Syrian Freedom

Damascus rebel belts shelled - #Syria

Syrian forces on Friday shelled rebel belts on the eastern and southern outskirts of Damascus where street battles also erupted, a watchdog said, as an army offensive continued for a third straight day.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Jubar district in the east and nearby Qaboon were heavily shelled, as were the Hajar al-Aswad, Qadam, Assali neighborhoods in the south.

Fighting between rebels and President Bashar al-Assad’s forces erupted at dawn around the Yarmuk camp for Palestinian refugees to the south of the capital, the Britain-based watchdog said.

It added that six rebels were killed in shelling that occurred at dawn in the city of Moadamiyeh, just south of the capital, while another rebel bastion, Daraya also in the south, was also hit by the regime’s artillery.

Clashes erupted at several places along the highway running through the capital’s eastern and southern districts, the Observatory said.

The Zamlaka neighborhood, also in the east, was bombed by government jets as clashes between loyalists and rebels erupted.

The army on Tuesday launched a major offensive against rebel zones surrounding Damascus as it sought to break the military stalemate in Syria’s almost 23-month conflict, which began as a popular uprising against Assad.

Pro-regime newspaper Al-Watan said this week that the army was “determined to crush terrorism around the capital and big cities.”

Loyalists troops made ground in the country’s north, retaking Karnaz on the strategic Damascus-Aleppo highway on Wednesday after a 16-day onslaught, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Observatory.

The outgunned rebel “fighters withdrew from Karnaz, which they seized in December last year, after heavy fighting,” he told AFP.

Opposition leader Ahmed Moaz al-Khatib has offered to hold peace talks with Syria’s Vice President Faruq al-Sharaa, but Damascus has so far ignored the offer and has intensified attacks on rebel bastions.

The United Nations says more than 60,000 people have been killed in violence across Syria since the outbreak of a revolt in March 2011 that morphed into an insurgency after the army launched a brutal crackdown on dissent.

#Syria On the offensive, rebels push Syrian military out of cities around Homs

By David Enders

TALBISEH, SYRIA — This city is almost completely empty after a week of heavy shelling by the Syrian government. But it is empty of government forces as well.

The shelling, which killed 20 civilians and five rebel fighters, failed to dislodge rebels who had driven the Syrian military out of nearly a dozen bases and checkpoints in the city over a period of two days earlier this month.

Syrian president Bashar Assad has promised a new offensive to drive rebels from their strongholds in the center of Homs, the country’s third largest city, as the civil war in Syria grinds on. Opposition activist groups reported that Syrian troops bombarded Homs on Sunday with mortar rounds and heavy machine guns, leaving at least 11 people dead.

The site of the worst violence in the country since a peaceful uprising against Assad became an armed rebellion last year, Homs has been preparing for more fighting as Syrian troops massed around rebel-held neighborhoods there over the weekend. But the troop buildup belied the fact that more of the countryside around Homs – which includes Talbiseh – had fallen out of the government’s control.

The rebel offensive and the Syrian military’s heavy shelling prompted the United Nations on Saturday to call off its efforts to monitor a cease-fire that was supposed to take effect in April but never did. The head of the U.N. mission, Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, the chief of the U.N. observer mission in Syria, cited clashes over the past 10 days that were “posing significant risks” to the force of 300 unarmed observers.

Syrian troops were also driven out of Rastan, a city of similar size to Talbiseh about 10 miles to the north, earlier this month. The victory came at a heavy cost as some parts of the city were entirely destroyed. Both Rastan and Talbiseh lie on the north-south highway that is the country’s main artery and connects the capital of Damascus, south of Homs, to Aleppo, the country’s largest city and economic hub, in the north.

“We have a plan to control this area,” said Abdel Rizaq Tlass, the leader of the Farouq Brigade, one of the largest groups of rebels in Homs province that operates under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army, the name taken by the majority of armed rebels in Syria.

The fighting around Homs suggests Syrian troops in the area are largely demoralized as highly motivated and increasingly well armed and organized rebel forces go on the offensive. The fighting in Talbiseh involved hundreds of rebels.

“We didn’t imagine they had these numbers and so much equipment,” said a man who identified himself as a Syrian army captain who surrendered to the rebels in Talbiseh last week and was allowed to join them. He asked not to be named for his protection.

“Many of the soldiers ran away when the attacks began,” said Mahmoud Najjar, a spokesman for the Farouq Brigade in Talbiseh.

Farouq’s group of fighters in Qusayr, southwest of Homs, launched attacks on checkpoints all over that city on Friday and Saturday, reportedly driving the military out of the southern part of the city. Qusayr, the largest city between the Lebanese border and Homs, had been split between the rebels and the government’s forces for months.

