Syria unrest: Arab League discusses observer mission

Foreign ministers from the Arab League are meeting in Cairo to assess the progress of their mission in Syria and to discuss whether to ask for UN help.

Syrian rebels capture troops in north

Demonstrators against Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad gather in Derbasia near Hassaka on December 13, 2011. Security forces shot dead 17 people in Syria on Tuesday and rebels killed seven police in an ambush.


Armed Syrian rebels captured dozens of members of the security forces by seizing two military checkpoints in the northern province of Idlib today, the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

It said the army deserters also clashed with security forces at a third checkpoint, killing and wounding an unspecified number of troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

Rami Abdelrahman, director of the British-based Observatory, said Monday's operation took place in the Jabal al-Zawiyah region of Idlib. It was not immediately clear how many people had been killed or captured by the rebels, he said.

Globe and Mail Challenges Emerge as Arab League Observers Begin Work in a Syrian City

A team of observers from the Arab League traveled to the embattled Syrian city of Homs on Tuesday in a visit that quieted days of fierce violence but also provided hints of the potential challenges of a group trying to monitor a ...

Syrian troops storm Hama to break anti-Assad strike

Syrian troops swept into the city of Hama to break a three-day strike by opponents of President Bashar al-Assad, killing at least 10 people but running into resistance from armed insurgents who destroyed two armoured vehicles, activists said.

Outside Hama, army deserters attacked a convoy of military jeeps, killing eight soldiers, they said, adding to a death toll of at least 30 people across the country on Wednesday.

The assault in Hama was the first armoured incursion there since a tank offensive in August crushed huge protests in the city. Activists said troops fired machineguns and ransacked and burnt shops which had closed to observe a mass, open-ended “Strike for Dignity” called by the opposition.

The United Nations says more than 5,000 people have died in Assad’s crackdown on protests that erupted in the southern city of Deraa in March, inspired by Arab uprisings elsewhere.

Hezbollah head says building up weapons, backs Syria

Lebanon’s Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah greets his supporters during a Muharram procession to mark Ashura in Beirut’s suburbs, December 6, 2011.

The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah, whose backers Syria and Iran are at the centre of heightened regional tension, made a rare public appearance today marking the Shi’ite Muslim festival of Ashura and said his group was building up its arsenal.

Surrounded by armed bodyguards, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah walked through a crowd of Shi’ites in Beirut’s southern suburbs, Hezbollah’s stronghold, and greeted tens of thousands of supporters from the podium before disappearing for a few minutes to give his speech via a giant screen.

US says opposition must build ‘free, tolerant’ Syria

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton meets with a small group of expatriate Syrian opposition members at a hotel in Geneva December 6, 2011


The United States has called for a new regime of tolerance and freedom in Syria as forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad battled fighters infiltrating the country to join the growing rebel army trying to overthrow him.

Speaking after meeting members of the opposition Syrian National Council in Geneva, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Syrians must not only remove Assad but also advance towards the rule of law.

“A democratic transition includes more than removing the Assad regime,” Clinton said. “It means setting Syria on the path of the rule of law and protecting the universal rights of all citizens, regardless of sect or ethnicity or gender.”

What began nearly nine months ago as a peaceful protest against Assad, inspired by the Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt, is creeping closer to civil war as armed opposition groups organize and move into some city districts.

Al-Assad Says He Didn't Order Crackdown on Syria Protesters

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad denied ordering the military to crack down on civilians and said that most of the people who have been killed in protests and fighting since March were ...

Lebanon will not implement Syria sanctions

Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour (L) talks with his Cypriot counterpart Erato Kozakou Marcoullis in Nicosia November 25, 2011.


Lebanon will not implement the Arab League’s economic sanctions against Syria, Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour told Reuters today, because it had not agreed to them and believed they could hurt Lebanon.

“We do not agree with these sanctions and we will not go along with them,” Mansour said.

Russia sending warships to its base in Syria

Russia is sending a flotilla of warships to its naval base in Syria in a show of force which suggests Moscow is willing to defend its interests in the strife-torn country as international pressure mounts on President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Arab League sanctions and French calls for the establishment of humanitarian zones in Syria have increased international pressure on Assad to end bloodshed that the United Nations says has killed 3,500 people during nine months of protests against his rule.

Russia, which has a naval maintenance base in Syria and whose weapons trade with Damascus is worth millions of dollars annually, joined China last month to veto a Western-backed UN Security Council resolution condemning Assad’s government.

Izvestia newspaper reported today, citing retired Russian Admiral Viktor Kravchenko, that Russia plans to send its flagship aircraft carrier the “Admiral Kuznetsov” along with a patrol ship, an anti-submarine craft and other vessels.

Turkey tells Syria’s Assad: Step down!

Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan addresses members of parliament from his ruling AK Party (AKP) during a meeting at the Turkish parliament in Ankara, November 22, 2011.


Turkey yesterday bluntly told Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down for the sake of his people, tightening regional pressure on Damascus while the wider world condemned Syria’s violent crackdown on protests in a vote at the United Nations.

Activists said Syrian forces killed 21 civilians and five army deserters yesterday. Among those killed were four children shot dead by troops near a school in the central region of Houla and a 12-year-old killed at a protest in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

It was not possible to independently confirm the killings as Syrian authorities, who blame the unrest on “armed terrorist groups”, have barred most independent media from the country.

The United Nations says 3,500 people have been killed since the protests erupted in March, triggered by Arab uprisings that toppled the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt and Libya.

