Video Related To: Obama authorizes secret US support to Syrian rebels

CIVIL WAR SYRIA: US Pentagon predicts MASSACRE in ALEPPO if ASSAD ARMY succeed REBELS (ASSAD resignation??) Syrian troops backing President Bashar al-Assad stepped up their assault on rebels in Aleppo, prompting US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to predict that Assad's use of "indiscriminate violence" will hasten the regime's collapse. Government forces killed at least 120 people yesterday, mainly in Aleppo, the nation's commercial hub, and Damascus, the capital, according to the Local Coordination Committees, an activist group. Syrian opposition fighters have seized eight neighborhoods in Aleppo and the road leading to the Turkish border, while the army resumed pounding the city with heavy weapons, according to Al Jazeera television. Free Syrian Army opposition fighters battle government security forces during the siege of the Shaar district police station in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on July 25, 2012. About 200000 people have fled Aleppo and nearby areas in the past two days, Valerie Amos, the United Nations' top humanitarian affairs official, said in a statement yesterday. The security situation in cities and along main transport routes is making it very difficult for humanitarian agencies to reach displaced families, she said. "It's pretty clear that Aleppo is another tragic example of the kind of indiscriminate violence that the Assad regime has committed against its own people," Panetta told reporters yesterday on his plane as he began a five-day Mideast <b>...</b>