Alepp, Syria. Photo: wiki commons.

NY Times – Syrian Army helicopters fired on neighborhoods in Aleppo on Friday morning, activists said, as the army readied assault troops and armored columns for a possible invasion of the city, Syria’s densely populated commercial capital, where insurgents have embedded themselves over the past week in preparation for a battle.

As Aleppo girded for fighting, opposition figures said on Friday that a member of the Syrian Parliament from the city’s northern district had defected and crossed into Turkey. The lawmaker, Iklhas Badawi, was elected in May to a Parliament that was seen as a rubber stamp for the predominance of President Bashar al-Assad’s Baath Party. The elections were dismissed by opposition figures as a sham.

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