Iran has agreed to supply Damascus with $3.6 billion in oil in exchange for the right to invest in the country, Syria’s state news agency SANA said on Tuesday. …read more
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Two Syrian activist groups say they fear the past six days of clashes in two Damascus suburbs may have killed hundreds of people.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the number of dead could be as high as 250.
Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory, says the group has documented 80 names of those killed in Jdaidet Artouz and Jdaidet al-Fadel suburbs.
The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, says the death toll is 483. It says most of the people were killed in Jdaidet Artouz.
State-run news agency SANA said Syrian troops “inflicted heavy losses” on the rebels in the suburbs.
Monday’s reports came as President Bashar Assad‘s forces continued a major offensive in the suburbs against opposition fighters who were closing in on parts of Damascus.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/DGxUIGH8p6s/
Two Syrian activist groups say they fear the past six days of clashes in two Damascus suburbs may have killed hundreds of people.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says the number of dead could be as high as 250.
Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory, says the group has documented 80 names of those killed in Jdaidet Artouz and Jdaidet al-Fadel suburbs.
The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, says the death toll is 483. It says most of the people were killed in Jdaidet Artouz.
State-run news agency SANA said Syrian troops “inflicted heavy losses” on the rebels in the suburbs.
Monday’s reports came as President Bashar Assad‘s forces continued a major offensive in the suburbs against opposition fighters who were closing in on parts of Damascus.
From: http://feeds.foxnews.com/~r/foxnews/world/~3/0THO01FX6Ws/
Syria‘s state news agency says rebels fighting to topple the government have set fire to three oil wells.
The news agency SANA said Sunday that the fires would cause a daily loss of 4,670 barrels of oil and 52 cubic meters of natural gas.
It accused “terrorists,” the government‘s term for rebels, of setting the fires after fighting among themselves over how to divide the oil.
Rebels waging a civil war against President Bashar Assad have seized large areas of territory in Syria‘s oil-rich east, including a number of oil fields. Although rebels lack the ability to exploit the wells, their loss represents a setback to the cash-strapped government they are trying to topple.
SANA said rebels have set fire to a total of nine wells in recent months.
President Bashar Assad vowed Friday to “wipe out” Muslim extremists in Syria, blaming them for a suicide bombing at a mosque that killed dozens of people, including a top cleric who supported the embattled regime in the civil war.
The death toll from Thursday night’s bombing — the first suicide attack on a mosque in two years of violence in Syria — rose to 49 after seven of the wounded died overnight, the Health Ministry said.
Sheik Mohammad Said Ramadan al-Buti, a top Sunni preacher, was killed as he was giving a sermon in the mosque in the heart of the capital, Damascus. The blast, which also wounded nearly 80 other people, was one of the most brazen assassinations of the civil war, which has seen a number of suicide bombings blamed on Islamic extremists.
Al-Buti, 84, was the most senior religious figure killed in the civil war, and his slaying was a major blow to the president.
The preacher supported the regime since the early days of Assad’s father and predecessor, the late President Hafez Assad, providing a Sunni cover and legitimacy to their rule. Sunnis are the majority sect in Syria while Assad is from the minority Alawite sect — an offshoot of Shiite Islam. Al-Buti’s grandson was among the dead.
In a statement on Syria‘s state-run SANA news agency, Assad said al-Buti represented true Islam in facing “the forces of darkness and extremist” ideology.
“Your blood and your grandson’s, as well as that of all the nation’s martyrs will not go in vain because we will continue to follow your thinking to wipe out their darkness and clear our country of them,” Assad said.
Syria‘s main opposition group, the Syrian National Coalition, condemned the blast and expressed solidarity with the Syrian people, hinting that the bombing was the work of Assad’s regime.
The Assad regime doesn’t “hesitate to bomb mosques, universities, bakeries and residential areas with Scud missiles,” said an English statement by the group. “This regime is not deterred by anything to carry out bombings, killing the Syrian people without guilt.”
Syria‘s crisis started in March 2011 as peaceful protests against Assad’s authoritarian rule. The revolt turned into a civil war as some opposition supporters took up arms the fight a harsh government crackdown on dissent. The U.N. says more than 70,000 people have been killed since.
