russta, politically speaking, are your views considered mainstream in the land down under ?
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russta, politically speaking, are your views considered mainstream in the land down under ?
yeah pretty much if you look at the polls
our government is rated the worst ever but you people will love their policies which are close to getting them lynched
Just to note, the 1982 CIA sponsored rebellion failed. This one will fail too unless Putin caves in. And BTW: the so called free Syrian army has been getting its weapons from the US via Israel. This has been planned on for years. Remember the US info sources are very tightly censored. Don't believe everything to hear or read from them.
Do you have a reference you can cite for your claim that the CIA sponsored the rebellion in Hama in 1982? We know that the rebellion was mounted by the military faction of the Muslim Brotherhood (al-Tali'a as-Muqatila Lil-Mujahideen = Fighting Vanguard of Warriors) and that it was the climax of a move against the Brotherhood that had begun the year before and that 400 pro-Brotherhood officers in the Army were rounded up in January 1982. But we also know that the elderly leader of the Brotherhood, Isam al-Attar had been living in West Germany since 1964 (in Aachen). Is it possible that arms went from Germany via Turkey? The reports on the one hand claim the rebels were well-armed, yet intelligence doesn't seem to account for significant external support, so perhaps in the previous year sympathisers in the Syrian Army had gradually built up a stockpile in Hama which was a stronghold of the Brotherhood -there was a rebellion against French rule there in 1925-intriguing, but in the absence of any evidence, I don't think the role you claim is being played by the CIA/USA is as clear as you think it is.Quote:
Originally Posted by thx1138
http://news.yahoo.com/red-cross-syri...222632538.html
http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/DlG...70670021ef.jpgQuote:
Red Cross in Syria fails to evacuate reporters
http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/kjm...p_logo_106.pngBy BASSEM MROUE and BEN HUBBARD | Associated Press – 2 hrs 50 mins ago
BEIRUT (AP) — A Red Cross team evacuated 27 people from a besieged neighborhood in the Syrian city of Homs on Friday but apparently failed to get out two wounded Western journalists and the bodies of two others killed by government rockets.
The International Committee of the Red Cross said a local team entered the besieged neighborhood of Baba Amr, but spokesman Hicham Hassan said he wasn't sure if foreign journalists were among them.
An earlier statement said that seven people were taken to the privately owned al-Amin hospital, which is nearby. It was not immediately clear where the others were moved to.
The Syrian Foreign Ministry accused "armed groups" of refusing to hand over the journalists, and an opposition activist in the area said the journalists had refused to leave.
French journalist Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro and British photographer Paul Conroy of the Sunday Times both asked for help leaving the embattled city after they were wounded in a government attack on a makeshift media center Wednesday. French photographer William Daniels, who was not injured, was also with the group, as was Spanish journalist Javier Espinosa.
American correspondent Marie Colvin, also of the Sunday Times, and French photographer Remi Ochlik were killed in the same attack.
The effort to evacuate the reporters and wounded Syrians is part of a wider international push to bring aid to people in the areas hardest hit by the regime's efforts to quash the uprising against President Bashar Assad's rule.
But the inability of the Red Cross to navigate the tremendous hatred and distrust between Assad's regime and opposition activists seeking to overthrow it does not bode well for future international efforts to help those suffering the most in the country's 11-month-old political crisis.
At a high-level international conference Friday in Tunisia, American, European and Arab nations asked the United Nations to plan a civilian peacekeeping mission to deploy after Assad's regime halts its brutal crackdown. It also called on Assad to end the violence and allow humanitarian aid to reach embattled areas.
Workers from the local branch of the Red Cross entered one of those areas Friday, Baba Amr in Homs, to negotiate the evacuation of wounded civilians with Syrian authorities and opposition groups.
In a statement, the Syrian Foreign Ministry accused "armed groups" in Baba Amr of refusing to hand over a wounded female journalist and the dead bodies of two other journalists. Syrian authorities regularly blame the violence on radical Islamists and "armed gangs."
The Foreign Ministry said the government had sent several local "dignitaries" and ambulances from the Syrian Red Crescent to evacuate the journalists.
But after several hours of negotiations, the statement said, the groups "refused to hand over the wounded journalist and the two bodies, which endangers the life of the French journalist and blocks the return of the bodies to their countries."
A local activist, Abu Mohammed Ibrahim, reached on Skype, said the journalists had refused to leave because the ICRC did not enter, only the Syrian Red Crescent, which he said is full of "collaborators with the regime."
"The journalists also refused to give over the bodies," he said. "They don't know what the government is going to do with them."
He said the four journalists remained in the city, each staying in a different apartment, and that the two dead bodies are being kept in yet another apartment, where they have begun to decay.
Hassan, the spokesman for the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross, said "as for Red Crescent's reputation, they are independent and their volunteers risk their lives on a daily basis." He said the ICRC has often accompanied the Red Crescent volunteers into the field.
Speaking at the Tunisia conference, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Syrian authorities had refused a request to tell the French Ambassador to Syria travel to Homs to arrange the evacuation.
"I appeal personally to the Syrian authorities that Madame Bouvier and the others receive the medical care they urgently need," he said.
One video posted on YouTube on Wednesday showed Bouvier lying on a hospital gurney with a white cast stretching from her left ankle to her thigh. Conroy is on a nearby bed, with white bandages around his left thigh and calf. The video says he was injured by shrapnel from the rocket attack.
In another video, posted Thursday, Bouvier is covered with a blanket and lying on a couch. She says her leg is broken in two places and that she needs an operation that local medics cannot perform.
"I need, as soon as possible, a cease-fire and a medically equipped car in good condition to drive us to Lebanon," she says.
Daniels stands at her side and pleads for their swift evacuation.
"It is difficult here. We don't have electricity. We don't have much to eat. The bombs continue to fall," he said, adding that they only have Internet access in a dangerous place on the neighborhood's edge.
A boom is heard outside as he speaks.
Conroy appears in a third video, also posted Thursday. Lying on couch, he says he has three large wounds in his leg.
"I am currently being looked after by the Free Syrian Army medical staff who are treating me with the best medical treatment available," he says, referring to armed opposition forces.
"It's important that I am here as a guest and not captured," he says. "I am absolutely OK."
The Syrian uprising, which began last March with protests in some of Syria's impoverished hinterlands, is evolving into one of the most violent of the Arab Spring. Assad's security forces have used extreme force against protesters, and the opposition is increasingly taking up arms.
The U.N. said last month that 5,400 people had been killed. Hundreds more have died since. Activists put the number at more than 7,300, but overall figures are impossible to confirm independently.
___
Associated Press writer Frank Jordans contributed to this report from Geneva.
This image from amateur video purports to show Edith Bouvier of Le
Figaro in a makeshift clinic in Homs, Syria, Thursday, Feb. 23, 2012.
