#Syrian Assistance

11/09/12

Syrian Assistance

Syrian Assistance is an independent, non profit organisation consisting of volunteers from different countries, that has been set up to raise money for the basic humanitarian needs of those Syrians either displaced or in need because of the ongoing crisis. Thousands of Syrians have fled to neighbouring countries, or have been internally displaced. Food costs are soaring and there is a shortage of medical supplies and fuel for cooking and heating.
We need your help in raising awareness of the current situation in Syria, and to help raise money so we can do what we can to alleviate the suffering of those most affected. We hope to partner with aid organisations in order to fulfill this aim. Join us and work together to give assistance to the Syrian people.
Syrian assistance is a completely volunteer based organization, and EVERY PENNY of the money donated goes to aiding the innocent Syrian Victims.  We give 101% of our funds to the cause…even our volunteers donate their personal funds as well.  We are happy to supply the necessary accounting documentation to any organization wishing to contribute!
Thank you in advance for visiting our website @http://www.syrianassistance.com/our-activities.html  we hope you will find the same place in your heart that we have for the syrians that have become victims of this tragic war and become a part of Syrian Assistance team!
Sincerely,
Syrian Assistance team

Source: syrianassistance.com

Red Cross chief in #Syria as fighting rages

04/09/12

Red Cross chief Peter Maurer was in Syria on a mercy mission Tuesday amid a surge of bombings and clashes in the capital and the second city Aleppo that left scores more dead, a spokeswoman said.

Maurer’s mission will “focus on increased humanitarian needs and to remind the belligerents of their obligation under international law related to the protection of civilians” in particular, said International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) spokeswoman in Damascus Rabab Rifai.

Making his first visit to violence-wracked Syria since being appointed as ICRC head on July 1, Maurer is slated to meet with President Bashar al-Assad and senior officials, including Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, Rifai said, but gave no timings.

The visit comes amid a surge in violence in the past weeks across Syria, where according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights more than 5,000 people were killed in the month of August alone.

The Britain-based watchdog, which relies on its information from a network of activists on the ground, said 153 people died countrywide on Monday — 72 civilians, including 19 children and 14 women, 42 soldiers and 30 rebels.

Among those killed was an entire family — including seven children — when a government air raid hit their home in the heart of Aleppo, witnesses told an AFP correspondent in Syria’s second city.

An activist said that on Tuesday, several districts of the northern city were bombarded with artillery and mortar fire as was an area near the Aleppo airport, bordering the Nayrab district in the southwest of the city.

A senior commander in charge of the regime offensive on Aleppo told AFP that the army would recapture the city from the rebel forces “within 10 days.”

Some 3,000 troops were involved in the fight against about 7,000 “terrorists,” said the general, adding that 2,000 of the insurgents had been killed since the assault on Aleppo was launched at the start of August.

In the capital Damascus, fighting broke out in the Yarmuk Palestinian refugee camp early Tuesday between members of the PFLP (Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine) and rebel fighters, the Observatory said.

It also reported fighting between rebels and the army in the capital’s southern district of Tadamun, which is adjacent to the camp.

The Syrian Revolution General Council, a network of opposition activists, said that panicked residents were fleeing the Yarmuk camp in droves amid the fighting.

On Monday, a car bomb ripped through the mainly Christian and Druze Damascus suburb of Jaramana, killing at least five people, according to the Observatory.

In Madrid, the opposition Syrian National Council appealed to the international community for weapons and urgent military intervention to defend civilians from such attacks.

“We need a humanitarian intervention and we are asking for military intervention for the Syrian civilians,” SNC chairman Abdel Basset Sayda said. “I have the duty of asking for weapons that will allow us to defend against the Syrian armour and weapons.”

Sayda said the conflict had now killed 30,000 people and forced millions from their homes, including more than three million displaced inside the country and 250,000 who had fled abroad. Another 100,000 had been detained.

The plight of civilians was at the forefront of the ICRC mission to Syria, Maurer said in a statement issued on Monday in Geneva.

“At a time when more and more civilians are being exposed to extreme violence, it is of the utmost importance that we and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent succeed in significantly scaling up our humanitarian response,” the ICRC chief said.

His talks with Syrian officials would largely deal with the deteriorating humanitarian situation in Syria, as well as the difficulties the ICRC and the Red Crescent face as they try to reach people affected by the armed conflict, the statement said.

According to the Observatory, more than 26,000 people have been killed in Syria since the revolt began in March last year — more than two-thirds of them civilians.