In Geneva, the U.N.’s top human rights body on Friday extended its probe into suspected abuses in Syria. By a vote of 41-1, the 47-nation U.N. Human Rights Council reauthorized the investigation, which is being conducted by a panel of four independent experts, until March 2014, a half-year longer than originally proposed.
Those in favor of the extension included the United States, Germany, Libya, Pakistan, Qatar and United Arab Emirates. Only Venezuela was opposed. Abstaining were Ecuador, India, Kazakhstan, Philippines and Uganda.
Earlier this month, the panel, which began its work in August 2011, said it was collecting evidence on 20 alleged massacres in Syria, a reflection of the civil war’s growing brutality.
An official at the ministry of religious affairs said …read more
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A small amount of chemical weapons was almost certainly used in Syria, a defense expert told FoxNews.com, but the window for verifying such an attack has likely closed.
Christopher Harmer, a senior naval analyst at the Institute for the Study of War, said Wednesday that it was “overwhelmingly likely” that a choking agent such as chlorine or phosgene was used by either Syrian rebels or the Bashar Assad regime, contradicting statements by the U.S. ambassador to Syria who said the Obama administration has no evidence to support Assad’s claims that U.S.-backed rebels used the weapons recently in northern Syria.
“When you take the totality of the evidence, it seems obvious to me, or overwhelmingly likely, that a chemical weapon attack did take place,” Harmer said. “You had near simultaneous claims by both sides, independent reporting on the ground and a lot of patients at the hospital with the same symptoms.”
Other experts contacted by FoxNews.com expressed doubt that chemical weapons were used.
Harmer, the former deputy director of future operations at the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet, said there’s a “good possibility” the usage was inadvertent or intentionally very limited to gauge international reaction.
The U.S. Department of Defense has extremely effective chemical weapons detection equipment, Harmer said, but since the amount of low-end chemical agents likely used in the purported attack on the village of Khan al-Assal in Aleppo were relatively limited, they have likely already dispersed — making detection extremely difficult.
“Even with a single round, there’s going to be some remnants, but it’s going to be fairly small,” Harmer said. “I just don’t think anybody’s going to put people in a free-fire zone right now to validate this.”
Drones fitted with chemical weapons-detecting equipment could also be flown over Syria to verify the claims. Harmer also suggested that U.S. defense officials have already confirmed the usage of the weapons but failed to release that information because the methods of collecting it is classified.
“If you tell what you know, you may very well expose how you found that out,” he said.
The most likely deployment of the weapons, according to Harmer, was a crude, unguided rocket attack, which coincides with reporting from the Syrian state-run SANA news agency. Choking agents like chlorine and phosgene could also be packed into a truck to be exploded, much like an improvised explosive device, Harmer said.
Syria‘s Deputy Foreign Minister Faysal Mekdad said 31 people were killed and more than 100 others were wounded in the attack, some critically. A medical center aligned with the rebels said there were cases of “suffocation and poison” among civilians after a missile was fired at the area. The cases were most likely caused by regime forces’ use of “poisonous gases,” according to a statement.
Other chemical weapons experts contacted by FoxNews.com doubted that chemical weapons were used, especially given President Obama‘s past statements that the use, deployment or transferring of the weapons would be a “red line” for possible military intervention in the two-year Syrian conflict that has killed an estimated 70,000 people.
“If used, they would …read more
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A senior Israeli official said Wednesday that it is “apparently clear” that chemical weapons were recently used in Syria, and that the alleged attack will be a main topic of conversation with visiting President Barack Obama.
The statement by Yuval Steinitz, the newly appointed minister of intelligence and strategic affairs, conflicts with U.S. assessments that there is no evidence behind accusations traded the day before between Syrian rebels and the Bashar Assad regime of a chemical weapons attack in a village in the north of the country.
Steinitz, who was speaking to Army Radio, did not say how he came to the conclusion that the weapons were used. He would not comment on whether it was Assad forces or the rebels that used them, saying it was not important.
