28/10/12

Activists say government forces continue air raids in the Syrian capital in breach of a truce violated by both sides.

Syrian fighter jets have bombarded eastern suburbs of the capital, Damascus, activists say, continuing air raids despite an internationally brokered ceasefire supposed to take hold two days ago.

Warplanes reportedly hit the adjacent suburbs of Zamalka, Arbeen, Harasta and Zamalka on Sunday, where government forces are trying to root out rebels. Videos posted online purporting to show the aftermath showed huge plumes of smoke billowing over rooftops.

A statement by the Harasta Media Office, an activists’ organisation, said electricity, water and communications had
been cut and dozens of wounded at the Harasta National Hospital had been moved as the bombardment closed in

Activists also reported fighting in the nearby suburb of Douma, where rebels have been attacking roadblocks, and clashes in Qadam district.

Damascus suburbs have played a major role in the 19-month-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, both in terms of peaceful protests and armed resistance.

Eid truce bid

Joint UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi had brokered a ceasefire that was to begin on Friday, the first day of Eid al-Adha.

Regime forces and the rebels had both agreed to a call by Brahimi to lay down their arms for the four-day Muslim holiday, with both reserving the right to respond to attacks.

But fierce fighting erupted after a short lull in fighting, with the rival sides accusing each other of breaching the ceasefire.

State news agency SANA said “armed terrorist groups” had attacked checkpoints and planted explosive devices in several cities.

While violence flared in Damascus on Sunday, shelling and clashes were also reported in the eastern Deir al-Zor province.

Fighting was also reported near Maaret al-Numan, a town along the Aleppo-Damascus highway that rebels seized earlier this month. Opposition fighters have also besieged a nearby military base and repeatedly attacked government supply convoys heading there.

Reports of violence cannot be independently verified as most journalists have been barred from entering the country legally.

The opposition says an estimated 32,000 people have been killed since the uprising began in March last year. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled to neighbouring countries.

24/10/12

AP  |  By MAGGIE FICK

CAIRO (AP) — The U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria says the Syrian government and some rebel leaders have agreed to a ceasefire during the upcoming Muslim four-day holiday.

Lakhdar Brahimi told reporters in Cairo on Wednesday that the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad will issue a statement on accepting a truce today or tomorrow. The Eid al-Adha holiday begins Friday.

Brahimi didn’t elaborate on how such a truce would be monitored.

The fighting in Syria has killed more than 34,000 people since March last year, according to activists.

22/10/12

(Reuters) - Syrian rebels cast doubt on Monday on prospects for a temporary truce aimed at stemming bloodshed in the 19-month-old conflict, saying it was not clear how an informal ceasefire this week could be implemented.

International mediator Lakhdar Brahimi, who held talks in Damascus on Sunday with President Bashar al-Assad, has proposed Assad’s forces and the rebels hold fire during the three-day Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha which starts on Friday.

His call has won the backing of international powers on both sides of the crisis including Iran and Russia, which have provided support to Assad, and Turkey, which backs the rebels in a conflict that has killed 30,000 people.

But neither Syria’s army nor the rebels have shown signs of easing off as Eid nears. More than 200 people were killed on Sunday in fighting and bombardments including 60 soldiers, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

On Monday the British-based group reported army shelling in Deir al-Zor in the east and Deraa in the south, as well as heavy clashes in towns and suburbs around the capital Damascus.

“This truce is just a media bubble. Who is going to implement it and who is going to supervise it?” said Colonel Qassem Saadeddine, a former army officer who defected and is now head of a rebel military council in Homs province.

“We are still committed to any UN decision. But on this truce…what is the mechanism to implement it?” Saadeddine, who is also spokesman of the joint command of the Free Syrian Army inside Syria, told Reuters.

He said rebels had implemented the last ceasefire in Syria - an April 12 deal brokered by former mediator Kofi Annan - but that Assad’s forces had not honored it. Syrian authorities say it was they who implemented and rebels who broke the ceasefire.

Another rebel commander in Damascus, who declined to be named, was more blunt: “The truce will not happen. We will not accept it. It’s not in our interest,” he said, adding that a three-day truce would achieve little anyway.

JORDANIAN SOLDIER KILLED

Syria’s conflict has spilled over into its neighbors in recent weeks. The army has exchanged cross-border fire with Turkey, a Lebanese intelligence chief whose investigations implicated Syrian officials was assassinated on Friday and a Jordanian soldier was killed near the border overnight.

Information Minister Samih Maaytah said the soldier, who died in clashes with Islamist fighters trying to cross into Syria, was the first to die on the Syrian border since the uprising erupted against Assad last year.

Brahimi declined to say how Assad had responded to his ceasefire appeal. After his talks with the president he said the idea had won wide support among rebels and the political opposition, but suggested it was up to individual groups to decide how to implement it.

“Everyone can start this when they want, today or tomorrow for example, for the period of the Eid and beyond,” he told reporters.

Syria has not publicly embraced Brahimi’s proposal and state media quoted Assad as telling him that any initiative must be centered around “halting terrorism and … commitment by the countries involved in supporting, arming and harboring the terrorists in Syria to stop these actions”.

