BEIRUT – Syrian President Bashar Assad made his first appearance Thursday since a bomb killed some of his top lieutenants, looking calm and composed on state TV even as his forces turned parts of Damascus into combat zones and rebels seized two of the country's border crossings.

The unprecedented attack on Assad's inner circle Wednesday, along with the government's inability to crush the rebels after five days of intense clashes in the Syrian capital, point to an unraveling of his grip on power after 16 months of violence.

"It is a war going on here, literally a war," said a 25-year-old woman in the Muhajereen neighborhood. The sounds of battle had kept her up all night and she stayed home from work because she feared random gunfire, she added.