A senior defense official told the Associated Press that he concurred chemical weapons had been used, basing that on intelligence reports. He would not elaborate. He spoke anonymously because he is not allowed to speak to the media.
Israel has repeatedly expressed concern that Syria‘s chemical arsenal could fall into the hands of anti-Israel militants like Lebanon’s Hezbollah, an Assad ally, or an al-Qaida-linked group fighting with the rebels.
Steinitz said that after Iran‘s nuclear program, the fate of Syria‘s chemical weapons is the second most urgent issue that will be discussed with Obama during his 48 hour visit that begins Wednesday afternoon.
“It is apparently clear that chemical weapons were used,” Steinitz said. “The fact they apparently used chemical weapons against civilians needs to worry us and shows the urgency of taking care of the issue,” he said.
Syrian rebels and Assad’s government blamed each other Tuesday for a chemical attack on a northern village. There have been many reports and rumors of such weapons being used throughout the war but no attack has yet been confirmed. The U.S. said there was no evidence chemical weapons were used.
The use of such weapons would be a nightmare scenario in the 2-year-old conflict that has killed an estimated 70,000 people, and the competing claims showed willingness by both sides to go to new levels to seek support from world powers.
President Barack Obama has declared the use, deployment or transfer of the weapons would be a “red line” for possible military intervention by the U.S. in the Syrian conflict.
The Syrian state-run SANA news agency said “a missile containing a chemical substance” was fired at the village of Khan al-Assal in Aleppo province by “terrorists” — the term it uses for rebels. Syria‘s Deputy Foreign Minister Faysal Mekdad said 31 people were killed.
SANA added that more than 100 others were wounded, some of them critically, and it published pictures showing casualties, including children, on stretchers in what appears to be a hospital ward. None showed signs of physical injuries. The rebels quickly denied using chemical weapons and accused regime forces of doing so.
The Aleppo Media Center, affiliated with the rebels, said there were cases of “suffocation and poison” among civilians in Khan al-Assal after a missile was fired at the area. …read more
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Syria‘s state-run news agency says 25 people have been killed in an alleged rebel chemical attack in northern Syria.
Rebels in northern Syria deny the government claim and blamed regime forces for Tuesday’s missile attack on Khan al-Assad village in northern Aleppo province.
SANA says 86 people were wounded, some in critical condition. It published pictures showing casualties, including children, on stretchers in what appears to be a hospital ward.
They say victims were taken to a hospital in a government-controlled area in Aleppo.
Syrian authorities have discovered Israeli spying devices that were apparently hidden in objects that resembled rocks, Syria‘s state news agency said Thursday.
SANA‘s report said the devices are designed to photograph, register and transfer data. The agency said the objects were uncovered in Syria‘s coastal regions, but gave no further details.
The Israeli military declined comment.
State-run TV aired footage of an object consisting of what looked like a camera and a satellite dish, and other objects that resembled rocks. Plastic boxes resembling batteries and cables were shown lined up in a room.
Lebanon also discovered similar devices in recent years, and said the objects were planted by Israel.
Syria and Israel have fought several wars since the Jewish state’s creating in 1948, and the two nations remain technically in a state of war even now.
Israeli warplanes carried out an air raid near Damascus in January. U.S. officials said the target was a convoy of sophisticated Russian SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles. Syria said a research center was hit.
Syrian army officials say troops have regained control of several villages along a strategic highway near the embattled northern city of Aleppo.
The highway links the central city of Hama with Aleppo’s International Airport, the second largest in Syria.
Rebels have been trying to storm the airport for weeks. They ousted troops from several military bases protecting the facility and cut off a major highway the army used to supply its troops inside the airport complex.
In a statement Saturday, the Syrian Army’s General Command said its troops had carried out special operations in towns and villages along the road, restoring stability there and at the airport.
The statement was carried Saturday by the Syrian state-run SANA news agency.
A prominent Syrian comedian has been killed in Damascus after apparently being caught in the crossfire between rebels and government troops.
The SANA state news agency says Yassin Bakoush was killed Sunday by a rebel mortar round that landed on his car in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus.
