Today’s Death toll: 117. The Breakdown: 48 in Damascus and Suburbs (including 17 martyred in a massacre in Buwayda town), 17 in Aleppo, 15 in Homs, 15 in Idlib, 9 in Deir Ezzor, 9 in Daraa, 2 in Hama, 1 in Lattakia, and 1 in Raqqah (LCC).

Aleppo: Heavy artillery shelling of Sakhour neighborhood is renewed, with more than 12 shells landing; Heavy artillery shelling of Massaken Hanano neighborhood is reported; Heavy shooting by warplanes on Bezagha Area.

Daraa: Shajra: Heavy gunfire is reported from heavy machine guns located west of the town, next to Abdeen checkpoint

Hama: Shahshabo Mountain: Sounds of heavy shelling shake the mountain’s villages. They are from the artillery located in Seqelbiya

Damascus Suburbs: Hamourieh: Mortar shelling targets the city; Jdeidet Artouz: Shelling targets Dahra area at a rate of one shell per 2 minutes; Daraya: Gunfire from light and medium-grade weapons is reported from checkpoints to scare residents; Diabiyeh: Heavy mortar shelling targets the area; Saqba: Shelling targets Bassateen area in the city.

On Thursday, September 20, the Kurdish activist Mahmoud Wali, AKA Abu Jandi, was assassinated by an unknown assailant on a motorcycle in his hometown of Ras Al-Ain (Seri Kanye). He was the founder of the independent Kurdish grassroots movement, Shabab Al-Thawrah, which played an important role in galvanizing support for the Syrian Revolution among Kurdish youth. The assassination comes at a time of increasing tensions between different Kurdish factions as well as between Kurdish and Arab population in Kurdish-majority areas.

Also, on Thursday, rebels in Eastern Ghoutah Region in Damascus Province managed to shoot down an attacking helicopter gunship.

Syrian rebels say government airstrikes killed 30 in Raqqah. Long deemed a bastion of support for President Bashar Assad, Raqqah may be the latest battle zone.

Besides growing reservations about the dynamic on the ground in Syria, last week’s killings at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi have raised new questions about Libya as a model for intervention

A Lebanese solution for Syria, in which different areas have different outside backers, may be the end result, but it is nobody’s goal.

The Times’s C.J. Chivers travels with an antigovernment fighting group in and near Aleppo, where the war for Syria’s future has hardened all involved.

The statements of Iranian military involvement can also be interpreted as the IRGC’s way of threatening to increase its intervention, which would transform civil war in Syria into a regional war. The threat obviously aims to force Westerners, Turks, and Saudis to think twice before getting further embroiled in a proxy war.

Ammar Abdulhamid & Khawla Yusuf: The Shredded Tapestry: The State of Syria Today