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GENEVA — A showdown between government troops and opposition forces in Syria’s largest city, Aleppo, is “imminent,” the U.N.’s human rights office said Friday, as the Red Cross said it is pulling some of its foreign staff from Damascus out of concern for the safety of its workers.

The country’s chaos has spread to Syria’s biggest cities in some of the most widespread and sustained violence the two areas have seen in more than 17 months of conflict. Rebels have been locked in fierce fighting with government troops in Aleppo for six days and are bracing for an attack amid reports that the regime is massing reinforcements to retake the embattled city of 3 million.

U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said unconfirmed reports are coming out of the capital, Damascus, of extra-judicial killings and shootings of civilians during fighting in the city’s suburbs. Expressing deep alarm at the situation, Pillay said the report “bodes ill for the people of that city (Aleppo).”

“And it goes without saying, that the increasing use of heavy weapons, tanks, attack helicopters and – reportedly – even jet fighters in urban areas has already caused many civilian casualties and is putting many more at grave risk,” she said in a statement read aloud to reporters by her spokesman Rupert Colville.

The statement also said that there have been clashes in Homs and Deir el-Zour.

A senior U.N. diplomat close to the mediation effort of international envoy Kofi Annan said they are “watching the situation in Aleppo with great concern.”

“The ground is shifting. We use words like `It’s fluid’ – and it certainly is … It has been a roller-coaster ride,” the diplomat said, while speaking on condition of anonymity because of the delicacy of the negotiations among world powers on the U.N. Security Council.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said Friday it is temporarily moving some of its foreign staff from Damascus to neighboring Lebanon. A Red Cross spokesman in Geneva, Hicham Hassan, said the move was prompted by security concerns but that a core team of about 50 staff would remain.

Hicham Hassan also told The Associated Press on Friday that the Syrian Arab Red Crescent was suspending some of its operations in Aleppo due to heavy fighting but that the Red Cross hopes to bring its staff back into the country.

Turkey’s state-run agency said a Syrian legislator from Aleppo has fled to Turkey and also warned that Syria was preparing for a massive offensive on cities where rebels are fighting government forces. The Anadolu agency said Friday that Ikhlas Badawi has defected in protest of the Syrian regime’s “violence against the people.”

She would be the first member of Syria’s parliament to defect from the parliament that was elected in May.

In January, Legislator Imad Ghalioun left the country to join the opposition, saying Syria was suffering sweeping human rights violations. He was from the city of Homs that was being subjected to a massive regime attack at the time.

On Friday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said troops bombarded the neighborhood of Fardous killing at least four people. It added that Sunni cleric Abdul-Latif al-Shami was kidnapped and killed in Aleppo. It gave no further details, although some activists said al-Shami is a government supporter.

Mohammed Saeed, an Aleppo-based activist, said helicopters were bombing with heavy machine-guns rebel-held areas east and west of the city on Friday. He added that army reinforcements arrived in the city on Thursday and a major attack is expected any time.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory, said army reinforcements took positions around Aleppo. “I expect the attack to begin today,” he said.

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Mroue reported from Beirut. Frank Jordans contributed from Berlin.

For Palestinians in Syria, keeping out of the conflict has become increasingly difficult, the Associated Press reports. Early on, Palestinians said they had little to gain by joining the rebels or supporting the Assad regime. Yet as the conflict in Syria intensifies, young Palestinians are taking up a larger role in the resistance.

Read the full story on HuffPost World.

Fighters from the Syrian opposition guard a checkpoint during clashes with forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad (portrait), in the center of Syria’s restive northern city of Aleppo on July 25, 2012. (BULENT KILIC/AFP/GettyImages)

The U.S. fears that Syrian security forces are preparing for mass killings in the city of Aleppo. “This is the concern: that we will see a massacre in Aleppo and that’s what the regime appears to be lining up for,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said, according to Reuters. “Our hearts are with the people of Aleppo, and again this is another desperate attempt by a regime that is going down to maintain control, and we are greatly concerned about what they are capable of in Aleppo,” she added.

Nuland stressed that the U.S. does not foresee a military intervention in Syria.

Read more on Reuters.com.

This citizen journalism image provided by Shaam News Network SNN, taken on Tuesday, July 24, 2012, shows bodies of Syrians killed in the suburb of Daraya, Damascus, Syria. (AP Photo/Shaam News Network, SNN)

Turkish reporter Mahir Zeynalov tweets:

@ MahirZeynalov :
Syria’s defected brigadier general, Manaf Tlas, arrives in Ankara for talks with Turkish FM Davutoglu.

Defected Syrian General Manaf Tlass told reporters in Saudi Arabia that there is no room for president Bashar Assad in Syria’s future. Tlass defected in early July and is now in Saudi Arabia.

“Sometimes in a friendship you advise a friend many times, and then you discover that you aren’t having any impact, so you decide to distance yourself,” Tlass told al-Sharq al-Awsat daily, discussing his relationship with Assad. He added that he would try to help unite Syria’s opposition.

Read more on HuffPost World.

Turkish Prime Minster Erdogan said on Thursday his country will not tolerate the establishment of a Kurdish region in Syria.

The Associated Press explains:

Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s comments Thursday follow reports that Kurdish rebels and the Democratic Union Party of Syria took control of five cities along the Syrian-Turkish border.

Turkey is concerned that the creation of a Kurdish authority in the north of Syria could provide a sanctuary to Kurdish rebels who are fighting for self-rule in Turkey’s southeast.

Read more on HuffPost World.

The Syrian army has stepped up its attacks against opposition fighters in the cities of Damascus and Aleppo, Reuters reports. Damascus residents reported shells landing ‘every minute,’ according to activists.

Read more on HuffPost World.

In this image made from amateur video released by the Ugarit News and accessed Tuesday, July 24, 2012, a Free Syrian Army solider fires his weapon during clashes with Syrian government troops in Aleppo, Syria. (AP Photo/Ugarit News via AP video)

Is a breakaway Alawite state in parts of Syria’s territory a viable option for president Bashar Assad?

According to the Associated Press, the Alawite sect to which the Assad family and many of its closest supporters belong has its roots in the mountain villages of Syria’s Mediterranean coast. Experts believe Assad may want to retreat to this base if his power in the rest of the country continues to crumble.

The Associated Press writes:

In the recent sectarian violence in Syria, some observers see a grim pattern: Alawite fighters from President Bashar Assad’s minority sect, they say, are trying to carve out a breakaway enclave for themselves by driving out local Sunnis, killing entire families and threatening anybody who stays behind.

Read the full analysis on HuffPost World.

Amnesty International said on Monday that both government forces and opposition groups in Syria have been deliberately and unlawfully killing captured opponents. The organization calls on all sides in the conflict to abide by international humanitarian law.

There have been hundreds of cases, including those documented by Amnesty International itself, of members of the Syrian government’s security forces and pro-government militia deliberately killing captured fighters, suspected opponents, and others. More recently, Amnesty International has received an increasing number of reports of similar, as well as other, abuses committed by members of the armed opposition groups.

Read Amnesty’s full statement here.

@ AlArabiya_Eng :
#BreakingNews: UN chief Ban urges world to act now to stop Syria ‘slaughter’

(AP) Syria acknowledged this week for the first time that it possesses chemical weapons, and threatened to use them if the country came under foreign attack. President Bashar Assad’s regime is believed to have mustard gas as well as nerve agents such as tabun, sarin and VX. Check out AP’s report on the chemical weapons believed to be in Syria’s arsenal here.