The anti-regime Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group says Bakoush was killed when a rocket-propelled grenade launched by government troops slammed into his car.
The part of Damascus where Bakoush was killed has been hit by fierce clashes between rebels and regime forces in recent months.
The 75-year-old Bakoush was known for playing characters that were likeable but naive and dim-witted.
SANA said Bakoush is survived by11 children.
Two mortars exploded next to a soccer stadium in central Damascus Wednesday, killing one player and injuring several, Syria‘s state-run news agency said.
The mortar attack was the second in as many days in the capital. On Tuesday, two mortars exploded near one of President Bashar Assad‘s palaces, causing material damage only.
But it was the first confirmed strike close to a presidential palace and another sign that the civil war is moving closer to the heart of Assad’s seat of power and into areas of the capital once considered safe.
SANA news agency said the mortars landed Wednesday in a complex housing the Tishrin Stadium and a hotel next to it in the central Baramkeh district. Some players were practicing in the stadium at the time.
It said the player killed was from the Homs-based al-Wathbah club. He was wounded inside the hotel as some players were getting ready to go out and join the practice and died later at the hospital.
The Britain-based activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported one player was killed.
Players from al-Wathbah team who witnessed the attack identified the dead teammate as 19-year-old Youssef Suleiman, the team’s striker. They said he was the father of a 6-month-old baby.
They said the mortars landed in front of Tishrin hotel next to the stadium where players normally stayed, and shattered some of the building’s windows.
The attack hit a few hours before the team was to play against the Hama-based al-Mawaair club as part of the domestic league.
“We were collecting our things about to head to the stadium when we heard the first explosion and the windows were blown off,” said Ali Ghosn, a 20-year-old player.
“Youssef was hit in the neck. We ran out to the corridor when the second explosion struck and I saw Youssef fall down bleeding from his neck,” he told The Associated Press in Damascus as some of his colleagues wept.
Ali said Suleiman died shortly after he arrived at the hospital. Three other players were wounded, one of them in critical condition.
Assad has tried to maintain an image as the head of a functioning state even as rebels edge closer to the heart of Damascus.
The capital had largely been spared the violence that has left other cities in ruins. For weeks, however, rebels who have established footholds in the suburbs have been pushing closer to the center of Damascus from the eastern and southern outskirts, clashing with government forces.
A top Syrian government official says electricity has been restored in most parts of the Syrian capital and that power will gradually reach southern areas.
A power outage plunged Damascus into darkness late Saturday. Much of southern Syria, mainly the provinces of Daraa and Sweida, which abut the Jordanian border, also was affected by the outage.
Electricity Minister Imad Khamis told the state news agency, SANA, Sunday that technical teams were working around the clock to restore power in the south. He said electricity was back on in most parts of Damascus.
He blamed the blackout on an unspecified fault in high-tension lines.
The Syrian capital’s 2.5 million residents have grown used to frequent power cuts as the country’s conflict has damaged infrastructure and sapped government revenue.
A power outage plunged Damascus and southern Syria into darkness late Saturday, Syria‘s state news agency said, while anti-regime activists reported a string of tit-for-tat, sectarian kidnappings in the country’s north.
The news agency, SANA, quoted Electricity Minister Imad Khamis as saying that the failure of a high voltage line had left the country’s south without power.
The blackout affected Syria‘s capital, Damascus, and the southern provinces of Daraa and Sweida, which abut the Jordanian border.
An Associated Press reporter in Damascus reported dark streets across the capital. A fuel shortage makes it hard for residents to run backup generators.
A similar blackout struck Damascus and southern Syria on Jan. 20, leaving many residents with no way to heat their homes on a cold winter night. The government blamed that outage on a rebel attack, and power was restored to most areas the following day.
The Syrian capital’s 2.5 million residents have grown used to frequent power cuts as the country’s conflict has damaged infrastructure and sapped the government‘s finances.
Meanwhile, anti-regime activists reported a string of kidnappings in recent days that have enflamed tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslim villages that back opposite sides in the country’s civil war.
The activists differed on the number kidnapped from both sides, with reports ranging from a few dozen to more than 300.
