and the fighting in this country.   From what I’ve seen traveling with the rebels, many of the commonly accepted ‘truths’ seem to be incorrect.  After all, the first casualty of war is the truth.

Myth: The rebels are getting weapons and money from abroad and will soon finish off Bashar’s army on their own. 

View from the ground: The rebels are fighting with almost nothing.  I was with a rebel commander yesterday who has 48 men.  Only 15 of his fighters have any weapons.  He has almost no ammunition.  He has one anti-aircraft gun, but not a single bullet for it. 

The rebels don’t have enough gasoline to put in their vehicles.  The gas they can find costs the equivalent of $8 a gallon.  Food is plentiful, and so is water.  But weapons and ammunition are in desperately short supply.  Another unit I have seen is armed with homemade bombs that they try to fire from cardboard tubes.  

The rebels are now starting to get Motorola radios.  They are new and coming from Turkey.  Washington has recently said it will help private non-lethal aid, including communications equipment.  But the radios are of little use.  Communications have never been the rebels’ main problem.  In fact, the rebels coordinate and communicate effectively already.  They use  both the new Motorola radios and local Syrian cellphones.  The cellphones can be monitored by Syrian intelligence, but the rebels’ strategy has been to overwhelm the Syrian government’s ability to listen. 

Because the rebels – commanders and foot soldiers – all use cellphones and landlines, there are tens or thousands of conversations going on at any one time.  The rebels speak vaguely and in primitive codes.  It seems unlikely that Syrian forces are able to keep track of such a high volume of calls and effectively act on them.  The rebels do appreciate the radios and use them, but they are a secondary priority. 

Syria: What you need to know about the crisis from the CFR.org

What the rebels say they truly need are arms that can pierce Syrian armored vehicles.  They need 12.7 anti-aircraft ammunition.  They say they need 14.5 ‘doshka’ rounds.   They need armor penetrating RPGS.  They need 60mm and 120mm mortars.  They need 7.62 rounds.  These are what commanders ask for whenever I meet them.  These are what every rebel wants.

Myth: The rebels are disorganized, have no leaders and are rife with infighting.

View from the ground: The rebels have no central leadership.  They do not have a single commander.  The rebels generally do not recognize the leaders of the Syrian opposition in exile in Turkey and Europe.  But on the ground here in Syria the rebels are well organized.   Their structure is more organic than hierarchical, less like a pyramid than a bungle of grapes, with individual cells joined together by a common cause.  The rebel cells coordinate well with each other.  Since weapons are in such short supply, all rebel military operations are collective efforts.  In the town where I am, there are no fewer than five different rebel commands.  They respect each other.  They trade weapons and fighters.  Some units are more Islamic in their politics, others are secular.  The differences in politics do not prevent their coordination.

Photo Blog: Who are the Syrian rebels?

Myth: The rebels are al-Qaida or at least infiltrated by al-Qaida.

View from the ground:  We have not seen evidence of a large al-Qaida presence.  This is not an al-Qaida fight.  In the last 24 hours we have met three rebel commanders.  One was an air-conditioner repairman before the war.  Another was a tomato and zucchini farmer.  The third grew grain and lentils.  One of the commanders considers himself an Islamist.  The other two are more secular. 

In total, the three commanders control about 1,500 men.  Not one of the commanders supports al-Qaida, nor have any of the dozens rebels have we have met.  There were reports that al-Qaida fighters had recently taken over the Baab al-Howa border crossing between Syria and Turkey.  There was a video that showed rebels carrying a suspicious-looking all black flag, similar to ones favored by al-Qaida.  We spoke with the rebel leader who carried the flag.  He said he has nothing to do with al-Qaida and the flag was an Islamic one.

Syrian forces launch air attacks on largest city

Al-Qaida’s presence may grow, however, without a quick end to this conflict.  The rebels need help.  Their men are dying.  Their homes are being burned.  As time goes on, the temptation to welcome help – even if offered from al-Qaida –will grow.  We have heard reports of foreign fighters coming to Syrian from Algeria and Saudi Arabia.  We have heard reports that al-Qaida is offering some rebel commanders money.  The longer this drags on, the more dangerous it will get.

Myth: The rebels want a NATO intervention

View from the ground: The rebels do not want American or European soldiers in Syria.  Many rebels do not specifically even want a no-fly-zone, although I suspect many would welcome it.  Mostly, they just want access to weapons. 

Myth: After Assad is toppled there will be ethnic cleansing of Allawite (a secretive Shiite sect) civilians by the Sunni majority. 

View from the ground: Syrians don’t want ethnic violence, but some may happen.  It’s already happening.  There have already been ethnically motivated massacres.  The longer the war continues the worse this will become.  Syria is not, however, Iraq. 

There are no U.S. troops in Syria trying to organize elections.  The U.S. presence and American missteps made ethnic violence in Iraq far worse than it would have been otherwise after Saddam Saddam Hussein's fall.  The Syrians are better suited to sort out their internal divisions than anyone else. 