Syrian authorities blame neighboring Turkey in particular for the bloodshed because it has sheltered mainly Sunni Muslim rebels fighting to overthrow Assad, from Syria’s Alawite minority which is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam. Gulf Sunni powers Saudi Arabia and Qatar also support arming the rebels.

“The indications that are now apparent and the government’s reaction…do not show any signs of a real desire to implement this ceasefire,” said Ahmed Ben Hilli, deputy secretary-general of the Arab League.

“We are days away from Eid. We hope the situation changes and the government and opposition respond even a little bit to this door for negotiations,” he said on the sidelines of a conference in Dubai.

Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Ami-Abdollahian called for both sides to establish a lasting ceasefire, and said the two sides in the conflict were beginning to converge.

“The views of different sides are getting closer to each other and they have reached the conclusion that they should consider a political solution in Syria,” Abdollahian said after talks with his Russian counterpart Mikhail Bogdanov.

His comments might reflect the growing concerns of outside powers at the relentless bloodshed but on the ground both parties to the armed conflict appear committed to a military solution.

The Syrian Observatory said there were heavy clashes in towns around Damascus such as Harasta, Douma and Artouz, and said helicopter gunships fired rockets on a village in the northern province of Idlib.

Rebel fighters also attacked a military base at Wadi al-Deif, close to the town of Maarat al-Numan which they seized earlier this month, cutting the country’s main north-south highway linking Damascus and Aleppo.

(Additional reporting by Zahra Hosseinian, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Amena Bakr in Dubai; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Angus MacSwan

21/10/12

Inside #Syria - Will a temporary

truce work in Syria?

21/10/12

Bomb blast in Damascus as Assad meets mediator

* Assad says curbing arms central to any initiative

* Brahimi says opposition would respond to govt ceasefire

By Marwan Makdesi

DAMASCUS, Oct 21 (Reuters) - A car bomb killed 13 people in central Damascus on Sunday as President Bashar al-Assad told an international mediator seeking a truce in Syria’s civil war that the key to any political solution was to stop arming rebels.

The bomb exploded outside a police station in the mainly Christian central Bab Touma district of the capital while Assad held talks with United Nations-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who is pushing for a temporary ceasefire to mark the Islamic festival of Eid al-Adha.

State news agency SANA said the president said Syria supported “any sincere effort to find a political solution to the crisis, based on respect for Syrian sovereignty and rejecting foreign intervention.”

Any proposal “must be centred around the principle of halting the terrorism and … commitment by the countries involved in supporting, arming and harbouring the terrorists in Syria to stop these actions”, SANA quoted Assad as saying.

Syrian authorities blame neighbouring Turkey in particular for the bloodshed because it has sheltered mainly Sunni Muslim rebels fighting to overthrow Assad, from Syria’s Alawite minority which is an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam. Gulf Sunni powers Saudi Arabia and Qatar also support arming the rebels.

Syria’s conflict, which started with peaceful protests for reform, has escalated into a civil war marked by heavy use of artillery and air power by Assad’s forces and regular bombings against symbols of his authority in Syria’s main cities.

The Interior Ministry said the Bab Touma bomb, on the edge of the old city of Damascus, killed 13 people. Security forces cut off access to the area. Television pictures showed shattered glass on the road and several burnt out cars.

HOPING FOR CALM

Speaking after his meeting with Assad, Brahimi gave few details of the talks but reiterated his call for a pause in the violence, which activists say has killed more than 30,000 people since the uprising against Assad erupted in March last year.

“Everyone can start this (ceasefire) when they want, today or tomorrow for example, for the period of the Eid and beyond,” he told reporters at a Damascus hotel. Eid al-Adha begins at dusk on Thursday, lasting for three or four days.

Brahimi said he had contacted opposition figures inside and outside Syria, including rebel fighters, as well as officials in neighbouring countries, some of which support the insurgency.

“They answered that they would respond positively to a (ceasefire) initiative from the government,” he said. “We hope this Eid in Syria will be calm, even if it is not a happy Eid.”

He added: “If we do find that this calm continued through the Eid, we will try to build on it. If that does not happen, we will try nevertheless and work to open the path to hope for the Syrian people.”

Turkey has called for all sides to observe Brahimi’s truce. Iran, one of Assad’s major backers, has also supported the call but said the main problem in Syria was foreign interference, such as arming the rebels.

The United States, which has been a vocal critic of Assad but has little apparent influence on the ground, threw its weight behind the ceasefire call on Friday.

A previous ceasefire in April collapsed after just a few days, with each side blaming the other. Mediator Kofi Annan resigned his post in frustration a few months later.

The violence has spread across Syria’s frontiers. Assad’s forces exchanged cross-border artillery fire with Turkey several times this month and on Friday a huge car bomb in Beirut killed a top intelligence official whose investigations had implicated Syria in trying to stoke violence on Lebanese soil.

Syria’s Information Minister Omran Zoabi told reporters on Friday: “We condemn this terrorist explosion and all these explosions wherever they happen. Nothing justifies them.”

20/10/12

(Reuters) - International mediator Lakhdar Brahimi met Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem in Damascus on Saturday, pressing for a brief ceasefire between President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and rebels seeking his overthrow.

Brahimi has called for a ceasefire during next week’s Islamic Eid al-Adha holiday to stem the bloodshed in a 19-month-old conflict which activists say has killed at least 30,000 people and claimed the lives of 220 more on Friday.