Bouvier was wounded in shelling Wednesday in Homs. (AP Photo)
Syrian forces pound Homs, block aid convoy http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...8220CI20120303
Quote:
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis and Mohammed Abbas
BEIRUT | Sat Mar 3, 2012 6:49pm EST
(Reuters) - Syrian forces renewed their bombardment of parts of the shattered city of Homs on Saturday and for a second day blocked Red Cross aid meant for civilians stranded without food and fuel in the former rebel stronghold, activists and aid workers said.
The government assault came a day after U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he had received "grisly reports" that President Bashar al-Assad's troops were executing and torturing people in the city after rebels abandoned their positions there.
"In an act of pure revenge, Assad's army has been firing mortar rounds and ... machine guns since this morning at Jobar," said the Syrian Network for Human Rights, naming a district next to Baba Amro, where rebels held out against almost a month of siege and shelling before fleeing this week.
"We have no immediate reports of casualties because of the difficulty of communications," the campaign group said in a statement.
Syria's government says it is fighting foreign-backed "terrorists" whom it blames for killing hundreds of soldiers and police across the country.
The United Nations says Syrian security forces have killed more than 7,500 civilians since a revolt against Assad's rule began in March last year.
Concern was mounting for civilians in freezing conditions in Baba Amro, where International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) trucks were being held up by Assad's forces.
Anti-government activists said they feared troops wanted to prevent the ICRC witnessing a reported massacre of rebels in Baba Amro, which had become a symbol of the year-long uprising.
A Damascus-based ICRC spokesman said Syrian authorities had given the convoy permission to enter but government forces on the ground had stopped the trucks because of what they said were unsafe conditions, including "mines and booby traps."
"There has been fighting there for at least a month. The situation cannot be good. They will need food, it's cold, they will need blankets. And there are injured there that need to be evacuated immediately," Saleh Dabbakeh told Reuters.
Syrian state television broadcast interviews with unnamed civilians in what it said was the stricken district, against a backdrop of empty streets, some with heavy conflict damage.
"Anyone who went out on the street was kidnapped or slaughtered. We called for the army to come in. God bless the army, they saved us from the armed terrorist gangs," said one interviewee, referring to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) rebels.
INTERNATIONAL CONDEMNATION
The outside world has proved powerless to halt the killing in Syria, where repression of initially peaceful protests against Assad's rule has spawned an armed insurrection by army deserters and others.
Russia and China have twice vetoed council resolutions that would have condemned Damascus, accusing Western and Arab nations of pushing for Libya-style "regime change" in Syria.
China urged both Damascus and the rebels to end the violence immediately and start talks, but again said it opposed any foreign military intervention in Syria.
"We oppose anyone interfering in Syria's internal affairs under the pretext of 'humanitarian' issues," said a foreign ministry statement carried by Xinhua news agency early on Sunday Beijing time and monitored in London.
Former Syrian ally Turkey said Assad was committing "war crimes" and condemned Syria for blocking aid to Baba Amro.
"The Syrian regime is committing a crime against humanity every day," Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague said his government was again seeking to have the U.N. Security Council tackle the Syrian crisis.
"This means working with other countries such as Russia and China that have blocked previous initiatives," he told Sky News.
The United States is drafting a legally binding council resolution that would call for aid workers to be allowed into besieged towns and an end to the violence, U.N. envoys said.
UNREST SPREADS
Syria's SANA news agency reported a suicide car bombing in the southern town of Deraa, but activists denied it was a suicide attack.
SANA said the Deraa bomber killed three people and wounded 20 others, while residents said seven people had been killed.
Elsewhere in Syria, anti-Assad activists reported mass arrests and the killing of six soldiers.
Campaigners said seven people had been killed in Syria's north, and three had been shot dead in east Syria's Deir al-Zor when troops opened fire on a funeral for two killed in a crackdown on democracy protests.
Senior rebel FSA officer Colonel Malik Kurdy said his fighters had seized an arms cache in a battle in countryside north of Damascus and killed and wounded about 100 Syrian troops, but added the report was preliminary.
Rights group Human Rights Watch distributed satellite images of Baba Amro that it said showed widespread destruction.
"The bombardment has severely restricted movement and relief efforts and deprived thousands of civilians of the ability to access the most basic commodities," it said in a statement.
Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said anti-Assad fighters had killed six soldiers and wounded nine in the town of al-Herak, south of Deraa.
He also said seven people had been killed in Syria's north in and around Idlib province, three by a roadside bomb and the others by gunfire from Syrian security services.
In the suburbs of Damascus, activists reported hundreds of arrests and said Syrian security forces had killed three people during raids in which they also set alight homes and cars.
Due to media restrictions, the activists' reports could not be independently verified.
In unusually tough remarks to the 193-member U.N. General Assembly on Friday, Ban explicitly blamed Damascus for the fate of civilians in the conflict.
"The brutal fighting has trapped civilians in their homes, without food, heat or electricity or medical care, without any chance of evacuating the wounded or burying the dead. People have been reduced to melting snow for drinking water," he said.
"This atrocious assault is all the more appalling for having been waged by the government itself, systematically attacking its own people."
Syrian U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari, said Ban's comments included "extremely virulent rhetoric which confines itself to slandering a government based on reports, opinions or hearsay."
Western diplomats on Saturday received the bodies of American journalist Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik, who were killed on February 22 during shelling of Baba Amro.
The diplomats, believed to be the French ambassador to Syria and a representative from the Polish embassy, which is managing U.S. affairs in Syria, had taken the bodies from the Al-Assad University Hospital in Damascus.
(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes in Beirut, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Michelle Nichols in New York, Avril Ormsby in London; Writing and additional by Mohammed Abbas; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Andrew Heavens)
they look like they are having fun:tongue:Quote:
Originally Posted by Dino Velvet
Assad: 1, Obama. Clinton, Netanyahu: 0
http://www.almanar.com.lb/english/ad...ccatid=20&s1=1
@ Stavros: Sent you a message. Re Homs: Doesn't look too different from what the US military did to Falluja.
http://news.yahoo.com/annan-ends-syr...143209371.html
Quote:
Annan ends Syria trip with no deal
http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/kjm...p_logo_106.pngBy ZEINA KARAM | Associated Press – 4 hrs ago
BEIRUT (AP) — International envoy and former U.N. chief Kofi Annan left Syria Sunday without a deal to end the bloody year-old conflict as regime forces mounted a new assault on rebel strongholds in the north.
Annan said he presented President Bashar Assad with concrete proposals "which will have a real impact on the ground."
"Once it's agreed, it will help launch the process and help end the crisis on the ground," he told reporters at the end of his two-day visit to Syria.
Annan, who also met with Syrian opposition leaders and businessmen in Damascus, said he was optimistic following two sets of talks with Assad, but acknowledged that resolving the crisis would be tough.
"It's going to be difficult but we have to have hope," he said.