The kidnappings point to the dark sectarian overtones of Syria‘s civil war, which pits a predominantly Sunni Muslim rebellion against a regime dominated by President Bashar Assad‘s minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The country is also home to Christian, Kurdish, Armenian and Shiite communities, all of whom have been swept up in the conflict.
The kidnappings took place between two Shiite villages in the northern Idlib province and a number of Sunni villages that surround them.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 42 Shiites, including mainly women and children, were snatched Thursday from a bus that was traveling from the Shiite villages of Foua and Kfarya to the capital Damascus. Observatory director Rami Abdul-Rahman, said it was not clear who took them, adding that Shiites have refused to give the names of those kidnapped or details about the make or color of the bus.
Since then, however, Shiite gunmen from the two villages have kidnapped more than 300 people from nearby Sunni villages, Abdul-Rahman said.
The kidnappings highlighted how much the civil war has heightened sectarian tensions. Kidnapping for ransom has grown common across Syria since the crisis began in March 2011, but sectarian and political abductions have been rare.
Anti-regime activists in Idlib reached via Skype confirmed the kidnappings, but gave much lower numbers for the number of people involved.
Activist Fadi al-Yassin Al-Yassin said Foua and Kfarya are being used by the regime to bombard nearby villages and towns, saying the regime has turned them into “castles of shabiha,” referring to pro-government gunmen.
In retaliation for the bus kidnappings, members of the pro-government Popular Committees set up a checkpoint around the two Shiite villages and on Thursday and Friday were taking people from cars they stopped, the …read more
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Syria‘s defense minister signaled Monday that his country won’t hit back at Israel over an airstrike inside Syria, claiming the Israeli raid was actually in retaliation for his regime’s offensive against rebels he called “tools” of the Jewish state.
The remarks suggest the regime’s military options might be severely constrained after 22 months of fighting an uprising that has depleted its weapons and stretched troops thin.
Israel has all but confirmed it was behind Wednesday’s airstrike — a humiliating raid just few miles away from the Syrian capital, Damascus, that added another layer of complication to a chaotic uprising and civil war. U.S. officials said the Israelis struck a military research center and a convoy next to it carrying anti-aircraft weapons destined for the Islamic militant group Hezbollah in neighboring Lebanon.
Syria vowed to retaliate, but the threats of retribution were seen by many as exceedingly mild, drawing criticism and mockery from rebels and opposition leaders who called it proof of President Bashar Assad‘s weakness and acquiescence to Israel.
In a televised interview Monday, Syrian Defense Minister Gen. Fahd Jassem al-Freij indicated that Syria may not be planning to retaliate at all. He said Israel attacked the research center near Damascus because rebels were unable to capture it. He called the rebels Israel‘s “tools.”
He was asked by Syrian state TV why Damascus does not retaliate against Israel.
“The Israeli enemy retaliated. When the Israeli enemy saw that its tools are being chased and did not achieve any (of their) goals, they interfered,” he responded. “It was a response to our military acts against the armed gangs,” al-Freij added. “The heroic Syrian Arab Army, which proved to the world that it is a strong army and a trained army, will not be defeated.”
In surprisingly candid remarks, al-Freij said that rebels have made Syrian air defenses across the country a focus of their attacks over the past months, attacking some with mortars while attempting to seize others in order to incapacitate them.
In response, he said the Syrian leadership decided to station them all in one safe place, leading to “gaps in radar coverage in some areas.”
“These gaps became known to the armed gangs and the Israelis who undoubtedly coordinated together to target the research center,” he said.
He suggested the army was overstretched and finding difficulty retaining control over several positions across the country, adding they had to abandon some areas to minimize casualties.
Ahmad Ramadan, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council executive bureau, dismissed accusations by Syrian leaders that the Israelis were doing the rebels’ bidding.
He also told The Associated Press that the military was using the research center to direct battles against rebels in the suburbs of Damascus. He said the area has witnessed clashes between troops and rebels but that the rebels had not attacked the center itself.
In his first comment on the airstrike, Assad said Sunday that that his country would confront any aggression.