Syria’s Foreign Ministry said the talks were “constructive and serious” and that Brahimi and Moualem discussed “objective and realistic ways of halting the violence by either side, to prepare the ground for comprehensive dialogue between Syrians”.

It added that dialogue, rather than foreign intervention, was the only way to resolve the crisis.

Syria has so far given a guarded response to Brahimi’s ceasefire proposal, suggesting it wants guarantees that rebels would reciprocate any move by Assad’s forces.

Brahimi, the joint U.N.-Arab League special envoy for the Syria crisis, has been criss-crossing the region with the aim of convincing Assad’s main backers and his foes to support the idea of a truce during the holiday, which starts at dusk on Thursday.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has called for all sides to observe the three or four-day ceasefire. Iran, one of Assad’s major backers, has also supported the call but added that the main problem in Syria was foreign interference, such as arming the rebels.

The United States, which has been a vocal critic of Assad but has little apparent influence on the ground, threw its weight behind the ceasefire call on Friday.

“We urge the Syrian government to stop all military operations and call on opposition forces to follow suit,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said.

A previous ceasefire in April collapsed after just a few days, with each side blaming the other. Mediator Kofi Annan resigned his post in frustration a few months later.

VIOLENCE CROSSING FRONTIERS

The violence has spread across Syria’s frontiers. Assad’s forces exchanged cross-border artillery fire with Turkey several times this month and on Friday a huge car bomb in Beirut killed a top intelligence official whose investigations had implicated Syria in trying to stoke violence on Lebanese soil.

Syria’s Information Minister Omran Zoabi condemned the bombing. “We condemn this terrorist explosion and all these explosions wherever they happen. Nothing justifies them,” he told reporters on Friday.

Next week’s truce would be self-imposed, with no international observers, and there has been no sign of a reduction in violence ahead of the Eid holiday.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported heavy clashes on the main north-south highway connecting Damascus with Aleppo on Saturday. The highway town of Maarat al-Numan and villages around it in Idlib were shelled, after rebels took the area a week ago.

It said a reported 60 people had been killed in Syria by nightfall on Saturday.

The United States has repeatedly said it believes Assad must step down to allow for a political transition in Syria, and blamed Russia and China for blocking moves at the U.N. Security Council aimed at increasing pressure on his government.

Russia and China, joined by Iran, say they are opposed to foreign intervention in Syria and accuse Western powers of working with Arab allies in the Gulf to support Syria’s armed opposition in a conflict that appears to be heading toward a sectarian proxy war.

Turkey’s Davutoglou, speaking in Sanaa on Saturday, said Yemen’s power transfer deal which allowed President Ali Abdullah Saleh to step down was no longer a suitable model for Syria.

“The Yemen solution was suitable for Syria nine months ago,” he said. “But now, because every country has its own special circumstances and due to the latest developments on the Syrian arena which saw the use of artillery and the air force in bombarding Syrian cities, this has narrowed the room for implementing such solutions.”

(Writing by Dominic Evans; editing by Andrew Roche)

19/10/12

International mediator Lakhdar Brahimi will meet Syrian officials in the capital Damascus over the next few days in the hope of a securing a brief ceasefire in the war between President Bashar al-Assad’s government and rebel forces.

Brahimi arrived in the city on Friday and will meet Syrian foreign minister Walid al-Muallem on Saturday morning, the UN spokesman in Damascus, Khaled al-Masri, said.

He did not say whether the envoy would meet Assad himself.

“We will talk about the ceasefire and the Syrian issue in general. It is important to decrease the violence. We will talk with the government and political parties and civil society about the Syrian issue,” Brahimi told reporters when he arrived.

Eid cease-fire?

The violence showed no sign of abating, however, with opposition activists reporting heavy street clashes in Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city, and intensified army bombing of towns along the strategic north-south highway.

Brahimi, the envoy for the United Nations and the Arab League, has been criss-crossing the region with the aim of convincing Assad’s main backers and his foes to support a truce during the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha which starts next week.

Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, on Friday called for all sides to observe the three or four days of ceasefire.

“It is important that the Syrian regime, which bombards its own people with fighter planes and helicopters, halts these attacks immediately and unconditionally,” Davutoglu said in Ankara.

Iran also backed the ceasefire call but added that the main problem in Syria was foreign interference, a reference to support for the rebels by Gulf Arab states, the United Sates and other Western powers, and Turkey.

“We consider the establishment of an immediate ceasefire an important step in helping the Syrian people,” said Iranian deputy foreign minister Hossein Amir Abdullahian, as quoted by Mehr news agency.

“Syria has taken important steps against terrorism and foreign interference and is pursuing political reforms and the security of the country.”

No ’trust’

Despite positive words from the different backers of the warring factions, the task of securing even a temporary ceasefire appears daunting in an intensifying conflict in which more than 30,000 people have been killed over 19 months.

A previous ceasefire in April collapsed after just a few days, with each side blaming the other. Mediator Kofi Annan resigned his post in frustration a few months later. Next week’s truce would be self-imposed, with no international observers.

Hilal Khashan, a Lebanese political scientist, said that Turkey and Iran were probably promoting the ceasefire because “they need to seem like they are doing something”.