In Ankara, a US official told AFP that CIA director Petraeus was in Turkey for regional meetings, without elaborating.

His visit comes less than two weeks after Turkish and US officials held their first operational planning meetings aimed at bringing an end to the Assad regime.

© ANP/AFP

Source: rnw.nl

#Syria, keeping up with what’s happening!

25/08/12

#Syria:  Be sure and check with us everyday for all the news and videos coming out of Syria … it’s impossible to find all you need in one place … we at Syrian Freedom provide other avenues to the latest news … starting with our main site that posts the important news of the day, in depth analysis, and opinion pieces along with with updates on our relief activities, and humanitarian news: www.syrianassistance.com …

In addition we now have a now a 12 hourly update at http://paper.li/danmike1/1345751214# which compiles all our tweets of the day in one place. Of course there is our live stream site: www.syrianfreedom.org where we try to show whatever feeds are live from Syria, and which also includes a feed from here, our constantly updated tumblr site!

If at any time you are searching for something, and can’t find what you want just post here and let us know!  We are proud of our team, and work hard every day to get the news out in the most efficient way … we hope you find these resources useful, if you have suggestions or wish to contact us mail here: emailsyfr@gmail.com

Source: livestream.com

#Syria Aleppo rebels wait anxiously for Bashar al-Assad’s elite to attack

07/08/12

Coming days likely to be decisive as Syria army reinforcements rumoured to be making their way towards city.

A Syrian woman carrying bread in Aleppo: nearly all of the 30,000 residents in the city’s Salahedin district have left. Photograph: Vedat Xhymshiti/AFP/Getty Images

From where he sits behind the headmaster’s desk in an old school house, the battle for northern Aleppo is going better than expected. But as artillery shells and heavy rounds from a circling helicopter thundered ever closer into nearby buildings on Sunday, Abu Suleiman, the commander of rebel operations in the north of the city, seemed to waver. “I expected that we’d get to this point in close to two weeks,” he said. “But the coming days will be the most important of the revolution.”

Aleppo is now undeniably a city at war. Crippling petrol shortages have reduced traffic by around 90%; festering garbage bags are now piled so high that they resemble road blocks; and the few people who brave the city’s foreboding streets do so with one eye to the ground and the other tilted towards the ever-present circling attack helicopters.

The rigid order that has helped make this city a tenant of regime power for more than four decades is no more – for now. Most police stations have been overrun, and their vehicles are now being used to ferry fighters to one of two front lines – a small enclave called Sarhour near the centre of the city.

The hospital in the east of the city, which was commandeered by regime forces until last week, is now in rebel hands. So, too, is part of the central city near the citadel, which has towered above this ancient settlement throughout the ages and appeared resolute under floodlights as fierce fighting raged nearby on Saturday night.

In the Salahedin district in the city’s south-west, where it all began in late July, there has been no letup in daily battles which have reduced large parts of the suburb to a crumbling wasteland. All 30,000 or so residents have left. Only guerilla fighters remain here. Even the canaries have died.

“We were feeding 20 canaries that the people had left behind and only one has survived,” said Sheikh Abu Omar, who brought rebel reinforcements to Salahedin from the nearby city of al-Bab on Saturday. “Haram. I am taking the last one with me. He’s like a refugee now.”

Outgunned

The battle for Salahedin has now settled into a violent rhythm. Rebel snipers perched behind sand berms shoot down streets towards regime positions around 200 metres away. Cars that still have petrol in their tanks – there aren’t many – are used to drive behind the berms and tempt the snipers to expose themselves.

All the time, a jet passes menacingly overhead, dropping bombs when it chooses and strafing rebel positions. The jets are a constant reminder that no matter what their gains on the ground, the rebels cannot match the regime’s firepower. Even getting to the fight is becoming more difficult by the day. Petrol – or the poorly mixed sludge that passes for it – now costs around $4 per litre. All petrol stations have closed and roadside vendors have mixed the remaining fuel with other things such as cooking oil to keep the guerilla force moving. As two fighters waited in Abu Suleiman’s office for him to give them fuel coupons, the helicopter cannon again thundered into life, causing both to wince and the overworked commander to pause.

“We have many more weapons than we used to have,” he said. “The regime is running away and they are tired, so tired. Even more than us. I would say that of the force they are bringing to fight us, only 20% are brave and committed to battle.

“We had around 120 defectors this morning alone.”

