A new rebel alliance said Sunday it had launched an offensive to "liberate" Syria's largest city, Aleppo, while government troops backed by helicopter gunships wrested back control of rebel-held neighborhoods in the capital Damascus.

The attack on Aleppo, Syria's commercial hub that has been a bedrock of support for President Bashar Assad, was a sign of the rebels' growing confidence and capabilities days after they killed four members of Assad's inner circle in a Damascus bombing.

"Right now, Assad's inner circle has been dismantled and Assad has lost his balance," Brig. Gen. Abdul Kareem al-Ahmad of the rebel Free Syrian Army said at a meeting in Turkey. "This war is now being waged in the heart of Syria in Damascus."

The killing of senior regime figures, a series of high-level military defections, and the capture of several border crossings have given the rebel side unmistakable momentum over the past week and put the regime on the defensive. After struggling for nearly a week to put down a rebel challenge inside the capital, regime forces appeared close to regaining control of Damascus.

The battles in Damascus and Aleppo signal a new and bloody phase of Syria's civil war, with combat in heavily populated cities.

With the conflict moving from the countryside and smaller cities into the two main urban centers, an activist group said the death toll had risen to more than 19,000 since the uprising began in March 2011. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said July is shaping up to be the deadliest month of the conflict so far, with 2,752 people killed in the first three weeks - already nearly as many as the previous month.

The escalating bloodshed and increasing chaos is threatening to spill across borders into a larger regional conflagration. It has put Syria's neighbors, particularly Israel, on edge.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in an interview with Fox TV that his "principle concern" is the political chaos that might ensue if Assad falls and the Syrian- and Iranian-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah gains access to Syria's stockpile of chemical weapons, rockets and missiles.

He said Israel hasn't considered specifically trying to cross the border and seize the weapons. "There are other possibilities," he said without elaborating. "We'll have to consider our actions...Do I seek action? No. Do I preclude action? No."

There have been no indications that Shiite Hezbollah is active in Syria, where the rebels are largely Sunni.

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