“I don’t think it will work. Neither side trusts the other, and the opposition fears the regime will use the ceasefire to bolster its positions in Aleppo and Idlib,” he told the Reuters news agency  in Beirut.

A rebel group calling itself the Joint Command for Military and Revolution Councils in Syria said in a video statement that it was willing to respect the ceasefire on condition that the Assad government released detainees, particularly women, and lifted the siege of the central city of Homs.

It also called for a halt in air strikes and for access to humanitarian aid - something Assad has in practice denied to several international organisations. It also said the army must not take advantage of the truce to fortify its positions.

Other rebel groups say a decision has not been taken.

17/10/12

Video of a helicopter in flames was posted on YouTube

The Syrian government has indicated that it is interested in exploring a temporary ceasefire proposed by the UN and Arab League envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi.

Spokesman Jihad al-Makdisi told the BBC that the government would listen to any initiative to end the crisis, but that both sides would need to be involved.

The opposition meanwhile said they would match any government ceasefire.

Dramatic video, said to have been shot in Syria, has emerged of a helicopter exploding in mid-air.

The authenticity of the footage could not be independently confirmed.

Syrian rebels told al-Jazeera TV that they had downed a Syrian army helicopter in the north-western province of Idlib.

‘Microscopic step’

Mr Brahimi wants a truce over the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha, which starts on 25 October, to “allow a political process to develop”.

In an interview with the BBC on Tuesday evening, Mr Makdisi said the government in Damascus would listen to any initiative Mr Brahimi might have to “stabilise the situation in Syria and end the crisis, whether on the occasion of Eid al-Adha, independence day or any other anniversary”.

“If we want the initiative to succeed, it is not enough for only the Syrian [government] side to be bound by it,” he said.

“But at the same time, I would say that calming down the situation is in the interest of the Syrian government because we support a political solution and dialogue under this umbrella without preconditions.

“The purpose of [a ceasefire] is not calm itself but transition to a political dialogue between Syrians themselves.”

After holding talks with Lebanese Prime Minster Najib Mikati in Beirut on Wednesday morning, Mr Brahimi called on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to take the lead in implementing the ceasefire.

He revealed that the Syrian opposition had told him that any ceasefire observed by government forces would be reciprocated.

“We heard from everyone we met in the opposition, and everyone [else] we met that, if the government stops using violence, ‘We will respond to this directly’,” he said.

“The Syrian people are burying hundreds of people each day, so if they bury fewer people during the days of the holiday, this could be the start of Syria’s return from the dangerous situation that it has slipped and is continuing to slip toward.”

Mr Brahimi also warned neighbouring countries and regional powers who have been supporting the Syrian rebels: “It is not possible that this crisis will stay inside Syrian borders forever.

“Either it has to be taken care of or it will spread and spill over and consume everything. A truce for Eid al-Adha would be a microscopic step on the road to solving the Syria crisis.”

A ceasefire negotiated by his predecessor, Kofi Annan, in April broke down within days and was followed by an escalation in the conflict.

Human rights and opposition activists say more than 30,000 people have been killed since anti-government protests erupted in March 2011.

17/10/12

Turkey on Wednesday threw its support behind a ceasefire plan for Syria’s 19-month conflict that has been proposed by international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.

“In principle, we consider a ceasefire… to be declared during the Eid al-Adha as useful,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in an interview with A Haber television.

Brahimi, joint envoy of the Arab League and the United Nations, has proposed a truce for the four-day Eid al-Adha Muslim holiday at the end of the month to pave the way for a political process.

The UN envoy’s proposal was also discussed during a bilateral meeting between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the sidelines of a regional summit in Baku on Tuesday, according to Davutoglu.

“Iran has declared support [for the ceasefire proposal],” he said.

Turkey and Iran remain at the two opposite ends of the conflict in Syria.

Ankara has taken an increasingly strident line towards its southern neighbor, and Shiite-led Iran is Syria’s closest regional ally and is accused by several Western and Sunni-led Arab nations of providing military aid to President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Turkey backs the Syrian rebels and is currently sheltering more than 100,000 Syrian refugees in several camps along the border.

-AFP

16/10/12

By Angus MacSwan and Dominic Evans | Reuters

Reuters/Reuters - Smoke rises from a damaged building following what activists said was shelling by forces loyal to Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in Baidah, near Homs October 15, 2012. Picture taken October 15, 2012. REUTERS/Muhammad Ibrahim/Shaam News Network/Handout

EIRUT (Reuters) - International peace envoy Lakhdar Brahimi appealed to Iran to help arrange a ceasefire in Syria during the Islamic holiday of Eid al-Adha as rebels and government forces fought street by street and village by village on Monday.

Brahimi made the request in talks with Iranian leaders on Sunday in Tehran, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s closest regional ally in his campaign to crush a 19-month-old uprising.

The veteran Algerian diplomat said the civil war in Syria was getting worse by the day and stressed the urgent need to stop the bloodshed, his spokesman said on Monday.

He suggested the truce be held during the Eid holiday, which starts around October 25 and lasts several days. It would “help create an environment that would allow a political process to develop”.

There was no immediate response from either side and with fighting raging on Monday in several Syrian cities and in the countryside, it was not clear if they would want to put the brakes on any battlefield advantages.