If the consistent rumours among rebel ranks are right, the Free Syrian Army will need many more men to defend its gains in Aleppo in the coming days. Rebel commanders across northern Syria say the rump of the regime’s army, including all its key divisions and units, is travelling north from Damascus, Hama and Idlib to join the battle.

“We are expecting them on Tuesday,” said a rebel colonel from Idlib, who has sent spotters to monitor the progress of the regime reinforcements. “They are sending the Republican Guards.”

Word of the loyalist advance is everywhere in Salahedin. At dusk on Saturday, spotters on the rooftops of abandoned apartment blocks mistook the movement of three tanks on a nearby highway for the arrival of the advance guard. One spotter sent a frantic radio message and commanders preparing for the iftar meal to break the Ramadan fast sent a runner to report back to them. The 16-year-old rebel volunteer grabbed a nearby rocket-propelled grenade – captured from regime forces – and rode in the gathering dark through broken glass and masonry that littered the empty street.

Minutes later, he reported back: three flashes of his torch through the gloom to indicate the number of tanks on the move.

Behind us, the tangerine glow from a massive fire ignited three days ago by regime shells helped illuminate the evening feast, which was brought to the fighters in a cardboard box by a tired rebel in flip-flops. The men circled round an eggplant and tomato stew served in containers on the kerb. A gust of wind buffered patio awnings above, which filled like spinnakers and showered the men below in concrete dust that had gathered over days of explosions. The wind also stirred the unmistakable smell of death, the foul scent of six nearby corpses – all civilians – who have lain there since they were killed 10 days ago.

Power vacuum

As Abu Suleiman continued to give directions, the aircraft made its closest strike yet, sending bombs into a factory near the entrance to the city and fighters scrambling from the building firing wildly into a vacant blue sky.

Back in his office, he said: “We have anti-aircraft rockets, you know. We will use them when the time is right. They can’t win, because they are not fighting for the right reasons. God is with us and so are the people.”

The latter remains to be seen. Aleppo locals seem yet to fully embrace the rebel army, preferring to wait to see who can fill the vacuum.

Abu Suleiman is trying to change that by preparing a letter for locals calling for volunteers to help with civic services, and explaining what role the new sheriff in town intends to play. But as another day ended in war-ravaged Aleppo, the city clearly remained in play. The next week will go a long way towards telling who gets to call the shots.

Source: Guardian

For Rebel Fight in #Syrian City, Baking Bread Is Urgent Task

ALEPPO, Syria — Just before sunrise, a select group of Syrian rebel fighters steps away from the front lines here for a task their commanders now consider a vital and urgent part of the war effort: baking bread.

Zohra Bensemra/Reuters


A line to buy bread in the town of Aldana, near Aleppo, in northern Syria. Armed rebels help to keep order at some bakeries.

The floppy moons that they produce, pita to Americans, usually go quickly to hungry residents and rebels. Bread is a mainstay of the Syrian diet — it accompanies every meal — and in a city paralyzed by two weeks of war, the bakery lines show that basic commerce has become a battleground of its own.

“The regime has tried to deprive our supporters of water and gas, and now they are using bread,” said Basheer al-Hajeh, a member of Al Tawheed Brigade, one of the main rebel militias in Aleppo. But he said the rebels had learned how to fight back against the government’s attempts to keep bread and other resources out of opposition-controlled areas.

“We took control of the wheat warehouses in Aleppo’s suburbs,” he said. “We have many of them, in several areas, and they might keep us supplied for weeks.”

The struggle to keep bakeries operating is part of a much larger fight over the Syrian economy, especially in Aleppo, the country’s commercial hub and its largest city. As the government of President Bashar al-Assad tries to project an image of normalcy, denying reports of runaway inflation, rebels say they are finding new ways to attract support from the business class and siphon off government resources.

Kamal Hamdan, a Lebanese economist who has worked extensively in Syria, said both sides were engaged in efforts to replace the peacetime economy with wartime alternatives.

“They are expecting a civil war that will take a long time and you have to sustain the daily life of the areas you are controlling,” he said. “It’s part of the game.”

The government has a clear advantage. Its Central Bank reported foreign currency assets of about $17 billion, one month after the conflict started. According to an investment consultant in the capital, Damascus, the government now appears to be asking Russia for loans to continue propping up the economy. Many analysts also suspect that the Syrians have found a way to sell oil, despite sanctions from Europe.