The former U.N. chief called for reforms that would create "a solid foundation for a democratic Syria," but added: "You have to start by stopping the killing and the misery and the abuse that is going on today and then give time for a political settlement."
The ongoing bloodshed cast a pall over the U.N. efforts to end the country's yearlong conflict, with both the regime and the opposition refusing talks with the other.
In his discussions with Assad on Saturday, Annan made several proposals to end the political crisis and start a political dialogue. He was rebuffed by the president who rejected any immediate negotiations with the opposition, striking a further blow to already faltering international efforts for talks to end the conflict.
Assad told Annan that a political solution is impossible as long as "terrorist groups" threaten the country.
The opposition's political leadership has also rejected dialogue, saying talk is impossible after a crackdown that the U.N. estimates has killed more than 7,500 people. That makes it likely that the conflict will continue to edge toward civil war.
Annan left Syria later Sunday, headed for Qatar, a U.N. spokesman said on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
Syrian forces, meanwhile, kept up an offensive against rebel strongholds in the north of the country and shelled neighborhoods in the restive central city of Homs, as well as clashing with rebel fighters across the country.
Military units loyal to Assad appear to have been freed up after finally crushing lightly armed rebels in the Homs neighborhood of Baba Amr last week, and are on the attack in Idlib province, across the border from key opposition supply bases in Turkey.
Troops on Saturday launched a long-anticipated assault to crush the opposition in Idlib province, bombarding its main city with tank shells from all sides and clashing with rebel fighters struggling to hold back an invasion.
Syrian forces had been building up for days around Idlib, the capital of a hilly, agricultural province along the Syria-Turkey border that has been a hotbed of protests against Assad's regime.
An AP photographer touring Turkish villages across the border from Idlib reported hearing constant artillery pounding. Turkish villagers said the artillery fire began just before dawn and that refugees were trickling in across the border into Turkey during lulls.
A Turkish official said the violence had led to a spike in Syrian civilians fleeing to Turkey. Some 1,000 have crossed the border in the past week as opposed to 1,000 in the previous month, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity under government protocol.
Turkey now hosts some 12,500 Syrians, part of the more than 100,000 refugees who have fled to Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists on the ground in Syria, reported military arrests, raids in towns and villages across Syria as well as clashes with armed rebels.
In the north, three soldiers were killed in the village of al-Janoudieh near the Turkish border in clashes between troops and army defectors. A mother and her son were killed in the crossfire during another clash in the town of Ariha that also killed two soldiers. And four civilians were killed during an army raid of the village of al-Dabeet.
Others were killed in raids outside Damascus, the group said.
In Homs, several activists reported intense shelling of the Karm el-Zeytoun, Bab Dreib and Job al-Jandali districts with mortars and rocket propelled grenades and said several people were killed and wounded.
"There is very heavy destruction. Cars are burning and smoke is rising from the area," said Homs-based activist Abu Bakr Saleh.
"They are trying to punish all districts of Homs where anti-government protests still take place," he said.
Other activists said government forces shelled a bridge on a road to the Lebanese border often used by families fleeing violence. It was unclear if the bridge was destroyed.
The activist claims could not be independently verified. The Syrian government rarely comments on specific incidents inside the country and bars most media from operating.
Many fear the offensive in Idlib could end up like the regime's campaign against the rebel-held neighborhood of Baba Amr in Homs. Troops besieged and shelled Baba Amr for weeks before capturing it on March 1.
Activists say hundreds were killed, and a U.N. official who visited the area this week said she was "horrified" by the destruction in the district, now virtually deserted.
In the northwestern city of Aleppo, gunmen assassinated local boxing champion Gheyath Tayfour. State-run news agency SANA said an armed group ambushed the 34-year-old Tayfour in his car near Aleppo University square and opened fire, killing him instantly with five bullets to his head.
Syria has seen a string of mysterious assassinations lately targeting doctors, professors and businessman, as the uprising against Assad turns more militarized.
____
AP writers Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria and Suzan Fraser in Ankara, Turkey contributed to this report.
Assad is partially right. They do have terrorists in his country. Could we possibly get Al Qaeda vs Hezbollah on PPV?
http://news.yahoo.com/blasts-kill-do...130211721.html
Blasts kill dozens in Syrian capital
http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/kjm...p_logo_106.pngBy ELIZABETH A. KENNEDY | Associated Press – 7 hrs ago
BEIRUT (AP) — Twin car bombs struck intelligence and security buildings in the Syrian capital on Saturday, killing at least 27 people and wounding nearly 100, according to state media.
State TV, citing the health minister, said the death toll could rise. Gruesome images of the scene were aired, with mangled and charred corpses, bloodstained streets and twisted steel.
"All our windows and doors are blown out," said Majed Seibiyah, 29, who lives in the area. "I was sleeping when I heard a sound like an earthquake. I didn't grasp what was happening until I hear screaming in the street."
The blasts were the latest in a string of mysterious, large-scale attacks targeting the Syrian regime's military and security installations. The previous blasts, all suicide bombings, killed dozens of people since December, even as the regime wages a bloody crackdown against the year-old uprising against President Bashar Assad.
The government has blamed the explosions on the "terrorists" that it claims are behind the revolt. The opposition has denied any role, saying they believe forces loyal to the government are behind the bombings to tarnish the uprising.
But top U.S. intelligence officials also have pointed to al-Qaida in Iraq as the likely culprit behind the previous bombings, raising the possibility its fighters are infiltrating across the border to take advantage of the turmoil.
Al-Qaida's leader called for Assad's ouster in February.
A suspected al-Qaida presence creates new obstacles for the U.S., its Western allies and Arab states trying to figure out a way to help push Assad from power, and may also rally Syrian religious minorities, fearful of Sunni radicalism, to get behind the regime.
Bassma Kodmani, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council, said she doubted armed groups trying to bring Assad down by force, such as the rebel Free Syrian Army, have the capacity to carry out such attacks on security institutions in the capital.
"I don't think any of the opposition forces or the free Syrian army has the capacity to do such an operation to target these buildings because they are fortresses," she said by telephone. "They are very well guarded. There is no way anyone can penetrate them without having strong support and complicity from inside the security apparatus."
According to SANA, preliminary information indicated two blasts were caused by car bombs that hit the aviation intelligence department and the criminal security department at 7:30 a.m local time. Shooting broke out soon after the blast and sent residents and others who had gathered in the area fleeing, an Associated Press reporter at the scene said.
A Syrian official also said there were reports of a third blast Saturday targeting a military bus at the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus, but there were no details. He asked that his name not be used because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
The Syrian government denies there is a popular will behind the uprising, saying foreign extremists and gangs are trying to destroy the country. But his opponents deny that and say an increasingly active rebel force has been driven to take up arms because the government used tanks, snipers and machine guns to crush peaceful protests.
The U.N. estimates that more that 8,000 people have been killed since the uprising against Assad began last March.
