30/08/12
#Syria, FSA makes their own drones
Heavy weapons, drones, gunfire used against UN monitors in #Syria, Ban says
Updated: Jun 07, 2012 10:19 PM BST
Source: AFP
NEW YORK — Heavy weapons, armor-piercing bullets and surveillance drones have been used against UN observers in Syria to hamper their efforts to monitor the worsening conflict, UN leader Ban Ki-moon told a Security Council meeting Thursday.Diplomats inside a closed council briefing on Syria quoted Ban as saying the tactics had been used to try to force the unarmed monitors to withdraw from areas where government forces have been accused of staging attacks.
Ban said the heavy shelling had been used to deter a UN Supervision Mission in Syria convoy, drones had monitored the movements of observers and the armor-piercing bullets had been fired at UN vehicles.
According to UN officials, UN vehicles are shot at almost every day in Syria.
Ban told the 15-nation council that UN observers had seen Syrian military convoys approaching villages and tried to stop tank assaults against populated areas but had been “ignored.”
Ban and UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan briefed the Security Council shortly after a new massacre in a Syrian village in which dozens of people were reported killed.
Ban said small arms shots were fired at the UN convoy that tried to get into the village of al Kubeir.
Ban said that according to preliminary evidence, the Syrian army had surrounded the village and militia had entered al Kubeir and killed civilians with “barbarity,” according to diplomats at the meeting.
US drones monitor events in #Syria: report
A “good number” of unmanned US military and intelligence drones are operating in the skies over Syria, monitoring the Syrian military’s attacks against opposition forces and civilians, NBC News reported.
Citing unnamed US defense officials, the TV network said this surveillance was not in preparation for US military intervention.
However, the administration President Barack Obama hopes to use the overhead visual evidence and intercepts of Syrian government and military communications in an effort to make the case for a widespread international response, the report said.
NBC News said there has been some discussion among White House, State Deptartment and Pentagon officials about possible humanitarian missions in Syria.
But US officials fear those missions could not be carried out without endangering the people involved and would almost certainly draw the United States into a military role in Syria, the report noted.
At least 30 people were reported killed Friday as protests spread to several well-to-do neighbourhoods of the Syrian capital for the first time and security forces unleashed their heaviest pounding yet of the flashpoint central city of Homs.