“Syria, with the awareness of its people, the might of its army and its adherence to the path of resistance, is able to face the current challenges and confront any aggression that might target the Syrian people,” the president was quoted as saying by the state news agency SANA during a meeting with a top Iranian official.
But analysts say the Syrian military should be cautious about overreaching, noting that morale is sagging among many soldiers.
“It would be illogical for the regime in Damascus to engage in an adventure with the Jewish state which would further weaken it and hasten its collapse,” wrote George Semaan, a leading columnist in the pan-Arab Al Hayat daily Monday.
A top Iranian official visiting Damascus said Monday that Israel will regret its “latest aggression” on Syria and urged the entire Muslim world to be ready to defend the Syrian people.
“Just as it regretted its aggressions after the 33-day, 22-day and eight-day wars, today the Zionist entity will regret the aggression it launched against Syria,” Saeed Jalili, the head of Iran‘s National Security Council, told a news conference in Damascus. He was referring to past wars between Israel and Hezbollah or the Palestinian Hamas rulers of Gaza.
Iran is Syria‘s closest regional ally, and Jalili used his three-day visit to pledge Tehran’s continued support for Assad’s regime.
“The Islamic world will not allow aggression against Syria,” he said. “Syria stands on the front line of the Islamic world against the Zionist regime. … The Islamic world must react appropriately to the Israeli aggression.”
Israel has been growing increasingly concerned that Assad, fighting a civil war with rebels who want to overthrow him, is losing his grip on power and on his country’s arsenal including chemical weapons.
The strike was apparently meant to prevent Syrian and Iranian ally Hezbollah from acquiring more sophisticated defenses that could have limited Israel‘s ability to gather intelligence on its enemies from the air.
For years, Israel has been charging that Assad and Iran have been arming Hezbollah, which fought a monthlong war against Israel in 2006.
Still, the airstrike was criticized by some countries vehemently opposed to the Assad regime.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Sunday that Israel engaged in “state terror.”
“Those who have from the very beginning looked in the wrong direction and who have nourished and raised Israel like a spoiled child should always expect such things from Israel,” Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News quoted Erdogan as saying.
Saudi Arabia also criticized the strike as a “flagrant violation” against Syria‘s territory, the kingdom’s official SPA news agency reported Monday.
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Syria’s official news agency says a former member of parliament and three members of his family have been killed in a rebel-held area the near the northern city of Aleppo.
SANA said Sunday that “terrorists” fired at Ibrahim Azzouz‘s car in Sheik Said neighborhood near the city’s airport, killing him along with his wife and their two daughters.
Rebels captured the strategic Sheik Said neighborhood, southeast of Aleppo on Saturday. It was a significant blow to regime forces because the area includes the road the army has used to supply troops.
The Syrian government refers to rebels as “terrorists.”
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Syrian rebels captured a strategic neighborhood near Aleppo’s international airport on Saturday, putting opposition fighters in control of a key road that the regime has used to ferry supplies and reinforcements to soldiers fighting in the embattled northern city, activists said.
Elsewhere in the nation, fighting continued unabated, killing more than 60 people nationwide, according to activists.
Troops loyal to President Bashar Assad and rebels have been locked in a deadly stalemate in Aleppo, Syria‘s largest urban center and main commercial hub, since an opposition assault last summer. Seven months later, the rebels hold large parts of the city and its outskirts, including several army bases, but they have been unable to overcome the regime’s far superior firepower.
The capturing of the Sheik Said neighborhood, southeast of Aleppo, is a significant blow to regime forces because the area includes a major road, linking the northern city with the airport. The army has used the road to supply troops.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels captured the area Saturday after several days of fierce battles with Assad’s troops. Rebels have previously established enclaves outside Syria‘s major cities to threaten the regime, including near the capital, Damascus, but they were later attacked by Assad’s fighter jets and artillery.
In an effort to reverse rebels’ advance in Aleppo, regime’s war planes carried out several airstrikes on the Sheik Said, the Observatory said. There were no reports of casualties from the bombing.