The last major suicide bombing in Syria happened on Feb. 10, when twin blasts struck security compounds in the government stronghold of Aleppo in northern Syria, killing 28 people. Damascus, another Assad stronghold, has seen three suicide previous bombings since December.
In recent weeks, Syrian forces have waged a series of heavy offensives against the main strongholds of the opposition — Homs in central Syria, Idlib in the north and Daraa in the south.
The bloodshed fuels the country's sectarian tensions. The military's top leadership is stacked heavily with members of the minority Alawite sect, to which Assad and the ruling elite belong.
Sunnis are the majority in the country of 22 million and make up the backbone of the opposition.
Diplomatic efforts to solve the crisis have so far brought no result. But U.N. envoy Kofi Annan told the Security Council in a briefing Friday that he would return to Damascus even though his recent talks with Assad saw no progress in attempts to cobble together peace negotiations between the two sides.
After the confidential briefing via videolink, Annan told reporters in Geneva that he urged the council "to speak with one voice as we try to resolve the crisis in Syria." Russia and China have blocked U.N. action against Assad's regime.
"The first objective is for all of us to end the violence and human rights abuses and the killings and get unimpeded access for humanitarian access to the needy, and of course the all-important issue of political process that will lead to a democratic Syria," Annan said.
Both Assad and much of the opposition spurned Annan's appeal for talks.
___
Associated Press writer Albert Aji contributed to this story from Damascus, Syria.
http://news.yahoo.com/secretary-clin...163814047.html
Quote:
And in response to reports of the growing reach of al Qaeda in Syria, Clinton said: "The vast majority of the people who are standing up against the horrific assaults of the military machine in Syria are ordinary citizens defending themselves and their homes."
http://news.yahoo.com/top-military-o...194617171.html
Top military officers targeted in Syrian conflict
http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/oXh...png_162613.pngBy BASSEM MROUE | Associated Press – 21 mins ago
BEIRUT (AP) — The gunmen walked into an apartment building before dawn earlier this month in the quiet Damascus suburb of Jaramana, went to the fifth floor and knocked on the door. When the police commander opened up, the men shot him dead and left.
Syrian President Bashar Assad's opponents appear to be resorting increasingly to assassinations of loyalist military officers in an escalation of their campaign to bring down the regime. At least 10 senior officers, including several generals, have been gunned down in the past three months, many of them as they left their homes in the morning to head to their posts.
The latest occurred Tuesday, when attackers shot and killed a retired lieutenant colonel and his brother, a chief warrant officer, at a home supplies store in another suburb of the capital, according to the state news agency. Elsewhere in Damascus, an intelligence officer was killed, opposition activists said.
Such targeted slayings are rising as an intensified crackdown by regime forces in recent months has dealt heavy setbacks to Syria's rebels. For the moment, Assad's troops have shattered the rebels' strategy of trying to seize ground in several cities and provinces.
Their pace appears to have accelerated even more sharply since a cease-fire plan brokered by U.N. and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan went into effect April 12 — and just as quickly began to unravel.
The peace plan was meant to halt 13 months of violence by government forces to put down an anti-Assad uprising in which the U.N. says more than 9,000 people have died. A spokesman for Annan said in Geneva that satellite imagery and other credible reports show Syria has failed to withdraw all its heavy weapons from populated areas as required by the cease-fire deal.
It remains murky whether the recent slayings are being carried out by rogue elements in the opposition seeking revenge or whether they represent a coordinated strategy by rebels to destabilize the regime. A spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, the Turkish-based umbrella group for armed opposition groups in Syria, denied it was behind the string of attacks, although he said the victims were legitimate targets.
There is also a sectarian tone to the killings. Almost all the slain officers come from the religious minorities that have been the most die-hard supporters of Assad in the face of the Sunni Muslim-led uprising against his rule. Such minorities — particularly Alawites, followers of a Shiite offshoot sect — make up the backbone of the military's officer ranks.
Mohamad Bazzi, a Syria expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the killings are "likely a tactic by the Syrian rebels who are fighting from a much weaker position."
"In many ways, it's a classic guerrilla tactic — to strike at weak points in the regime's military and security apparatus," he said.
Some such targeted killings did take place last year as the uprising against Assad became increasingly militarized. But the pace appears to have sped up in recent months.
One of the first major attacks occurred Feb. 11, when gunmen opened fire at Brig. Gen. Issa al-Khouli early in the morning as he left his home in the Damascus neighborhood of Rukn-Eddine. Al-Khouli was a doctor and the chief of the Hameish military hospital in the capital.
On April 11, gunmen shot and killed army Brig. Gen. Jamal Khaled in the Damascus suburb of Aqraba as he drove to work, the Syrian state-run news agency SANA said. His driver, a soldier, was also killed.
The slaying of the police commander in Jaramana came on April 12. Jaramana, on the capital's southeast outskirts, is predominantly Christian — a community that, like Alawites, has stuck strongly by Assad, in large part because of fears of Sunni domination if he falls. The gunmen knocked on the door of police Brig. Gen. Walid Jouni, gunned him down and then escaped unscathed, according to SANA.
At least five more officers have been assassinated since, including the three Tuesday.
Faiz Amru, a rebel general in the Free Syrian Army, insisted those who were killed were involved in the crackdown on the opposition in the past year. Aside from assaults battering pro-opposition residential areas with tank fire and heavy machine guns, regime forces have also directly targeted dissidents, with activists taken from their homes and later found dead.
"Under any law, the killer should be killed," he said. "These officers have direct orders to kill people and destroy homes."
Amru said the FSA is not directly involved and that the assassins were individuals seeking revenge for abuses by the regime.
However, it is not clear whether all those assassinated directly participated in the crackdown. The motive in the hospital chief slaying, for example, is unknown; one slain officer was part of the air defense forces, which is not known to be participating in attacks on opposition areas.
That could suggest the assassinations aim to intimidate anyone in the military — or the attackers are selecting easier targets of opportunity.
One activist said those killed appeared not to be the most prominent commanders of the assaults. "It is very difficult to assassinate intelligence officers who are taking a major part in the crackdown because they move amid tight security," he said. "Such officers don't drive or walk alone in the streets."
Another activist, based in the city of Homs, said he believed the main motive was revenge against the loyalist religious minorities.
Both activists spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
The Syrian government consistently blames "terror groups" for the killings, just as it blames the country's turmoil in general on terrorists, denying there is a popular-based uprising. The regime says more than 2,000 members of the military and security forces have been killed in the past year, almost all of them in rebel attacks on checkpoints or convoys, or in gunbattles.
The last time Syria saw any such major string of assassinations was in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the Muslim Brotherhood waged a campaign of violence against Assad's predecessor and father, Hafez Assad. One of the most notorious attacks came on June 16, 1979, when gunmen killed dozens of cadets at Aleppo Artillery School in northern Syria. The dead were mostly Alawites, the sect to which the Assad family belongs.