A first? Helicopter gunships bombard Syrian capital

Allawites comprise about 10 percent of Syria’s 23 million people.  They are the government’s favored sect.  The Assad family is Allawite.  If Assad falls, there may be vendetta killings of some Allawites.  More than 17,000 Syrians have already been killed, which means 17,000 angry families.  It will be difficult to contain all that rage.  The longer the conflict continues, however, the more vengeance there will be.  If there are more large-scale massacres – if Aleppo is reduced to a smoldering pile like Homs – the aftermath could be much worse. 

But Syrians I have spoken to say they do not want a civil war.  They do not want to drive Allawites from the country.  Mostly, they want justice.  The rebels know exactly who they are looking for.  They have the names of Syrian government officers and militiamen responsible for massacres and torture.  They want to bring them to justice, but not to perpetrate more atrocities.  Syria needs help organizing a justice system to deal with the popular demands for retribution after the regime collapses. 

The conflict in Syria seems to be in its final stages, but how long this stage will last depends largely on what happens in the coming days and weeks and the amount of support the rebels receive. 

All indications are that Assad is going to fall.  But how many more Syrians need to go with him?

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TRIPOLI, Lebanon – It only takes a two-minute stroll down Syria Street to see why so many people are so worried about what might happen next in Lebanon.

A hole punched through the wall of the mosque by a rocket or mortar shell, smoke-blackened masonry, shops and apartments bearing the pockmarks of fierce gun battles.

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Syria Street is the aptly named thoroughfare that separates rival factions in Lebanon’s second city.

For much of the past week, the two sides have been waging a mini-civil war.

It is a direct spill over from the chaos in neighboring Syria.

Photos: Violence on the streets of Tripoli

One side of the street is home to a hard-line Sunni Muslim militia who run guns to rebels across the border.

“President Assad is trying to destroy us,” says Sheik Bilal Masri, by way of explanation. “They cause trouble here to take the pressure of them in Damascus.”

We meet a small group of his men. They are well-armed and apparently spoiling for a fight.

Not many yards away, posters of Syria’s President Bashar Assad striking stern military poses adorn walls on the other side of the street.

Here the people share Assad’s Alawite faith and, it seems, the same determination to defend his regime.

“No one wants a civil war in Lebanon,” a local Alawite leader tells me.  “But everyone should be warned: There will be repercussion for anyone who tries to meddle in Syria.”

Conflict along Syria Street is nothing new. But the outside world began to take notice on Monday when for the first time in four years, gun battles broke out on the streets of Lebanon’s capital, Beirut.

2 killed, 18 hurt as Syria conflict spills over into Lebanon

It was a brief glimpse back into the abyss for a nation scarred by years of civil strife.

In 2005, Syrian troops were forced to withdrawal from Lebanon, but Damascus is still a big player in the fractured politics of a country that sees rival Muslim and Christian sects share power in a set of uneasy alliances.

Syria’s most powerful friend here is Hezbollah, the militant Shiite group that probably holds the key to whether Lebanon survives in one piece.

Inside Syria rebel stronghold: 'The city is on mute' 

Its heartland in the south of Beirut has been tense, but so far its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, has kept his forces out of the fray.

But for how long?

The fatal shooting of two Sunni clerics followed by the kidnapping of Lebanese Shiite pilgrims in Syria shows how unpredictable events have become.

A message to Assad? War games held near border

For more than two decades, Timur Goksel has watched events in Lebanon. Once of the U.N. Mission here, he now lectures at the American University in Beirut.

He tells me the country has rarely felt so dangerous.

“I hope I am wrong because this is scary. If the faction leaders lose control of these young guys with the guns then we’re in trouble,” he said.

Their bloody history has taught the Lebanese to be a fatalistic people.

“The country is at boiling point,” another seasoned observer told me with a shrug.  “What is coming will be very bad.”

 

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HOMS, Syria – Faced with a daily rain of rockets, bombs and bullets, the people of Homs keep fighting, refusing to yield to President Bashar Assad's forces in an uprising that began 11 months ago.

Their streets and homes have been shelled. They have few medical supplies, no power and very little food. And casualties are mounting. On Wednesday, Syrian forces killed more than 80 people, according to activists, whose claim could not be independently confirmed. But among the dead were two Western journalists.

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There seems to be no way out for the people in this besieged city, reduced to rubble and ruin, yet families and fighters share a moment to dancing in the streets for their “revolution of dignity and freedom.”

A French photojournalist known as Mani, whose full name is being withheld for his own safety, has spent time living alongside the people of Homs. Jonathan Miller, Channel Four Europe reports.

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The intense fighting in Syria between President Bashar Assad's forces and opposition rebels seems to be getting worse by the day. On Wednesday, a French photojournalist and a prominent American war correspondent working for a British newspaper were killed as Syrian forces intensely shelled the opposition stronghold of Homs. 

Weeks of withering attacks on the city of Homs have failed to drive out opposition factions that include rebel soldiers who fled Assad's forces. Hundreds have died in the siege - galvanizing international pressure on Assad, who appears intent on widening his military crackdowns despite the risk of pushing Syria into full-scale civil war.

NBC News' Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel is on assignment along the Turkey-Syria border. He answered reader questions about the ongoing conflict in Syria earlier today.

Click on the box below to replay the chat.

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