The opposition’s Western backers, including the United States, have been reluctant to supply rebels with more sophisticated weapons because of the increased influence of an Al Qaeda-affiliated group among the anti-Assad fighters on the front lines. The Islamists growing prominence in the Syrian opposition has fueled fears that Muslim radicals might try to hijack the revolt that started as peaceful protests against Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for more than 40 years.
In Germany, Vice President Joe Biden said, “The opposition (to Assad) continues to grow stronger.”
Speaking at an annual security conference in Munich, Biden stated the conviction of the U.S. and many others. “President Assad — a tyrant hell-bent on clinging to power — is no longer fit to lead the Syrian people and he must go,” Biden said.
Assad has repeated brushed aside international calls to step down, characterizing its opponents as Islamic extremists who are out to destroy the country. In a speech last month, Assad outlined a peace initiative that would keep him in power.
The opposition coalition has rejected any talks with Damascus until Assad steps down. However, Moaz al-Khatib, the president of the coalition that is dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood movement, said Wednesday that he is willing to negotiate with members of Assad’s regime to bring a peaceful end to the country’s civil war.
Later on Saturday, Biden was scheduled to hold a separate meeting in Munich with al-Khatib as well as the international envoy to Syria‘s conflict, Lakhdar Brahimi, and Russia‘s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov.
Russia is Assad’s longtime ally, and it has disagreed sharply with Washington and its Western allies on ways to end the bloodshed in Syria. Moscow has maintained that Assad is part of the solution to the crisis, though Russian officials have recently criticized their ally in Damascus and even mentioned the possibility of rebels winning the war.
However, Lavrov told the gathering of top security officials that Biden’s statement that Assad must go was counterproductive.
“The persistence of those who say that priority No. 1 is the removal of President Assad — I think it’s the single biggest reason for the continued tragedy in Syria,” Lavrov said.
Syria‘s civil war is estimated to have claimed more than 60,000 lives since the uprising against Assad erupted in March 2011.
Despite disagreements on ways to end the fighting and Assad’s role in peace efforts, Lavrov said Russia shared the West’s concern over the fate of Syria‘s arsenal of chemical weapons.
As the regime grows more desperate to retain power, many fear it could use the weapons against its own people — a claim Damascus has repeatedly denied. There have also been concerns that conventional and unconventional weapons that Syria is said to have could end up in the hands of Islamic radicals.
“The red line is a common line for all of us: We are categorically against any use of weapons of mass destruction, be it chemical, be it biological, be it nuclear,” Lavrov said. He added that the Syrian government has repeatedly assured Moscow that it is watching over those weapons and keeping the rebels away from the sensitive sites.
“Our partners agree with us that the biggest threat is the probability or possibility that the rebels get hold of those chemical weapons,” Lavrov said.
In the north, regime war planes hit rebel-held areas in Idlib province as troops fought rebels in Deir el-Zour in the east, an oil-rich area along Syria‘s border with Iraq, the Observatory said. Fighting also raged in the central provinces of Homs and Hama, in the restive suburbs of Damascus that were also hit by air strikes and in the southern province of Daraa, the birthplace of the uprising.
State-run SANA news agency said 15 people were killed and 22 others were wounded when a car, packed with explosives detonated prematurely in Idlib’s Saraqeb city. The report said all the dead and wounded were “terrorists,” a term the government uses for rebels.
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Syria‘s state-run news agency says troops have raided an opposition stronghold near Damascus, killing an unspecified number of rebels and uncovering tunnels used by them to move about and smuggle weapons.
SANA says the tunnels were discovered Saturday after clashes in Daraya just south of the capital.
Two activist groups, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees, meanwhile reported shelling and air raids of other Damascus suburbs, including areas near the international airport.
Syrian troops have been trying to capture Daraya for weeks but faced strong resistance from hundreds of rebels. Damascus suburbs have been used as a base by rebels to threaten nearby regime facilities.
Syria‘s crisis began in March 2011 and has so far killed more than 60,000 according to the U.N.
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Syria‘s army unleashed a barrage of rocket and artillery fire on rebel-held areas in a central province Friday as part of a widening offensive against fighters seeking to oust President Bashar Assad. At least 80 people were killed in fighting nationwide, according to activist groups.