A ceasefire brokered by Brahimi’s predecessor Kofi Annan in April fell apart after a few days and Annan later quit his job in frustration.

A senior United Nations political official, briefing the Security Council in New York, said that for any ceasefire to succeed, “this must be a collective effort by all inside Syria, in the region and beyond”.

The official, Jeffrey Feltman, said all governments should stop supplying weapons and giving military assistance to any side in the conflict.

“Human rights abuses, including arbitrary detentions, torture and summary executions continue unabated. The voices of the peaceful protests that emerged so proudly last year have receded in the tremor of fighting,” he said.

The conflict has claimed more than 30,000 lives since March 2011, when demonstrations first broke out calling for an end to the Assad family’s dynastic rule.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 50 people had been killed across the country so far on Monday, nearly half of them soldiers. That followed a death toll of 170 on Sunday.

ALEPPO STREET-FIGHTING

The pro-opposition Observatory said two rebel-held districts in northeast Aleppo, al-Shaar and Karm al-Jabal, came under heavy bombardment from Assad’s forces on Monday. It also reported clashes in the district of Jdeideh, just north of the ancient citadel in Syria’s biggest city.

Syrian television showed footage of soldiers inside Aleppo’s Great Mosque, which dates back to the 8th century and was badly damaged in fighting between government forces and rebels battling for control of the Old City.

The mosque’s medieval arches were charred, its elaborate wooden panels smashed and metal filigree lanterns lay broken in the courtyard. The sound of nearby gunfire could be heard.

In northwestern Idlib province, government warplanes bombed several towns on Monday, the Observatory said.

Rebels had surrounded an army garrison on Sunday close to a northwestern town in the latest push to seize more territory near the border with Turkey, opposition activists said.

Several hundred soldiers were trapped in the siege of a base in Urum al-Sughra, on the main road between Aleppo, Syria’s commercial and industrial hub, and Turkey.

“Rebels attacked an armored column sent from Aleppo to rescue the 46th Regiment at Urum al-Sughra and stopped it in its tracks,” Firas Fuleifel, one of the activists, told Reuters by phone from Idlib province, the main base and supply route for the insurgents fighting in Aleppo.

He said a jet was shot down while trying to provide air support to the column.

On the border with Turkey’s Hatay province, the rebels appeared to have a tentative hold after four days of heavy fighting in the town of Azmarin and surrounding villages.

Giving an overview of the military situation, analyst Shashank Joshi of the Royal United Services Institute in London said the rebels, boosted by weapons from Gulf States and gaining in fighting skills, were possibly doing better. Assad’s forces were increasingly stretched and taking more casualties.

On the other hand, opposition forces have not coalesced and formed a reliable chain of command connecting local groups.

“So even if government forces are losing their grip, what is taking over is many opposition groups,” Joshi told Reuters. “I am less confident of regime collapse within six months than I was in July.”

The rebels have made ground in Aleppo but not as much as they would have liked and at much higher cost, he said.

It would be important if the rebels are able to maintain their block of the north-south highway between Damascus and Aleppo but the lack of cover on the roads make them vulnerable to air strikes, he said.

If they can hold the road, the government’s helicopter fleet would be strained as it would be diverted from an attack role by the need to resupply stranded towns.

TURKEY GAME-CHANGER

The “game-changer” could be Turkey, once an ally of Assad and now a leader in international calls for him to quit, Joshi said.

Turkey’s confrontation with Syria deepened in the past two weeks because of cross-border shelling and escalated on October 10 when Ankara forced down a Syrian airliner en route from Moscow, accusing it of carrying Russian munitions for Assad’s military.

Ankara said in on Sunday it had closed Turkish air space to Syrian planes. Damascus also banned Turkish planes from flying over its territory.

Russia has said there were no weapons on the grounded plane and that it was carrying a non-legal cargo of radar. But it acted to cool friction with Ankara - Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the incident would not hurt “solid” relations.

After meeting mediator Brahimi, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Salehi said Iran was ready to work with him for peace and repeated Tehran’s call for an immediate ceasefire before reforms and elections to resolve the conflict.

“We all need to join hands so that this conflict comes to a halt and further bloodshed is stopped,” Salehi said.

Shi’ite Iran is the main ally in the region of Assad, who is a member of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam.

The uprising has been led by the Sunni Muslim majority and is backed by Sunni-ruled Arab states and by Turkey, also led by a party with its roots in Sunni Islamist politics.

Turkey’s disaster management agency said on Monday the number of Syrian refugees housed in camps in southern Turkey has exceeded 100,000, reaching the limits of its ability to cope.

Two other Syrian neighbors, Lebanon and Jordan, are sheltering 94,000 and 106,000 refugees respectively, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

(Additional reporting by Jonathon Burch on the Turkey-Syria border, Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman, Yeganeh Torbati and Zahra Hosseinian in Dubai and Oliver Holmes in Beirut; Editing by Jon Hemming)

15/10/12

UN envoy to Syria urges temporary ceasefire

Shuttling between neighbours Iran and Iraq as Syria fighting rages on, Lakhdar Brahimi welcomes “ideas from all sides”.

The UN-Arab League envoy has called for a ceasefire in Syria during the upcoming Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha, as the revolt against the Syrian government enters its 20th month with a death toll of more than 33,000.