Hafez Assad eventually responded with a three-week siege of the main Brotherhood stronghold, the city of Hama, that leveled parts of the city. Amnesty International has estimated that 10,000 to 25,000 were killed in the Hama assault, and the Brotherhood was all but wiped out of the country.
An official with the main political umbrella group for the opposition, the Syrian National Council, said he didn't believe that anyone in that organization or the Free Syrian Army was involved in the latest killings. Instead, he suggested, it reflects a growing extremism among rogue enemies of Assad.
"The longer it takes for an international intervention to contain the crisis, Syria is going to the unknown," Sameer Nashar said. "Many local, regional and international forces will enter Syria and will find a good atmosphere for extremist cases."
___
Bassem Mroue can be reached on twitter at http://twitter.com/bmroue
Im sure this has been said (i cant be arsed to read all the thread), but there is one way to solve Syria :
Get Russia to stop fucking about
Deal with Vlad then.Quote:
Originally Posted by jimbo1974
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_g7-75H8jXz...czar+putin.jpg
I have a solution to the problem of Syria. Nuke them back to the Stone Age! muhahahahahaha .....
:joke:
You just said this about Afghanistan -I thought you were being sarcastic, but now I am not so sure. Give it some thought for a few moments, then I think you will need another cup of tea.
Well Irvin - that seems to be your solution with all our contemporary political problems. Very enlightened. Perhaps the solution with Breivik is to nuke him too? Oh whoops. Too much collateral damage. Or are you perhaps simply a lame prankster?
Yep that is the solution to the problem Breivik, take him out back and shoot him in the head. Problem solved muhahahaha........:moon
I'd be OK with dealing out the same justice this character got in Russia. Give him his fair trial then let him never be heard from again.Quote:
Originally Posted by irvin66
Andrei Chikatilo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://www.utropia.no/wordpress/wp-c...ikatilo-AP.jpg
http://news.yahoo.com/suicide-bomber...120556724.html
Suicide bombers strike Syrian capital, killing 55
http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/oXh...png_162613.pngBy ALBERT AJI and BASSEM MROUE | Associated Press – 2 hrs 29 mins ago
DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Two suicide car bombs ripped through the Syrian capital Thursday, killing 55 people and tearing the facade off a military intelligence building in the deadliest explosions since the country's uprising began 14 months ago, the Interior Ministry said.
Residents told an Associated Press reporter that the blasts happened in quick succession during morning rush hour, with an initial small explosion followed by a larger bomb that appeared aimed at onlookers and rescue crews arriving at the scene. Paramedics wearing rubber gloves collected human remains from the pavement as heavily damaged cars and pickup trucks smoldered.
There was no claim of responsibility for Thursday's blasts. But an al-Qaida-inspired group has claimed responsibility for several past explosions, raising fears that terrorist groups are entering the fray and exploiting the chaos.
In addition to the 55 dead, the ministry also said there were 15 bags of human remains, meaning the death toll was likely to rise.
More than 370 people also were wounded in the attack, according to the ministry, which is in charge of the country's internal security. It said the explosives weighed more than 1,000 kilograms (2,200 pounds).
The U.S. condemned the attack, with State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland saying "any and all violence that results in the indiscriminate killing and injury of civilians is reprehensible and cannot be justified."
Central Damascus is under the tight control of forces loyal to President Bashar Assad but has been struck by several bomb attacks, often targeting security installations or convoys, since the revolt against him began in March 2011.
But the previous attacks happened on a weekend when many people stay home from work, making it less likely for civilians to be killed. Thursday's blast was similar to attacks waged by al-Qaida in Iraq, which would bolster past allegations by top U.S. intelligence officials that the terror network from the neighboring country was the likely culprit behind previous bombings in Syria. That raises the possibility that its fighters are infiltrating across the border to take advantage of the political turmoil.
A shadowy group called the Al-Nusra Front has claimed responsibility for some of the attacks in statements posted on militant websites. Little is known about the group, though Western intelligence officials say it could be a front for al-Qaida's Iraq branch.
Al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri called for Assad's ouster in February.
"We strongly condemn the twin bomb attacks this morning in Damascus, which seem to have targeted the maximum amount of casualties and damage and which we see as an act of pure terrorism, from what we see initially," said Michael Mann, spokesman for EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton.
The Syrian government blames the bombings on the terrorists it says are behind the uprising, which has been the most potent challenge to the Assad family dynasty in Syria in four decades. But opposition leaders and activists routinely blame the regime for orchestrating the attacks, saying they help it demonize the opposition and maintain support among those who fear greater instability.
Syria's state-run news agency, SANA, posted gruesome pictures of the mangled, charred and bloody corpses and human remains — something that it has done after previous bombings, as well. The decision to show such graphic images could be seen as a tactic by the regime to shock Syrians into abandoning any support for the opposition, which it blames for the country's chaos.
Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, the Norwegian head of the U.N.'s cease-fire monitors in the country, toured the site Thursday and said the Syrian people do not deserve this "terrible violence."
"It is not going to solve any problems," he said, when asked what his message was to those who are carrying out such attacks. "It is only going to create more suffering for women and children."
The attack occurred a day after a roadside bomb hit a Syrian military truck shortly after Mood rode by in a convoy traveling to the southern city of Daraa, the birthplace of the uprising.
The relentless violence in the country has brought a cease-fire plan brokered by special envoy Kofi Annan to the brink of collapse. The U.N said weeks ago that more than 9,000 people had been killed. Hundreds more have died since as the conflict has become increasingly militarized, with protesters taking up arms or joining forces with army defectors to fight a brutal crackdown by regime forces.
On Thursday, Annan appealed for calm and an end to bloodshed.
"The Syrian people have already suffered too much," Annan said in a statement.
Thursday's explosions began about 7:50 a.m. as the area was crowded with people going to work or doing morning errands. Witnesses said the first explosion attracted curious passers-by, then seconds later, a far larger explosion went off, causing massive damage.
Syrian TV showed shaken young girls in tears who said they were in the nearby Qazaz First Elementary School when the blast occurred. An hour after the blast, the school's gates were closed and no one was inside.
The explosions left two craters at the gate of the military compound, one of them 3 meters (10 feet) deep and 6 meters (20 feet) wide. Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi posted a message on his Facebook page urging people to go to hospitals to donate blood.
"The house shook like it was an earthquake," housewife Maha Hijazi said as she stood outside her house across the street from the targeted compound, which is headquarters for a military intelligence department known as the Palestine Branch.
The latest major explosion in the capital occurred on April 27 when a suicide bomber detonated an explosives belt near members of the security forces, killing at least nine people and wounding 26.
The previous deadliest attack in Damascus occurred on Dec. 23, when two car bombers blew themselves up outside the heavily guarded compounds of Syria's intelligence agencies, killing at least 44 people.