But after 17 months of conflict, the opposition is becoming more and more creative. In Damascus, for example, activists say there are merchants that pretend to support Mr. Assad, only to funnel government-supplied cooking fuel, gasoline, bread and water to the other side.

“We ask them not to defect,” said Moaz, an opposition activist in Damascus. “They will be rewarded later.” Like others interviewed, he would not give his full name for fear of retribution.

Rebels are also managing to create supply chains that route around government-controlled areas with the help of private businesses. In interviews, rebel commanders and opposition activists declined to name their corporate supporters, or to discuss assistance from countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia, but they said the homegrown assistance came in many forms.

In some cases, merchants donate money. In others, they said, business owners support the families of rebel fighters or opposition supporters, in one case 50 families at once. And especially in Aleppo this week, more immediate acts of generosity have emerged, with fresh food suddenly appearing for those in need.

One woman, a dentist who supports the opposition, said she recently helped distribute plates of schwarma, a local grilled meat dish, to 900 displaced people in five schools near a contested area of southwest Aleppo.

As is often the case in war, food has become almost as important as bullets. Aleppo has grown especially desperate. Several videos posted online now refer to a food crisis, and some confirm that bakeries there have become opposition outposts, with long, loud lines snaking around corners as armed rebels keep order, telling customers that they are only paying what is needed to cover bakery expenses.

Abu Mohammed, a rebel baker in eastern Aleppo, said that skirmishes sometimes break out among customers, especially when there is not enough to go around. But his squad — seven to nine rebels baking and distributing bread — try to feed who they can and make sure no one gets preferential treatment, he said.

Mr. Hajeh, the militia member and a spokesman for the main rebel unit in Aleppo, said that top leaders have already appointed someone to run all the city’s rebel-controlled bakeries, arranging grain deliveries and baker schedules. There is now at least one rebel-run bakery in every neighborhood of rebel control, he said. Usually, there are two or three.

“What we do is open the bakery with the owners’ consent and our own people bake the bread,” he said.

Other basic needs have been harder to manage. The rebels said they provide water to some areas, filling tanker trucks from wells outside the city, but milk is essentially unavailable. Gas prices have tripled to about $11 per gallon. Diesel prices and the cost of cooking fuel have skyrocketed, according to residents and black market sellers, while vegetable prices have also spiked.

Cucumber prices have more than doubled. “We try and help with other goods, but we don’t have a lot of capacity,” Mr. Hajeh said.

Major businesses in Aleppo are suffering as well. Mr. Hamdan, the Lebanese economist, said that Aleppo usually accounted for about 30 percent of Syria’s gross domestic product, slightly less than Damascus. But these days in Aleppo trade has essentially come to a standstill.

Several factory owners said in interviews that their exports have dropped to practically nothing. Abu Abdu, 60, who owns a textile factory in Aleppo with about 55 employees, said 2011 was his worst year in five decades of business. And 2012, he said, will probably be worse.

A garrulous Sunni who began working in his father’s factory as a teenager, he said his own views on the conflict have changed with his fortunes. Like many other merchants, he described himself as apolitical, so when the unrest started, the future seemed headed for a version of the past: in the 1980s, the government of Mr. Assad’s father violently crushed an Islamist revolt in Syria, killing thousands of people.

But over time, he said he has begun to question the government’s strength. “In the 1980s, no one in the country or the world knew what was going on with the military crackdown, but today the media and satellite channels are broadcasting and showing the live photos of the military operations,” he said.

As a result, he said, the rebels have been tougher to portray as defeated. “President Bashar al-Assad made big promises that everything will be finished in days, then in weeks, then in months,” he said. “But today, here we are after a year and half and we see and hear the same false words and statements.”

Other upper- and middle-class residents described similar conversions. Many residents of Aleppo now say Mr. Assad’s enemies will multiply every day he keeps up the fight, creating more unemployment, more displacement and more hunger in a city whose business is business.

“I was supporting him because I was looking to him as a moderate, secular and liberal leader, but that was until I saw his crimes in Dara’a, Homs, Hama, Dier al-Zour and now in my city, and against my relatives,” said Abu Fadi, 45, who owns a failing travel agency in Aleppo.

“With his crimes,” Mr. Fadi said, “he is buying a one-way ticket out of the country.”

