Syrian troops and rebels are readying for a long fight in the city of Aleppo, with 40 police killed on day four of a pivotal battle as the UNHCR said up to 18,000 civilians could be trapped inside the city.
The leader of the Free Syrian Army says his rebels are determined to win their fight for power of the country, at any price.
“We seek to gain our freedom, no matter how much blood it costs.”, he tells Yaara Bou Melhem from SBS's Dateline in a rare TV Interview.
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Bou Melhem was able to negotiate access to Colonel Riad al-Asaad in a Turkish military camp, which is normally off limits to journalists.
He controls the movement against President Bashar al-Assad from the neighbouring country after threats against his life, but is already planning optimistically for the Syria's future.
“There are instructions to control security for an interim period until elections are held or a democratic government is formed”, he tells Yaara. “Preparations have been made, we've been preparing for this for several months.”
While Yaara is filming, news comes in of a suicide bomb attack in the capital Damascus, which has killed Syria's Defence Minister and three others.
It's a victorious moment for al-Asaad, but he denies that using a popular method of al-Qaeda signifies a link with them.
“We see this as a fabrication on the part of the regime”, he says. “We know that al-Qaeda doesn't exist at all in Syria.”
In the dead of night, the rebels take Yaara across the border into Syria, where she becomes the first journalist to film in the secret labyrinth of caves and tunnels used by the rebel fighters.
They stretch for kilometres under Idlib province, which is now largely controlled by the rebels… some of whom have defected from the Assad regime.
Crawling through the dark and dirty tunnels, she hears that the rebels use their local knowledge of the tunnels to hide and also to surprise their foes.
“Of course, the army besieged us many times”, says rebel Bilal, “and we slipped through many times.”
Bilal also shows her the weapons they are forced to make themselves, because no country will supply them.
Even the rebels admit that demonstrates the size of the battle ahead against the well-armed forces of the Syrian government, but he too is determined to win.
“We want Syria to be, or rather Syria must be, a free just democratic, prosperous and strong Syria,” he says.
Go to the Dateline website to see Yaara's report in full.
