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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.

Hundreds of residents fled the fighting, which followed days of shelling by government forces after a three-month truce collapsed. 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.

The government said its forces had entered because citizens were “fed up with the acts of killing, abduction, sabotage and blocking of roads committed by the terrorists,” its term for its armed opponents. Syria’s SANA state news agency said that rebels had evicted residents and turned homes into firing positions.

Abu Mohammed, the Qudsaya resident, said that three months ago, the president had sent senior Republican Guard officers to negotiate with the people of Qudsaya and Hameh, a neighboring area where fighting also flared on Friday. He said an agreement had been reached that neither security forces nor insurgents would enter the area.

“The agreement was good for both sides; there was no arresting, no killing and no shabiha,” he said, referring to pro-government militias. But recently, he said, shabiha from the president’s Alawite minority had violated the truce by killing three young men and attacking women, so residents sought protection from rebels, who began attacking government checkpoints. The government has shelled the area since Tuesday, according to residents and video posted by activists.

Rebel video posted on YouTube purporting to document the captured air base showed uniformed insurgents in front of a military installation with black smoke spiraling.

Another video showed a jubilant bearded fighter in a crisp camouflage flak vest and carrying a semiautomatic rifle as he clambered onto a trailer with what appeared to be a Soviet-made SA-2 surface-to-air missile. Off camera, a voice hails the man, Abu Khattab, as the leader of the unit that claimed to have captured the base. “Thank God! Praise God!” voices cry as he raises his rifle and screams, “Get out, Bashar, you’re not strong enough to carry a missile!”

The SA-2, which dates to the 1960s and requires a large crew to operate, is most likely useless in the battle, but rebels said they had captured other weapons from the base.

On Friday, helicopter gunships and fighter jets attacked the area, according to activist video. In one video a helicopter can be seen hovering. A piece of a main rotor snaps off and collides with the tail rotor, which appears to fall. As the aircraft tumbles and spins, voices shout “God is great!” and thick black smoke rises upon ground impact.

Rebels have previously downed helicopters with heavy machine guns, which video shows were being used in the area. The events appeared consistent with the use of such weapons.

There was no means of independently verifying the claims or the videos since access to Syria is severely restricted.

The New York Times