On March, 17, two suicide car bombers struck in near-simultaneous attacks on heavily guarded intelligence and security buildings in Damascus, killing at least 27 people. On Jan. 6, an explosion at a Damascus intersection killed 26, including many policemen.
International diplomacy has failed to stop the bloodshed, and the U.N. has ruled out military intervention of the type that helped bring down Libya's Moammar Gadhafi, in part out of fear that it could exacerbate the violence.
Annan brokered a peace plan last month, but the initiative has been troubled from the start, with government troops shelling opposition areas and rebels attacking military convoys and checkpoints after the cease-fire was supposed to begin on April 12.
A team of 70 U.N. military observers now in Syria should grow to more than 100 in the coming days. A full team of 300 is expected by the end of the month to oversee a cease-fire intended to allow for talks on a political solution to the conflict.
___
Associated Press writer Ben Hubbard contributed to this report from Beirut.
The massacre at Houla over last weekend has been seen by some people as an event that could break the impasse in Syria. I am not so sure.
At the moment the issues look like this:
1) Arming the rebels: the call to arm the rebels is made on the basis that the rebels cannot defend themselves against the heavy artillery of the Syrian armed forces, and that the SAF are taking the initiative in seeking out rebellious quarters with the intention of crushing them, just as Asad pere crushed the Muslim revolts in the 1970s and in the 1980s.
Arming the rebels would intensify the conflict militarily, it might make a military 'victory' by either side less likely, but it would be a green light to the SAF to broaden its operations to crush the rebels and thus be even more destructive than the conflict has been so far.
Those rebels backed by Saudi Arabia and Qatar may be aware of this and want it; this to me is a belief that some people have that they are in a 'life or death struggle' and that there are no other options.
2) De-militarising the conflict. This argument insists that there are other options, and that negotiations and diplomacy are essential. The weak element in this position is that the Asad regime is faced -it believes- with a fight for its survival, and thus sees negotiations as negotiations to end the rule of those who have done well out of the Asad regime. In this case, what are negotiations for?
3) Solutions. If there is to be a de-militarisation and real attempt to negotiate, the pressure must come from those on whom the Asad regime currently relies for support. To some extent the Iranians have a lot to lose, Syria is the conduit to Lebanon where it has invested more than it has in Syria where the regime is secular rather than Islamic evedn though the Alawite sect is Shi'a in origin. The Russians are not that bothered by internal disputes in Syria, whereas Syria is the last of its historic Arab friends and it has a naval base at Tartus it does not want to lose. If the Russians could receive a guarantee of access to the Mediterranean they would back anyone in Damascus. The Chinese have invested in Syria but I don't know that they see Syria is a reliable ally in the long term. The USA and Europe, in my opinion, are desperate to avoid a long-drawn out conflict, but are equally nervous about the fractious opposition in Syria where Islamic parties seem numerically likely to score well in democratic elections, but return Syria to the instability and factionalism that followed the end of French rule in the 1940s. The Salafi element in Syria is weak, but capable of spectacular bombings; but for Europeans the Christian minority has tended to rely on the Asad regime which has deliberately stoked sectarian tensions over the last 20 or so years to create loyalties the Christians in fact could do without, but the prospect of Christians being slaughtered in Syria where they have lived uninterrupted since the days of Jesus would not play well on TV.
A transition to democracy seems to me to be the best option: given that the Egyptian elections have narrowed down to a Mubarak loyalist and a tame Muslim brother, the Asad regime might not imagine its doom is inevitable. But Asad the man must go, and in truth I think he would welcome it, I don't think he likes his job. So elections would then be between the Brotherhood and some secular figure.
None of these political changes would effect the quality of life unless there were also structural changes to the economy, where across the Middle EAst, crony capitalism rather than market forces are in control, and strangulating progress as much as the warriors are strangulating dissent and life itself. It is getting the military and complacent capitalists to share that will prove a bigger obstacle than giving up political power.
Its not an impossible scenario to deal with, but in my view a de-militarisation rather than an escalation is needed.
I suspect that two factors will prevent the West moving on this in any military way.
1. US election politics - which will make it impossible for Obama to commit to NATO or US military intervention because of the impact this will have on his election campaign.
2. Russian refusal to shift in any significant way from its assertion yesterday that "both sides' are to blame for the most recent killings. It prompted a Russian vote in the UN - but beyond that is unlikely to produce on the ground impacts. Russia still wants a political solution and is likely to see that as leaving the Assad regime in place.
I agree with you Prospero, that external intervetion is not on the cards. I wonder if the Russians would consider pressuring Asad to resign if that would make a difference-? It all depends on whether or not Russia is in fact the key power broker in this case, and whether or not the Syrians think they can simply do what the elder Asad did and fight their way through to a bitter end because they know they won't be invaded. Difficult to call.
I suggest sending an Elite Commandos to kill bachar al asad urgently and cleanly
If that were the answer Tiramisu why didn't the US do that with Ayatollah Khomeini, Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, etc etc.....
Syria has not been an autocratic dictatorship under Bashar al-Asad as it might have been under his father Hafiz, and it isn't even clear if he has any form of control over the armed forces or the Republican Guard who are led by his brother Maher. Under the Hafiz family rule, high ranking officers in the military have been able to acquire significant interests in the economy, as was been the case in Egypt over many years where the removal of Mubarak has not affected the military's involvement in the economy -indeed Ahmed Shafiq is a Mubarak-tainted candidate running on a law-and-order platform and could even win.Quote:
Originally Posted by tiramisu
Crony capitalism in the Middle East means there are no free markets, contracts are awarded through the military or as favours by the ruling elite, who have deliberately favoured Christians in some areas, sunni Muslims in others, and so on, classic divide and rule.
The whole point of the Syrian enigma is that there is no credible opposition to the existing regime, but nor is it precislely sure who is in charge -throw in foreign fighters sponsored by Saudi Arabia, al-Qaeda style militants, and the recipe for a long-drawn out conflict not dissimilar to what happened in Lebanon in the 1970s is a possibility.
Mitt Romney's belief that the USA should be bold (bolder than Obama) and arm the rebels is either risible or an invitation to an intensification of violence- which rebels? The divided Muslim Brotherhood(s)? Even the Communist Party in Syria has been split into two factions since 1986, perhaps Mr Romney could be more explicit about who it is that he wants to arm -as if the USA's close ally Saudi Arabia wasn't doing it already, and Qatar, while Iran has now claimed it helped create the Shabiya militia that carried out the massacre in Houla over the weekend.
If Bashar al-Asad died of a heart attack in an hour's time, it would make no difference.