The United Nations said a record number of Syrians streamed into Jordan this month, doubling the population of the kingdom’s already-cramped refugee camp to 65,000. Over 30,000 people arrived in Zaatari in January — 6,000 in the past two days alone, the U.N. said.
The newcomers are mostly families, women, children and elderly who fled from southern Syria, said Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. She said the UNHCR was working with the Jordanian government to open a second major camp nearby by the end of this month.
Many of the new arrivals at Zaatari are from the southern town of Daraa, where the uprising against Assad first erupted nearly two years ago, the Britain-based Save the Children said Friday.
Five buses, crammed with “frightened and exhausted people who fled with what little they could carry,” pull up every hour at the camp, said Saba al-Mobasat, an aid worker with Save the Children.
The exodus reflected the latest spike in violence in Syria‘s civil war. The conflict began in March 2011 after a peaceful uprising against Assad, inspired by the Arab Spring wave of revolutions that toppled leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, turned violent.
Activists said the army recently brought in military reinforcements to the central province of Homs and launched a renewed offensive aimed at retaking patches of territory that have been held by rebels for months.
An amateur video posted online by activists showed rockets slamming into buildings in the rebel-held town of Rastan, just north of the provincial capital, Homs. Heavy gunfire could be heard in the background.
Another video showed thick black and gray smoke rising from a building in the besieged city. “The city of Homs is burning … day and night, the shelling of Homs doesn’t stop,” the narrator is heard saying.
Troops also battled rebels around Damascus in an effort to dislodge opposition fighters who have set up enclaves in surrounding towns and villages. The troops fired artillery shells Friday at several districts, including Zabadani and Daraya, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees, said regime warplanes carried out airstrikes on the suburb of Douma, the largest patch of rebel-held ground near Damascus.
The Observatory, which like the LCC relies on a network of activists around Syria, said at least 80 people were killed in violence across the country Friday, including 11 in Homs.
Other video showed devastation in the Damascus neighborhood of Arbeen, following what activists said were two airstrikes there. A bleeding, wounded man can be seen being helped out of the rubble of the destroyed building. The videos appeared consistent with Associated Press reporting on the fighting.
Last month, the UNHCR said it needed $1 billion to aid Syrians in the Mideast, and that half of that money was required to help refugees in Jordan.
The agency says 597,240 refugees have registered or are awaiting registration with the UNHCR in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. Some countries have higher estimates, noting many Syrians have found accommodations without registering, relying on their own resources and savings.
In a rare gesture, Syria‘s Interior Ministry called on those who fled the country during the civil war to return, including regime opponents. It said the government will help hundreds of thousands of citizens return whether they left “legally or illegally.”
Syrian opposition figures abroad who want to take part in reconciliation talks will also be allowed back, according to a ministry statement carried late Thursday by the state SANA news agency.
If they “have the desire to participate in the national dialogue, they would be allowed to enter Syria,” it said.
The proposed talks are part of Assad’s initiative to end the conflict that started as peaceful protests in March 2011 but turned into a civil war. Tens of thousands of activists, their family members and opposition supporters remain jailed by the regime, according to international activist groups.
Opposition leaders repeatedly have rejected any talks that include Assad, insisting he must step down. The international community backs that demand, but Assad has clung to power, vowing to crush the armed opposition.
More than 60,000 people have been killed since the conflict began, according to the U.N.
Activists also said two cars packed with explosives blew up near a military intelligence building in the Syrian-controlled part of the Golan Heights, killing eight. Most of the dead were members of the Syrian military, the Observatory said.
The Syrian government had no comment on the attacks, which occurred Thursday night in the town of Quneitra, and nobody claimed responsibility for them.
Car bombs and suicide attacks targeting Syrian troops and government institutions have been the hallmark of Islamic militants fighting in Syria alongside rebels trying to topple Assad.
Quneitra is on the cease-fire line between Syria and Israel, which controls most of the Golan Heights after capturing the strategic territory from Syria in the 1967 war.
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Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, and Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report.
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Fox World News