“Without spilling any more blood, without causing any more injustice, for the sake of peace for the people, the country and the region, finally step down,” Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan said yesterday, in his first direct call for Assad to go.

Turkey’s Gul:Syria has reached ‘point of no return’

urkish President Abdullah Gul accused Syria’s government today of using oppression and violence against its people, saying the situation there had reached a “point of no return”.

“We exerted enormous efforts in public and behind closed doors in order to convince the Syrian leadership to lead the democratic transition,” Gul (picture) said in a speech hosted by Wilton Park, a British foreign policy thinktank.

Assad supporters attack UAE embassy

People carry a poster depicting Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and shout slogans during a rally to show support for him in Damascus on November 16, 2011.

Supporters of President Bashar al-Assad threw stones and debris today at the embassy of the United Arab Emirates and smeared its walls with graffiti, witnesses said, hours after an Arab League decision to suspend Syria took effect.

“You bastards. You agents of Israel,” read some of the graffiti, according to two residents who live near the building in the affluent Abu Rummana neighbourhood, one of the most secure districts of the capital near the home and offices of Assad.

Some Arab leaders offered haven for Assad: U.S.

Some Arab leaders have told the United States they are willing to provide safe haven to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to hasten his "inevitable" departure from power, a senior US official said on Wednesday.

Tanks deploy in east, Syrians flee assault on north

People dig out bodies of 10 security men killed and buried by armed groups in Jisr al-Shughour, according to the Syrian news agency, in this still image taken from video June 12, 2011


Thousands of Syrians fled the historic town of Maarat al-Numaan to escape tank forces thrusting into the country’s north in a widening military campaign to crush protests against President Bashar al-Assad.

In the tribal east, where all of Syria’s 380,000 barrels per day of oil is produced, tanks and armoured vehicles deployed in the city of Deir al-Zor and around Albu Kamal on the border with Iraq, a week after tens of thousands of people took to the streets demanding an end to Assad’s autocratic rule.

“The army is coming, find safety for yourselves and your families!” residents said mosque loudspeakers announced on Tuesday in Maarat al-Numaan, a town of 100,000 that straddles the main north-south highway linking Damascus with Syria’s second largest city, the merchant hub of Aleppo.

Syrian forces pushed toward Maarat al-Numaan after arresting hundreds of people in nearby villages close to Jisr al-Shughour, residents said.



Syrian state television said security forces “are pursuing and hunting down the remnants of the members of terrorist armed organisations in the areas surrounding Jisr al-Shughour in order to enable the residents to return to their neighborhoods.”

Residents from Maarat al-Numaan, Jisr al-Shughour and surrounding villages streamed toward Aleppo and to villages in the desert to the east, while some headed to neighboring Turkey, where more than 8,500 Syrians have already fled.

They sought shelter across the border to escape Assad’s latest assault on protests demanding more freedoms in a country dominated by the Assad family, from Syria’s minority Alawite sect, for the last 41 years. Most Syrians are Sunni Muslim.

Around 70 per cent of Maarat al-Numaan’s residents have fled, Othman al-Bedeiwi, a pharmacy professor there told Reuters by telephone. He said helicopters, which also fired at protesters on Friday, had been ferrying troops to a staging camp in Wadi al-Deif, several km (miles) from the town.

Syria has banned most foreign correspondents since the unrest began, making it difficult to verify accounts of events.

On the edge of a limestone massif in a relatively prosperous agricultural area, Maarat al-Numaan is a centre of Muslim pilgrimage with a rebellious history.

It was the site of the massacre of thousands of men, women and children by Crusader forces in 1099. In modern times, the town was focus of a brutal campaign to crush Islamist and leftist challengers to Bashar’s father, the late Hafez al-Assad.

CO-RELIGIONISTS

In the eastern province of Deir al-Zor, witnesses said several tanks deployed inside the provincial capital, on the Euphrates river, after security forces pulled out from the streets last week.

But protests continued and a violent confrontation occurred this week between Assad loyalists and protesters during which several people were seriously injured, they added.

“A pattern keeps repeating itself across Syria. The local garrison goes to their headquarters and leaves a city to try and create disorder, then tanks and troops are sent in to subdue protesters,” an activist in the city said.

“Sadly the invention of rubber bullets has not reached Syria,” he said. “It is live ammunition on protesters or nothing.”

Rights campaigners said around 20 tanks and armoured vehicles also deployed around the town of Albu Kamal to the east of Deir al-Zor city, which is also an official crossing point to Iraq, but said there were no troops inside the town.

Deir al-Zor province borders Iraq’s Sunni heartland. The two sides are linked by family ties and trade routes that preceded the creation of the two states by colonial powers in the 1920s.

France, with British support, has spearheaded efforts for the United Nations Security Council to condemn Assad’s repression of the protests. But Russia and China have suggested they might use their veto power to kill the resolution.

Turkey has set up four refugee camps just inside its borders and the state-run Anatolian news agency said yesterday authorities might provide more. It said the number of refugees, mainly from the Syrian northwestern region of Jisr al-Shughour, had reached 8,538, more than half of them children.

Fleeing refugees described shootings by troops and Alawite gunmen loyal to Assad, known as “shabbiha”, and the burning of land and crops in a scorched earth policy to subdue people of the region after large protests.

Syrian government denies mass grave claims - Unrest in Syria: 'Mass grave discovered in Deraa'

Students in Syria's second-largest city called for a nationwide strike today amid a government crackdown on democracy protesters, some of whom alleged Tuesday that they had discovered a mass grave of ...