Source: The New York Times

#Syria Crisis: Government Forces Destroy ‘Inch By Inch’

Members of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) take position in Idlib in northwestern Syria on February 22, 2012. (BULENT KILIC/AFP/Getty Images)

BEIRUT — Medics stitch wounds with thread used for clothing. Hungry residents risk Syrian government sniper fire or shelling to hunt for dwindling supplies of bread and canned food on the streets of the besieged city of Homs.

The opposition stronghold was being destroyed “inch by inch,” by government forces, with collapsed walls and scorched buildings, according to accounts Thursday, while Western and Arab leaders hoped to silence the guns long enough to rush in relief aid.

The pressure for “humanitarian corridors” into the central Syrian city of Homs and other places caught in President Bashar Assad’s crushing attacks appeared to be part of shifts toward more aggressive steps against his regime after nearly a year of bloodshed and thousands of deaths in an anti-government uprising.

In back-to-back announcements, U.N.-appointed investigators in Geneva said a list for possible crimes against humanity prosecution reaches as high as Assad, and international envoys in London – including U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton – made final touches to an expected demand for Assad to call a cease-fire within days to permit emergency shipments of food and medicine.

Washington and European allies remain publicly opposed to direct military intervention. But there have been growing signs that Western leaders could back efforts to open channels for supplies and weapons to the Syrian opposition, which includes breakaway soldiers from Assad’s military.

In a sign of the international divide, however, key Assad ally Russia said Moscow and Beijing remain opposed to any foreign interference in Syria. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev spoke by telephone with the president of the United Arab Emirates and emphasized that “foreign interference, attempts to assess the legitimacy of the leadership of a state from the outside, run counter to the norms of international law and are fraught with the threat of regional and global destabilization,” the Kremlin said.

“It is a deeply frustrating situation,” British Foreign Secretary William Hague told BBC radio ahead of the London talks. He said that the Assad regime “has continued to act seemingly with impunity.”

At least 16 people were killed across Syria, activists said. One group, the Local Coordination Committees, put the number at 40 with attacks ranging from mountain villages to areas near the capital of Damascus. The reason for the differing tolls was not immediately clear.

The most intense offensive, however, remained on beleaguered Homs, Syria’s third-largest city. Its defiance – amid hundreds of civilian casualties in the past weeks – has eroded Assad’s narrative that the uprising is the work of “armed thugs” and foreign plots.

Images posted online and accounts from activists and correspondents smuggled in – including two Western journalists killed Wednesday – also have stirred comparisons to sieges such as Misrata during last year’s Arab Spring revolt in Libya.

The epicenter – the Baba Amr neighborhood on the city’s southeast corner – is a collection of slum-like apartment blocks with peeling paint and neglected older homes. They draw in workers and fortune-seekers from across Syria to a place known as the “mother of the poor” because of its cheaper cost of living, compared with Damascus or Aleppo.

“They are blanketing Baba Amr with shells and snipers. They are destroying it street by street, inch by inch,” local activist Omar Shaker told The Associated Press.

Residents say 70 percent of the area is now inhabitable in harsh winter weather with temperatures dipping close to freezing some nights. Walls have collapsed; windows are shattered from shells that fall as much as two-a-minute during some of the heaviest barrages.

Another Homs activist, Mulham al-Jundi, called the conditions “catastrophic” in parts of the city, spreading over a valley in central Syria just 18 miles (30 kilometers) from the Lebanese border. Long lines form at even rumors of bread, cans of food or fuel for heaters, he said.

“There simply isn’t enough to go around anymore,” said Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Syria’s state-run media pushed back with its own version: Running photos on the official news agency SANA that claim to show markets full of food in Homs. It called the claims about food shortages “fabricating lies.”

Activists give a very different view. Bodies are buried wherever people can find space, they say. The wounded are too scared to try to reach government-controlled hospitals in other parts of the city. Instead, they stagger into makeshift clinics in kitchens and offices, al-Jundi said.

He said clothing thread is now used after surgical sutures ran out. In some places, medics conduct operations by only the light of an office lamp. In the Bab Drieb neighborhood, volunteers get a crash course in basic first aid before being put to work.

“I saw a nurse teaching a couple of people what to do. They had no idea,” said al-Jundi. “It’s unbelievable and tragic.”

Homs – which is mostly Sunni – was an early flashpoint of dissent against Assad’s regime, which is led by the minority Alawite community, which has Shiite power Iran as its main patron.

