Syria's air force has launched new air strikes on rebel bastions near Damascus. Source: AAP
THE Syrian regime is expanding its use of cluster bombs, an international human rights group says as the conflict enters its third year.
In the past six months Syrian forces have dropped at least 156 cluster bombs in 119 locations across the country, causing many civilian casualties, the New York-based group Human Rights Watch said on Saturday.
Two strikes in the past two weeks killed 11 civilians, including two women and five children, a report by the group says.
The group bases its findings on field investigations and analysis of more than 450 amateur videos.
Cluster bombs open in flight, scattering smaller bomblets. They pose a threat to civilians long afterwards as many don't explode immediately. Most countries have banned their use.
The report came a day after Syrians marked the second anniversary of their uprising against President Bashar Assad.
The rebellion began with largely peaceful protests by has grown into a civil war that has killed some 70,000 people and displaced four million of Syria's 22 million people, according to UN estimates.
The conflict remains deadlocked, despite some recent military gains by the rebels, who control large stretches of northern and eastern Syria.
Late on Friday, rebel fighters from the al-Qaeda-linked group Jabhat al-Nusra and other Islamist factions seized a military base and munitions depot in the town of Khan Touman in the northern province of Aleppo, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group.
The observatory quoted witnesses as saying rebel fighters drove off with truckloads of ammunition and weapons. The Khan Touman base is only a few kilometres from a larger base, located in a military engineering academy, that is considered a key government stronghold in the province.
Fighting was also reported on Saturday in the eastern city of Deir el-Zour, the Observatory said. Heavy gunfire was heard in an amateur video said to be showing the city. The narrator said regime forces fired mortar shells, while the Observatory reported a car bomb explosion.
The regime routinely pounds rebel strongholds with artillery and drops bombs from the air, sending civilians fleeing.
The rebels have appealed to the West for military aid, including anti-aircraft weapons, to help them break the stalemate.
On Friday, a European Union summit heard an appeal by Britain and France to lift a ban on arming the rebels.
The 27 national leaders were unable to reach a consensus and asked their foreign ministers, who will meet next week in Dublin, to try find a common position.
Samir Nashar, a member of the Syrian National Coalition, the main opposition group in exile, said he hoped France and Britain would defy the EU if the embargo remained in place.
"I prefer that there is a consensus and a joint resolution," he said on Friday in Istanbul. "But if there's no consensus, I still think France and Britain will act unilaterally."
The French foreign minister suggested earlier this week that his country might arm the rebels even if the EU disagreed.