For anyone who is interested this article offers a deeper insight into the internal dynamics of the current situation in Syria. The Shabiya (Shabiha is also known) [blamed for the Houla massacre] are alleged to be an Alawi militia:
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/43464/1/Aft...28lsero%29.pdf
Thanks for this. I have no idea how this thing stops.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
Violence spills over into Lebanon. http://news.yahoo.com/seven-killed-s...162518337.html
Nine killed in Syria-linked clashes in Lebanon
http://l1.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/FZ...b5cec5193.jpegBy Nazih Siddiq | Reuters – 1 hr 20 mins ago
TRIPOLI, Lebanon (Reuters) - Clashes erupted between supporters and opponents of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in neighboring Lebanon's northern port city of Tripoli on Saturday, killing nine people and wounding 42, residents and a doctor said.
A Reuters journalist said the two sides fired machineguns and rocket-propelled grenades at each other and that the army moved into the area with armored vehicles in an attempt to quell the violence but did not open fire.
Gunmen from the Jabal Mohsen district, home to the minority Alawite sect - the same offshoot of Shi'ite Islam to which Assad belongs - have fought on-off skirmishes over the past few weeks with the Sunni Muslim residents of the Bab al-Tabbaneh area.
Saturday's death toll is the highest in a single day in Tripoli, raising fears that Syria's unrest could spill over into its smaller neighbor.
Lebanon's National News Agency said there was "shelling across both areas heard every five minutes, and snipers targeting civilians".
Residents said those killed included civilians caught in the crossfire and that a Lebanese soldier was among the wounded.
The neighborhoods have long-standing grievances separate from the Syrian conflict but the Sunni-led uprising has led to strife among Lebanon's divided population, especially in majority Sunni Tripoli, 70 km (43 miles) north of Beirut.
International peace envoy Kofi Annan said on Saturday that Syria was slipping into all-out war and that the entire region would suffer if the international community did not step up pressure on Assad.
"Let me appeal to all of you to engage earnestly and seriously with all other stakeholders, mindful that if regional and international divisions play out in Syria, the Syrian people and the region - your region - will pay the price," Annan told a meeting of Arab League member countries.
(Additional reporting by Regan Doherty in Doha; Writing by Oliver Holmes; Editing by Pravin Char)
http://news.yahoo.com/un-team-sees-m...210405702.html
UN team sees massacre site in Syrian village
http://l.yimg.com/bt/api/res/1.2/oXh...png_162613.pngBy DIAA HADID and ZEINA KARAM | Associated Press – 2 hrs 36 mins ago
BEIRUT (AP) — U.N. observers could smell the stench of burned corpses Friday and saw body parts scattered around a Syrian farming hamlet that was the site of a massacre this week in which nearly 80 men, women and children were reported slain. The scene held evidence of a "horrific crime," a U.N. spokeswoman said.
The observers were finally able to get inside the deserted village of Mazraat al-Qubair after being blocked by government troops and residents, and coming under small arms fire Thursday, a day after the slayings were first reported.
In central Damascus, rebels brazenly battled government security forces in the heart of the capital Friday for the first time, witnesses said, and explosions echoed for hours. Government artillery repeatedly pounded the central city of Homs and troops tried to storm it from three sides.
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met with international envoy Kofi Annan in Washington to discuss how to salvage his faltering plan to end 15 months of bloodshed in Syria. Western nations blame President Bashar Assad for the violent crackdown on anti-government protests that grew out of the Arab Spring.
The U.N. team was the first independent group to arrive in Mazraat al-Qubair, a village of about 160 people in central Hama province. Opposition activists and Syrian government officials blamed each other for the killings and differed about the number of dead.
Activists said that up to 78 people, including women and children, were shot, hacked and burned to death, saying pro-government militiamen known as "shabiha" were responsible. A government statement on the state-run news agency SANA said "an armed terrorist group" killed nine women and children before Hama authorities were called and killed the attackers.
Sausan Ghosheh, spokeswoman for the U.N. observers, said residents' accounts of the mass killing were "conflicting," and that they needed to cross check the names of the missing and dead with those supplied by nearby villagers. Mazraat al-Qubair itself was "empty of the local inhabitants," she said.
"You can smell the burnt smell of the dead bodies," Ghosheh said. "You could also see body parts in and around the village."
The U.N. supervision mission released a statement later Friday saying that armored vehicle tracks were visible in the area and some homes had been damaged by rockets and grenades. Inside some of the houses, blood was visible across the walls and the floors, the statement said.
Ghosheh said she saw two homes damaged by shells and bullets. She spoke of burned bodies found in a house, but did not elaborate and was not clear whether the U.N. team saw them.
She told the BBC: "We can say that there was definitely a horrific crime that was committed. The scale is still not clear to me."
A BBC correspondent traveling with the U.N. observers described the hamlet as an "appalling scene" of burned-out houses and gore.
"There are pieces of human flesh lying around the room, there is a big pile of congealed blood in the corner, there's a tablecloth that still has the pieces of someone's brain attached to the side of it," said the correspondent, Paul Danahar.
"They killed the people, they killed the livestock, they left nothing in the village alive," he added.
The U.N. observers also visited a cemetery where some of the dead were buried, according to an activist in Mazraat al-Qubair.
Activists said the Sunni hamlet is surrounded by Alawite villages. Alawites are an offshoot of Shiite Islam and Assad is a member of the sect, while the opposition is dominated by Sunnis.
The United States condemned Assad over the killings, saying he has "doubled down on his brutality and duplicity."
The violence followed another mass killing last month in a string of villages known as Houla, where 100 people including many women and children were also shot and stabbed to death. The opposition and the regime blamed each other for the Houla massacre.
In April, the U.N. said more than 9,000 people have been killed since the crisis began in March 2011, but it has been unable to update its estimate since and the daily bloodshed has continued in past weeks. Activists put the number of dead at about 13,000.
Before her meeting with Annan, Clinton said they would look at "how to engender greater response by the government of Syria to the six-point plan that he has put forth."
Annan's plan calls for an end to violence followed by a political transition. Although Assad agreed to it, the violence has continued unabated with reports of brutal massacres against innocents.
Annan allowed that some people "say the plan is definitely dead." He asked rhetorically whether the problem is the plan or its implementation.
"If it's implementation, how do we get action on that? And if it's the plan, what other options do we have?" he said.
U.N. diplomats say Annan is proposing that world powers and key regional players, including Iran, come up with a new strategy to end the conflict.
In Damascus, government troops clashed with defectors from the Free Syrian Army in the Kfar Souseh district in some of the worst fighting yet in the capital. The clashes were a clear sign that the ragtag rebel group has succeeded in taking its fight into the regime's base of power.
"I've been hearing shooting and explosions for hours now and can see smoke rising from the area," a witness who spoke on condition of anonymity for security concerns told The Associated Press.
On Thursday night, armed rebels took part in a large anti-government rally in the same district, witnesses said, in a rare and bold public appearance by the fighters in the capital. Friday's fighting began when the rebels attacked a government checkpoint in the morning, according to Rami Abdul-Rahman of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
"The men are shouting 'God is great,' women are crying," said Omar, a Damascus resident who would not provide his family name for fear of reprisal by Syrian officials. The sound of machine gun fire and blasts could be heard in the background as he spoke by Skype.
