Reuters Tv / Reuters
Syria's President Bashar al-Assad speaks at the Opera House in Damascus in this still image taken from video on Sunday.
By NBC News and wire services
Syrian President Bashar Assad on Sunday outlined a new peace initiative that included a national reconciliation conference and a new constitution in?a rare speech about the uprising against his rule, which has killed an estimated 60,000 people and brought civil war to the edge of his capital.
Speaking before an overwhelmingly supportive crowd that interrupted his speech with chants and rapturous applause several times, Assad said the initiative could only take root after regional and Western countries stopped funding what he called militant extremists fighting to overthrow him.? ?
It was the 47-year-old leader's first speech in months and his first public comments since he dismissed suggestions that he might go into exile to end the civil war, telling Russian television in November that he would "live and die" in Syria.
As in previous speeches, he said his forces were fighting groups of "murderous criminals" and jihadi elements and denied there was an uprising against his family's decades-long rule.? ?He struck a defiant tone, saying Syria will not take dictates from anyone.?
PhotoBlog: Destruction, resistance in war-torn Syria
Insurgents are venturing ever closer into Damascus after bringing a crescent of suburbs under their control from the city's eastern outskirts to the southwest.?
Assad's forces blasted rockets into the Jobar neighborhood near the city center on Saturday to try to drive out rebel fighters, a day after bombarding rebel-held areas in the eastern suburb of Daraya.?
In an interview with a Russian television channel, Syrian President Bashar Assad vowed to live and die in Syria, amid the 19-month old uprising against him. NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.
"The shelling began in the early hours of the morning, it has intensified since 11 a.m. (4 a.m. ET), and now it has become really heavy. Yesterday it was Daraya and today Jobar is the hottest spot in Damascus," an activist named Housam told Reuters by Skype from the capital.?
Assad officials in Moscow to discuss end to civil war
The Syrian Network for Human Rights, a London-based group that supports the opposition, said it documented 76 deaths throughout Syria on Saturday, 35 of them in and around the capital Damascus. Reporting in Syria is severely restricted and NBC News could not confirm these numbers.
Amid violence and chaos in Syria, four hundred US troops have been deployed to Turkey with Patriot missile batteries to bolster defenses along the border. NBC's Annabel Roberts reports.
Since Assad's last public comments, in November, rebels have strengthened their hold on swathes of territory across northern Syria, launched an offensive in the central province of Hama and endured weeks of bombardment by Assad's forces trying to dislodge them from Damascus's outer neighborhoods.?
Syria's political opposition has also won widespread international recognition. But Assad has continued to rely on support from Russia, China and Iran to hold firm and has used his air power to blunt rebel gains on the ground.?
Missile batteries?
Despite the estimated death toll of 60,000 announced by the United Nations earlier this week -- a figure sharply higher than that given by activists -- the West has shown little appetite for intervening against Assad in the way that NATO forces supported rebels who overthrew Libya's Moammar Gadhafi?in 2011.
But NATO is sending U.S. and European Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries to the Turkish-Syrian border.?
Channel Four Europe's Alex Thomson has the rare opportunity to meet some of Syrian President Bashar Assad's troops.
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The United States military said U.S. troops and equipment had begun arriving in Turkey on Friday for the deployment. Germany and the Netherlands are also sending Patriot batteries, which will take weeks to deploy fully.?
Turkey and NATO say the missiles are a safeguard to protect southern Turkey from possible Syrian missile strikes. Syria and allies Russia and Iran say the deployments could spark an eventual military action by the Western alliance.?
Syria's war has proved the longest and bloodiest of the conflicts that arose out of popular uprisings in Arab countries over the past two years and led to the downfall of autocratic regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.?
Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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