Syrian army and rebels Tuesday deployed a large number of reinforcements to the northern city of Aleppo for a "decisive battle" that is seen lasting for several weeks, a Damascus security source said.

"The army and the terrorist groups have both sent reinforcements for a decisive battle that should last several weeks," the source told AFP.

The rebels sent in backup from neighbouring Turkey, after they seized a strategic checkpoint in Anadan, five kilometres (3.1 miles) northwest of the city of Aleppo, the source said.

"The Syrian army is surrounding rebel districts, and is bombing them, but it is going to take its time before it launches its assault on each neighbourhood" held by the rebel Free Syrian Army, the source said on condition of anonymity.

This is the second large-scale redeployment for both sides in less than a week.

Fighting for control of Syria's commercial capital raged into a fourth day after regime troops launched an assault Saturday at rebels who seized parts of the city on July 20.

Iraqi Kurdistan trained Syrian Kurds, says official
Arbil, Iraq (AFP) July 31, 2012 –

Iraqi Kurdish forces gave basic training to Syrian Kurds to fill any "security gap" should the Syrian regime fall, a top official in the party of the Kurdistan region's president said on Tuesday.

A "very small" number of young Syrian Kurds "were trained in basic training in camps in the region in order to fill any security gap after the fall of the Syrian regime," Hayman Hawrami, the head of the external relations department in the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), told AFP.

"We in the KDP and the region's government will not interfere in Syrian affairs, and we will not force any political equation on how the situation for Kurds in Syria will be," Hawrami said.

"But we supported uniting the Kurds in Syria so they can be a main supporter of the Syrian opposition and a main supporter of the positive change in Syria," he said.

Syria's two main Kurdish opposition blocs, the Kurdish National Council and the People's Council of Western Kurdistan said on July 11 that they would unite to form the Supreme Kurdish Council.

"We in the KDP are giving attention to Syrian affairs, because there are more than two million Kurds in Syria," Hawrami said.

His remarks come as Syrian opposition chief Abdel Basset Sayda was on a visit to Kurdistan in a bid to convince Kurdish leaders to join the opposition, according to a high-ranking official in the Kurdish National Council.

Activists say more than 20,000 people have been killed since an uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime began in March 2011.