BEIRUT- Opposition fighters battled Syrian government forces in poor districts of Damascus on Sunday in some of the most intensive daytime fighting yet inside the city limits of the capital. Activist Samir al-Shami, who spoke to Reuters by Skype from Damascus, said the fighting was underway in the al-Tadamon district in the capital's south, after a night of sustained battles in the nearby Hajar al-Aswad district. "There is the sound of heavy gunfire. And there is smoke rising from the area. There are already some wounded and residents are trying to flee the area," he said, showing live video images of smoke visible over the skyline. "There are also armored vehicles heading towards the southern part of the neighborhood," he said. He described it as the most intense fighting he had heard in the capital. Another Damascus resident who asked not to be identified also said the fighting was the worst so far. "This area has had a lot of fighting ... The area is kind of a slum. The people who live there are poor. There's a lot of people and a lot of grassy areas around it so it's easy for rebels to sneak in and out." An explosion hit a security forces bus in Damascus on Sunday and wounded several people, activists said. Residents said they heard a powerful blast, followed by the sirens of ambulances rushing toward Damascus's southern ring road near the neighborhood of Midan. Fifteen months into an uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, intensive fighting has reached the outskirts of the capital in recent weeks, focused on poorer areas where anger against the authorities is highest. Clashes frequently take place at night, but intensive battles during the day appear to be a new sign of the seriousness of the conflict. The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which compiles reports by anti-Assad activists, said Sunday's death toll was at least 80. Rockets were being used in the fighting in Damascus, it said. Its figures are impossible to verify as the government restricts access to the country by independent media. Western countries, Arab neighbors and Turkey have formed an alliance against Assad. But diplomacy has had little impact so far, with Assad's allies Russia and China blocking action by the U.N. Security Council and the West showing no appetite for the kind of intervention it undertook last year when NATO helped topple Libya's Muammar Gaddafi. Opposition reports of a massacre last week in the village of Tremseh brought a wave of new denunciations of Assad in the West. UN observers returned on Sunday to the village to gather more evidence at the site after finding blood, damaged houses and signs that artillery was used, but inconclusive evidence of the scale of the killing.