A resident of the Damascus neighborhood of Qaboun said the battles began in his area after Syrian forces opened fire on an evening demonstration, killing a young man he identified as Mahmoud Said. Following that, gunmen hiding in the area began clashing with security forces. Nobody was sure how many people were killed, because they could not leave their houses, said the resident, who asked not to be identified because he feared government reprisal.
The Observatory and another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees, said clashes also broke out in other Damascus districts. There was no immediate word on civilian casualties but the LCC said three rebels were killed.
In Homs, one of the main battlegrounds of the uprising, the offensive against Khaldiyeh appeared to be a new push by regime forces to retake the enclave that has been held by rebels for months.
Pro-Assad troops overran the opposition-held neighborhood of Baba Amr on March 1 after a government siege killed hundreds of people — many of them civilians — in Syria's third-largest city.
Activist Tarek Badrakhan said regime troops were trying to advance on Khaldiyeh from three sides, battling with rebels trying to stop them.
"This is the worst shelling we've had since the start of the revolution," he said via Skype. A shell could be heard exploding in the background as he spoke.
Shells were hitting the neighborhood at a rate of five to 10 a minute, said a statement by the Observatory.
There was no immediate word on casualties from Khaldiyeh, whose original 80,000 inhabitants have mostly fled.
Amateur videos showed missiles exploding into balls of flames in the crowded concrete jumble of homes, with thundering crashes that sent up plumes of heavy gray smoke. The videos suggested the attack began at dawn as birds chirped and roosters crowed. In one video, the missiles came in rapid succession, four exploding in less than a minute.
Homs has been one of the hardest-hit regions in Syria since the uprising began.
The government news agency reported troops on the eastern Lebanese border area clashed with rebels, who they said were trying to smuggle in three pick-up trucks full of weapons. The agency said they destroyed one car, but two sped back into Lebanon
In several locations across Syria on Friday, troops fired tear gas and live ammunition in an attempt to disperse thousands of anti-government protesters, activists said, including the northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, the southern region of Daraa and in the suburbs of Damascus. Several people were reported killed, but the numbers were not immediately clear.
In Geneva, International Committee of the Red Cross spokesman Hicham Hassan said Syria's humanitarian situation was worsening. And Kristalina Georgieva, European commissioner for humanitarian aid, said in Brussels that there are 1 million "vulnerable people who need humanitarian assistance."
"Between 200,000 and 400,000 are internally displaced ... and we have 95,000 refugees in Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan primarily," she said.
Also on Friday, the Committee to Protect Journalists said five citizen journalists documenting the unrest in Syria were killed in a two-day period at the end of May.
___
AP writers Frank Jordans in Geneva, Matthew Lee in Washington and Slobodan Lekic in Brussels contributed to this report.
I wonder if we are tipping towards a new Sunni-Shi'ite conflict which could become a regional war.
This is a difficult one to call. You could argue that Saudi Arabia has been 'in conflict' with Iran since 1979, in part because its own Shi'a population has never been satisfied with its status in the kingdom and has, on occasion rioted to prove the point; and also because Saudi Arabia as custodian of the Holy Places fears any political movement that challenges its authority: the Shi'a may not be numerically larger, but they live in Lebanon, Bahrain, Syria and obviously Iraq, which gives your theme some credence. The un-resolved issues of Syrian interference in Lebanon don't help that state maintain its delicate balance, but the argument must be -who would be fighting whom, and what for? Iraq at the moment is effectively two states with Iraqi Kurdistan signing oil contracts (with Exxon) which may yet become a flashpoint in Iraq; there is no outcome in sight to Syria which means nobody knows if Asad, his brother, or some military clique is going to hold on to power for another 10 years; and all of it would get much worse -in my opinion- if there was an escalation of the violence, be it sponsored by Iran on one side, or Saudi Arabia and Qatar (on behalf of -? USA?) on the other side.
Or, is this in fact the 'last Hurrah' for the Shi'a moment anyway? Elections in Iran next year will be interesting to watch...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Prospero
Thanks fellas. Regional War, huh?Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
I think at the moment the only solution that could stop the violance in Syria is if some people from within the regime say enough is enough and get rid of Assad, and then proces toward elections etc.I personally dont see that happing soon as there are many factors involved(mostly religion and the different ethnic communities within Syria) and also the problem is that the opposition is not really one front with a clear leader.So i think we will just have to wait until Assad overplays his own hand before anything will happen i guess.
You are right, sensuelle, but even if Asad and his brother were to go, would the remaining elites be willing to introduce a democratic transition to a system which might divest them of their assets? This is the problem in Egypt, but if it stopped the violence such a move would at least be a credible alternative, even if it meant a return to the divided politics of the 1940s and 1950s -although that in itself doesn't prevent democracy from taking root. France in the 1950s used to have a new government every 6 months because it was so unstable. If Saudi Arabia is seen as the 'dark knight' in the region it is because its founder, Abdul Aziz ibn Saud wanted to replace the Ottoman and then the British and French empires as 'Caliph' in all of the Arab lands the Ottomans lost in 1918, indeed he tried to annexe TransJordan twice before giving up but I am not sure if politically the ambition ever died. It may be today that SA is paranoid about democracy because it would mean this hugely successful family firm would have to, as it were, go public. I don't believe a single US President has ever called for democratic government in Saudi Arabia.
I'm not sure but you might be right about that. A few Congressman might have whined a little but that was probably just for the TV. Arab Spring not coming soon there, I bet.Quote:
Originally Posted by Stavros
Do you think the powers that be in Syria have a contingency plan just in case something happens with Bashar? He seems like the type of guy who might look for the exit sign but he might be pretty well dug in with less good options for him every day. Mubarak's future doesn't look very bright and Moammar didn't have one. I can't see how Iran would allow losing their influence their either.
Do you think Kofi Annan will make much of a difference?
Maybe I'm in the minority but I think we the U.S should just stay out of it... it's sad what's happening but we can't be policing the world, it's not our job.. its caused us enough trouble as it is.
I am not sure but I think part of the Asad family's problem is that they don't have many friends, Asad studied in London and his wife Asma was born in the UK to a Syrian family but after what has happened in the past year I doubt he could come here -which reinforces the siege mentality that this regime is in. Moreover, the elevation of the Alawite sect under his father, and the role that they -allegedly- play in the Shabiha militia suggests that the Alawite have made their own future precarious; in effect they could end up being the marginalised minority they were before the Asad family's ascendance.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dino Velvet
The Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov yesterday said that Asad is not essential to a solution but that the Syrians must decide:
"If the Syrians agree [on Assad's departure] between each other, we will only be happy to support such a solution," Lavrov said. "But … it is unacceptable to impose the conditions for such a dialogue from outside."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012...t-assad-lavrov