In April, protesters gathered at the central Clock Square in Homs, bringing mattresses, food and water in hopes of emulating Cairo’s Tahrir Square during the Egyptian revolution. Homs had a reputation for tolerance between Syria’s religions and Muslim sects, said Mohammad Saleh, an opposition figure who fled the city, but Sunnis have increasingly felt pushed into an underclass status by Assad.

A Western intelligence official said the Syrian military has the ability to “level Homs if it wanted to.” But the risks of backlash from Syria’s majority Sunnis – including many military officers – is far too great, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity under briefing rules.

On Wednesday, shelling of Baba Amr killed American-born veteran war correspondent Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik.

They were among a group of journalists who had crossed into Syria illegally and were sharing accommodations with activists, raising speculation that government forces targeted the makeshift media center where they were staying. But opposition groups had previously described the shelling as indiscriminate. At least two other Western journalists were wounded on Wednesday.

A Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman offered condolences to the families of Colvin and Ochlik, but rejected any responsibility for their deaths. The spokesman urged foreign journalists to respect Syrian laws and not to sneak into the country.

Some Syrians held protests and vigils Wednesday night to honor Colvin and Ochlik.

“Remi Ochlik, Marie Colvin, we will not forget you,” read one banner held by protesters in the town of Qsour in Homs province.

Two other journalists were wounded. In a video posted on YouTube, one of those injured, Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro, said her leg is broken in two places and that she has received some medical treatment but now needs an operation. Bouvier said she was speaking Thursday and is calm throughout the more than six-minute video.

The U.N. estimates that 5,400 people have been killed in repression by the Assad regime against a popular uprising that began 11 months ago. That figure was given in January and has not been updated. Syrian activists put the death toll at more than 7,300. Overall figures cannot be independently confirmed because Syria keeps tight control on the media.

“Every minute counts,” Shaker said. “People will soon start to collapse from lack of sleep and shortages in food.”

The international struggle over how to end Syria’s crisis moves Friday to Tunisia. The meeting is expected to bring together more than 70 nations to look at ways to assist Assad’s opponents.

The United States, Europe and Arab nations worked in London to draft a demand for Assad to impose a cease-fire with 72 hours to allow humanitarian convoys or face new punitive measures, likely to include toughened sanctions.

Officials at the London meeting said some nations have proposed creating protected corridors for humanitarian relief. It was unclear, however, whether it would receive full backing because it would almost certainly require military protection. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the ongoing discussions before the so-called “Friends of Syria” conference in Tunis.

Some Arab nations, such as Qatar, have urged consideration of direct military intervention similar to the NATO-led air campaign that helped end Moammar Gadhafi’s regime in Libya. Western powers have so far opposed trying to mobilize another military coalition for Syria.

More workable, officials said, would be a cease-fire such as the one proposed by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which is calling for a daily two-hour break in fighting to provide aid.

“The efforts that we are undertaking with the international community … are intended to demonstrate the Assad regime’s deepening isolation,” Clinton told reporters. “Our immediate focus is on increasing the pressure. We have got to find ways of getting food, medicine and other humanitarian assistance. Into affected areas. This takes time and it takes a lot of diplomacy.”

If Assad doesn’t comply, “we think that the pressure will continue to build. … I think that the strategy followed by the Syrians and their allies is one that can’t stand the test of legitimacy … for any length of time,” she said. “There will be increasingly capable opposition forces. They will from somewhere, somehow find the means to defend themselves as well as begin offensive measures.”

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the Obama administration still opposes military intervention but “obviously we’ll have to evaluate this as time goes on.”

In Geneva, a panel of U.N. human rights experts said the United Nations has a secret list of top Syrian officials who could face investigation for crimes against humanity. The U.N. experts indicated that the list goes as high as Assad.

Experts said the list appears mostly part of international pressures on Syria rather than a direct threat. Syria isn’t a member of the International Criminal Court so is outside its jurisdiction. Russia also would likely block any moves in the U.N. Security Council to refer the country to the Hague-based tribunal.

The European Union is expected next week to add seven Syrian government ministers to those already under sanctions that free assets and ban visas, said an EU official in Brussels. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of EU rules, said additional restrictions may be imposed on Syria’s central bank, on imports of precious metals from the country, and on cargo flights.

The EU had already sanctioned more than 70 Syrians and 19 organizations, and has banned imports of Syrian oil.

In Amman, Jordan, several dozen Syrians, mainly from Homs, protested at the U.S. Embassy and asked for Western military intervention. “Almighty God, destroy Bashar,” they chanted.

Source: The Huffington Post