Lakhdar Brahim made his call on Monday as he shuttled between Syria’s neighbours, which have been divided by the conflict.

He was in Iraq after holding talks in Iran, closest ally of Bashar al-Assad, Syria’s president.

Brahimi is weighing seeking authorisation for a peacekeeping force if a political deal can be struck, Ahmed Ramadan, an official of the opposition Syrian National Council, told AFP news agency as the exiled opposition bloc met in Doha, Qatar.

Iranian officials put forward proposals for a political transition during their meetings with Brahimi but they were for one supervised by Assad, Hossein Amir Abdolahian, Iran’s deputy foreign minister, said on Monday, something that is likely to be unacceptable to the Syrian opposition.

Brahimi said he welcomed ideas from all sides.

“We hope all these ideas gather into a project to put an end to the Syrian people’s nightmare,” he said.

The Eid al-Adha holiday later this month marks the climax of the annual Muslim pilgrimage which is an obligation for the faithful who can afford it once in a lifetime.

In another diplomatic development, Sergei Lavrov, Russian foreign minister, whose government is a traditional ally of Syria, was in Luxembourg on Sunday for talks with his European Union counterparts.

“We discussed Syria really in all its dimensions with Mr Lavrov last night,” William Hague, British foreign secretary, said on Monday. “I can’t say that we made any progress.”

Russia and China have repeatedly blocked action at the UN Security Council against the Assad government.

The EU imposed a new package of unilateral sanctions on Monday, its 19th since the conflict erupted in March last year.

European politicians say the measures target Syrian personalities linked to violence against protesters and entities involved in supplying equipment used for repression by the Assad government.

Fighting in Aleppo

Inside Syria, at least 16 soldiers were killed in fighting around two checkpoints near the commercial capital of Aleppo, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), the US-based opposition network, said on Monday.

Near one checkpoint, troops killed the driver of a vehicle which was carrying three tonnes of explosives that he intended to detonate, a security source told AFP.

Aleppo has been the theatre of intense conflict for the past three months, including in the city’s UNESCO-listed historic heart, with damage to both the ancient covered market, or souk, and the landmark 13th Century Umayyad Mosque.

Assad ordered the formation of a panel to oversee the mosque’s restoration, the state SANA news agency said.

A day after troops recaptured the complex in heavy fighting with rebels, spent cartridges and broken glass still littered the ground, an AFP correspondent reported.

Fire had destroyed some of the antique carpets and wooden furnishings that used to adorn the place of worship and charred one of its intricately sculpted colonnades.

In the town of Albu Kamal on the Iraqi border, shelling by the army of rebel positions killed three children aged six, seven and 12. They were among at least 48 people killed nationwide, the SOHR said.

Separately, over the weekend, rebel fighters pushed Syrian troops from the strategic town of Maarat al-Numan, in the northern Idlib province, forcing them to retreat to two military barracks on its outskirts.

Rebel commanders called the victory “a major breakthrough”, though fierce fighting continued in the greater Idlib province as government troops launched a counter-attack in a bid to regain territory lost recently in the northern battlegrounds.

Against this backdrop, a Turkish disaster agency said on Monday that the number of Syrians fleeing the conflict in their homeland and seeking refuge in Turkey now exceeded 100,000.

The AFAD agency said in a statement that there were now 100,363 Syrians at more than a dozen camps in Turkish provinces along the border.

Turkey had previously said that it would be able to handle no more than 100,000 refugees and had called for safe zones to protect people on Syrian soil.

Turkish officials have said, however, that the countrywill not close its doors to refugees if the number exceeds the threshold.

10/10/12

Turkey’s Gen Ozel met relatives of those killed by Syrian shells in Akcakale

Turkey’s top military commander has warned Syria that it will respond with greater force if it continues its cross-border shelling.

Five Turkish civilians were killed by Syrian mortar fire last week, prompting Turkey to fire into Syria for the first time since the uprising began.

Meanwhile, the US has confirmed reports it has a military task force in Jordan.

It is monitoring the security of Syria’s chemical and biological weapons as well as helping with the aid effort.

In Turkey, a Syrian passenger plane has been forced to land at Ankara airport. The plane was said to have been travelling from Moscow and Turkish media reports suggested it was suspected of carrying weapons. There is no official statement yet.

Ceasefire rejected

The Turkish armed forces chief of staff Gen Necdet Ozel has been visiting the town of Akcakale, and meeting families of the two women and three children killed there by Syrian shells last week.

He told reporters: “We have retaliated [for Syrian shelling] and if it continues, we’ll respond more strongly.”

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has said there is no intention of starting a war with Syria but that Turkey will defend its territory.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon had described the cross-border shelling as “extremely dangerous” and has called on Damascus to declare a unilateral ceasefire.

But Syrian foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Maqdisi said rebels would have to stop fighting first, and that Damascus had instead asked Mr Ban to send delegates to countries including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey who he said “finance, shelter, train and arm these armed groups” asking them to show “their commitment to stopping these acts”.

Within Syria, there are reports of fighting along a main route into the biggest city, Aleppo.

UK-based activist group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says rebels have taken control of Maaret al-Numan in Idlib province, a town on the main highway that links Damascus with Aleppo.

The Observatory is one of the most prominent organisations documenting and reporting incidents and casualties in the Syrian conflict. The group says its reports are impartial, though its information cannot be independently verified.

