Syrian Forces Attack Rebel Stronghold Near Palace BEIRUT, Lebanon - A large armored contingent of Syria's elite Republican Guard stormed a western Damascus suburb near the presidential palace on Friday, residents and antigovernment activists said, bringing intense combat with insurgents unusually close to the doorstep of the embattled Syrian leadership. Zac Baillie/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images A Syrian boy, hurt from the shelling of a refugee center, sat next to a body on Friday at a hospital in the northern city of Aleppo. Hundreds of residents fled the fighting, which followed days of shelling by government forces after a three-month truce collapsed in the area. Home to hundreds of Guard members and their families, the suburb extends to within a mile of the palace, the residence of President Bashar al-Assad, which overlooks the capital. The government and its armed opponents blamed one another, each claiming that residents of the neighborhood, Qudsaya, had requested protection from the other side. "I feel there is no secure district or suburb in the whole of Damascus," a 40-year-old Qudsaya resident, who gave only a nickname, Abu Mohammed, said in an interview. We can see the Republican Palace, and I am sure that Bashar al-Assad is hearing his elite forces attack us. He will not feel happy and sleep well if the fighting is next to his palace. On the other side of the capital, in the suburb of East Ghouta, rebels celebrated their apparent downing of a helicopter, documented in dramatic videos of the craft losing its rotors, spinning to earth and exploding, and jubilant young men dragging its tail section behind a pickup truck. Rebels also claimed to have seized an air defense base in the area earlier in the week, in videos that showed beaming fighters posing with antiquated surface-to-air missiles amid smoldering buildings and army vehicles, insulting Mr. Assad and shouting, "God willing, we're coming for you!" Taken together, the surge of military activity portrayed a government forced to exert itself on many fronts to manage a conflict that shows no signs of abating. The fighting around Damascus came as antigovernment activists reported a renewal of fierce army shelling of Homs, the central city that has long been a trouble spot for Mr. Assad. The shelling demonstrated that the government is still struggling to control the city, which it had declared insurgent-free eight months ago after an extended siege. Continued heavy shelling was reported on Saturday morning by antigovernment activists in the city and province of Homs. Scores of people were killed in the town of Houla in Homs Province, sending many residents fleeing, according to the Local Coordinating Committees, a network of activists inside Syria, and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on observers inside Syria. The government's news agency, SANA, has said in recent days that security forces are carrying out operations in Homs to combat terrorists, its term for the armed opposition, and have recovered many weapons and explosives there. The government's own accounts, issued Friday, of confiscating large amounts of heavy weapons and explosives from Qudsaya and nearby areas suggested how deeply the rebellion had penetrated even into a Republican Guard stronghold. And fears of regional repercussions continued to build as Turkish artillery hit Syria for a fourth consecutive day after a Syrian mortar killed five Turkish civilians on Wednesday. No casualties were reported in the cross-border shelling Friday and Saturday, in which Turkey reported that more Syrian shells fell on its territory, according to news reports. But Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, armed with Thursday's authorization from Parliament to respond with further military action against Syria, issued a stern warning. "Those who attempt to test Turkey's deterrence, decisiveness and capacity," the Anatolian News Agency quoted him as saying Friday, "I say here that they are making a fatal mistake." Turkey is a member of the NATO alliance, in which an attack on one member country can be considered an attack on all, raising the possibility that NATO could be drawn into the Syria conflict. Turkey has also enraged Syria by providing haven for rebels during the uprising, by far the bloodiest of the Arab revolts. Antigovernment activists reported that security forces, led by 4,000 Republican Guard forces, stormed the Qudsaya area with artillery and tanks. Reporting was contributed by an employee of The New York Times from Damascus, Syria; C. J. Chivers from the United States; Hwaida Saad and Hania Mourtada from Beirut; Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul; and Alan Cowell from Paris.