Losing Maaret al-Numan would make it difficult for the Syrian army to send reinforcements to Aleppo itself, the organisation says, adding that Syrian army helicopters were circling the area.

In other developments, the pro-government TV station al-Ikhbariya said one of its cameramen, Mohammed al-Ashram, had been killed in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor.

In June, seven journalists and security guards working for the station were killed when gunmen attacked its headquarters south of Damascus.

Chemical weapon planning

On Wednesday, US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta told the BBC that an American military team was in Jordan helping it deal with the influx of Syrian refugees.

Activists say rebels are now in control of the strategic town of Maaret al-Numan

Mr Panetta confirmed a report in the New York Times which said more than 150 American specialists were helping Jordan to provide humanitarian aid and with preparations for the possibility of the Syrian conflict spreading to the wider region.

Mr Panetta said the US had been working with Jordan for some time.

He said the advisers were also helping to ensure the security of chemical and biological warfare sites in Syria.

US President Barack Obama has said the deployment or use of such weapons would widen the conflict in the region and would represent a “red line” that would change his thinking.

There are also concerns that the Syrian government could lose control of the weapons.

US Acting Assistant Secretary of Defence George Little told the BBC the shelling into Turkey showed there were “various scenarios in which the Assad regime’s reprehensible actions could affect our partners in the region”.

“For this reason and many others, we are always working on our contingency planning, for which we consult with our friends,” he said

The international community has urged Syria to do more for those displaced by the fighting

As Syria’s neighbours struggled with the numbers of people fleeing the country, there is mounting pressure on Syria to do more for those displaced.

AFP reported that the first formal refugee camp opened within Syria itself on Wednesday. The site, near the Turkish border, has been set up with the help of foreign donors, including Libya, the agency reports.

In the UK, two people have been arrested at London’s Heathrow Airport on suspicion of travelling to Syria for alleged terrorist activities. They are said to have flown into the UK from Egypt.

British police said one line of enquiry was whether the pair were involved in the abduction of two journalists - a British and a Dutch man - in Syria earlier this year.

Dozens of people are thought to have travelled from Britain to Syria to fight in the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, which began 19 months ago.

By John Irish

PARIS, Oct 9 (Reuters) - U.N. special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi will go to Syria this week to try to persuade Bashar al-Assad’s government to call an immediate ceasefire in an 18-month-old conflict with rebels, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Tuesday.

Efforts by Brahimi’s predecessor, Kofi Annan, to engineer a ceasefire collapsed within days, with neither the Damascus government nor opposition forces willing to abide by conditions for an effective cessation of hostilities.

Brahimi is to meet Assad as fighting rages in Syria’s biggest city Aleppo and government forces pursue offensives to dislodge rebels from provincial bastions elsewhere, causing increasing spillover into neighbouring countries especially Turkey, prompting Ban to warn against the danger of escalation.

“Brahimi is now going to the region again and he will visit several countries and after that he will visit Syria,” Ban told a news conference along with French President Francois Hollande after the two met in Paris.

Ban said Brahimi aimed to curb the bloodshed and negotiate a deal to allow more humanitarian aid into Syria, where a civilian protest movement has evolved into an armed insurgency and one million people have been driven from their homes.

“First and foremost, the violence must be stopped as soon as possible,” Ban said. Diplomats said Brahimi would first visit Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt, all regional diplomatic heavyweights, for consultations before heading to Damascus.

In September, his first month on the job, Brahimi met Assad in Damascus and visited Syrian refugee camps in Turkey and Jordan. The U.N. envoy said afterwards that he had a “few ideas” but no full plan on how to defuse the conflict, which he described as “extremely bad and getting worse”.

On Monday, Turkish President Abdullah Gul warned that “worst case scenarios” were playing out in Syria as Turkey’s army fired shells over the border for the sixth day running in response to shelling from the Syrian side. Northern Syria near the Turkish border has seen heavy fighting in the civil war.

LEERY OF UNILATERAL CEASEFIRE

Asked how Assad reacted to calls for a ceasefire, Ban said he had conveyed a “strong message” for a unilateral truce.

“Of course, their reaction was what will happen if they do it and the opposition forces continue (to fight)?” he said.

Ban said he was discussing how to provide assurances to both rebels and the government in talks with the U.N. Security Council and countries in the region. “I am getting positive support from the key countries,” he said.

He repeated a call for those countries providing weapons to both sides to stop. Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey have backed the rebels, while Assad’s main allies are Iran and Russia.

Turkey has bolstered its military presence along the 900-km (560-mile) border with Syria and responded in kind to gunfire and shelling coming from the south, where Assad’s forces have been battling insurgents holding swathes of territory.

Hollande, among the most outspoken Western critics of Assad, said he would push for more punitive sanctions against Damascus in hope of forcing the Syrian leader to the negotiating table.

“The difficulty we are facing is not linked to the U.S. election, but to the division at the U.N. Security Council to take immediate decisions that would be useful to the Syrian people,” he said.

Russia and China have vetoed Western-backed attempts to have the Council pass harsh U.N. sanctions aimed at isolating Assad.

Activists say more than 30,000 people have been killed in the uprising against Assad.

BEIRUT (Reuters) - The head of the United Nations monitors in Syria said on Monday violence was intensifying across the country, blaming both President Bashar al-Assad’s forces and rebel fighters for ignoring the plight of civilians.

“It is clear that violence is increasing in many parts of Syria,” General Babacar Gaye, head of the U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria, told journalists in Damascus.

“The indiscriminate use of heavy weapons by the government and targeted attacks by the opposition in urban centers are inflicting a heavy toll on innocent civilians.

“I deeply regret that none of the parties has prioritized the needs of civilians.”

Activists say more than 18,000 people, including soldiers, rebels and civilians, have been killed since the start of the Syrian uprising against Assad in March last year.

Assad’s forces are battling to regain control of the biggest city, Aleppo, from rebel fighters who went on the offensive last month, seizing districts of the capital and the northern commercial hub, as well as several border crossings.

Free Syrian Army rebels also control towns and villages in a wide swathe of territory near the northern border with Turkey.

Assad’s forces have hit back, regaining much of Damascus and bombarding opposition strongholds in and around the capital. Residents reported overnight shelling from the Qassioun mountains overlooking north Damascus into Jobar neighborhood.

13/08/2012

Activists also reported shelling in the northern Damascus suburb of Tell, which they say has been under rebel control for two weeks, and in Muadamiya suburb, where they said four men had been found executed after troops pulled out.

State television said the army was battling rebels in the city of Homs and had attacked “terrorist lairs” in the town of Talbiseh to the north.

The mandate for the U.N. monitors, whose original mission was to observe an April ceasefire that never took hold, expires on August 19. Their numbers have already been cut to a third because violence has made it impossible for them to move around.

“But the remaining 100 observers, along with our civilian colleagues, will operate till the last minute,” Gaye said.

“I call on the parties to cease military operations and come to the (negotiating) table,” he said, adding that he and his colleagues had delivered the same appeal in person to the government and the Syrian opposition abroad.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman; Writing by Dominic Evans; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

DAMASCUS (AFP) - International envoy Kofi Annan has announced a new political “approach” in a bid to end Syria’s 16-month-old conflict, as the West voices concern over the violence spreading across the Lebanese border.

“We discussed the need to end the violence and ways and means of doing so. We agreed an approach which I will share with the armed opposition,” UN-Arab League envoy Annan said after meeting Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus on Monday.

Syrian foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi called the meeting “constructive and good”.

Stepping up efforts to halt the carnage which monitors say has cost more than 17,000 lives, Annan then travelled on to Iran, Syria’s closest regional ally, in his quest to broker a solution.

The diplomatic efforts were carried out against the increasingly familiar backdrop of bloodshed in Syria, with the United States and the European Union expressing concern at the outbreak of cross-border clashes with Lebanon.

Shells fired from Syria landed overnight in northern Lebanon after an exchange of fire along the border, a senior Lebanese security official told AFP early Tuesday.

The Syrian shells were fired into Lebanon following a cross-border gun battle, the source added.

There was no immediate report of casualties, but the latest incident came just two days after border clashes in which two girls were killed and several other people wounded in Lebanon.

US Ambassador to Lebanon Maura Connelly on Monday called on Damascus to “respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Lebanon”.

In Brussels EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton’s office released a statement saying she “strongly condemns the recent shelling of the Lebanese border area by Syrian artillery, causing several deaths and injuries”.

Monday’s interventions also came as at least 58 people were killed nationwide, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, a day after nearly 100 people died.

Pro-government Al-Watan newspaper said Annan’s discussions focused on the results of the Geneva meeting at the end of June.

They discussed means “to implement the results of the meeting… on forming a transitional government in Syria that groups government and opposition representatives without mention of Assad’s departure”, it said.

World powers in Geneva agreed a plan for a transition which did not make an explicit call for Assad to quit, although the West and the opposition made clear it saw no role for him in a unity government.

On the ground in Syria, the army pounded besieged rebel-held areas of Homs, monitors said Monday, as Qusayr also came under a morning bombardment.

The opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) slammed Annan’s decision to meet Assad, saying thousands of people have been killed despite an April ceasefire.

Annan, whose military observers in Syria have been grounded because of escalating violence, admitted in remarks published by French newspaper Le Monde ahead of his Damascus trip that his peace blueprint has so far foundered.

He also expressed frustration that while Moscow and Iran are mentioned by some as stumbling blocks to peace, “little is said about other countries which send arms, money, and have a presence on the ground”.

Moscow arms export officials said Monday that Russia will not supply new weapons to its Arab ally Syria while fighting there continues, while stressing that old contracts would be fulfilled.

Earlier, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Syria needed dialogue between the regime and opposition, rather than foreign intervention, to ensure a lasting peace.

Putin spoke after prominent Syrian opposition leader and intellectual Michel Kilo met Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow.

Later on Monday Annan few to Tehran for talks with Saeed Jalili, Iran’s top security official, and Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi.

Annan has said Tehran has a key role to play in efforts to end the bloodshed.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has accused the United States and its allies of opposing Assad’s regime with the goal of dominating the Middle East and propping up Israel.

On Sunday US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned time was running out to save Syria from a “catastrophic assault”.

The Observatory, a Britain-based monitoring group, estimates that 5,898 people have been killed since the Annan-brokered April truce.