The takeover of Qusayr was impossible to verify independently.

In both Rastan and Talbiseh, destroyed Syrian tanks and armored personnel carriers remained on the streets – including one near Talbiseh that remained in the median of the highway.

“We captured two armored personnel carriers and used them before the government destroyed them with helicopters,” Najjar said, adding that the cannons and heavy machine guns salvaged from some of the destroyed APCs would be mounted on rebel pickup trucks.

Tlass, who is based in Rastan, said the group had seized tanks from the Syrian military, and on Saturday, Farouq fighters in Qusayr sent footage to the Al Jazeera television network that showed them in possession of a tank and captured anti-aircraft weaponry. Najjar said that Farouq’s fighters in Talbiseh had managed to capture large amounts of ammunition in the offensive there, and were in possession of anti-tank rockets bought from weapons smugglers and captured from the military.

Rebels said casualties on the government side were far higher than those for the rebels.

“We killed about 40 soldiers here,” said Najjar, as he walked around a school in Talbiseh the Syrian army had used as a base. “Seven soldiers from the Free Army were killed.”

The Syrian military continued to shell Talbiseh and Rastan on Saturday and Sunday, killing a civilian and fighter there. At least four people were killed in Farhaniyeh, a village on the highway between Talbiseh and Farhaniyeh, by a helicopter strike on Saturday that hit a bakery.

“They are using helicopters more frequently now because they can’t control the ground,” Najjar said.

In both Rastan and Talbiseh, rebels were making plans to destroy Syrian army positions that were still being used to shell the area. FSA fighters had surrounded the closest Syrian military base to Rastan and said they were waiting to see if the soldiers would surrender before launching attack.

On Sunday, rebels captured five Syrian soldiers who attempted to leave the base for supplies.

“The soldiers are scared of us,” said Najjar.

#Syria refugees brave mines, machineguns

A young Syrian refugee who fled the violence - Source: Reuters

Published: 12:07PM Saturday April 07, 2012 Source: Reuters

Syrian forces are pressing a military offensive and laying mines near the border with Turkey in an attempt to block a flow of refugees and supplies for insurgents, rebel activists and a Turkish official at the frontier said.

Syrian army activity, visible across olive groves from the small Turkish border village of Bukulmez, comes days before a ceasefire deadline agreed by President Bashar al-Assad.

The flow of refugees to Turkish camps nearby swelled to 2,800 on Thursday as violence in the bordering Idlib province worsened.

“The whole of northern Idlib has become another Baba Amr,” said Ahmed Sheikh, a law student and activist, referring to a district of the town of Homs devastated by shelling in the past two months.

It was impossible to verify reports from the many refugees fleeing Syria since foreign correspondents’ access to the country is strictly limited by the Damascus government.

A Syrian helicopter could be seen hovering over mountains on the Syrian side of the border in clear view of refugees at a camp. A Reuters television journalist with experience in the area said it was the first time since the crisis began that he was aware of Syrian aircraft flying close to Turkey.

Villagers reported hearing artillery along the border.

A Turkish foreign ministry official touring the camps in the area said there was new activity close to the border.

“The Syrians have been mining the border, especially the southern Idlib part which has been restricting the flow of refugees,” the official said. He declined to give his name.

Activists said mining was concentrated on southerly parts of Turkey’s border with Syria, from the town of Harem westwards to the coast.

“Assad is using the days granted to him by the international community to choke off the refugee movement to Turkey and the delivery of any kind of aid,” said Muhammad Abdallah, a rights campaigner from Idlib.

He said most of the border area from the Mediterranean coast was closed, leaving only a 10 km corridor along a valley near Rehanyi which the rebel Free Syrian Army controls.

“But I don’t expect this to last for long because we have seen nearby villages and towns come under intense helicopter, tank and artillery bombardment,” he said.

Highways cut

Still, refugees were getting through, the flow rising to 2,800 on Thursday.

Assad says his government is under attack from foreign-backed Islamist militants and denies his own troops have targeted civilians. He says support from Western and Arab governments for the rebels is only feeding the violence and obstructing a peaceful settlement.

In Ankara, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu demanded Assad keep his promise to cease military operations.

“At the moment the number of refugees to have entered Turkey is 23,835. If more refugees come then the United Nations and international community must take action,” he told reporters.

Under an internationally backed plan agreed with Damascus, government forces should cease operations and withdraw from settlements by April 10. Rebels should then cease fire within 48 hours.

UN special envoy Kofi Annan said on Thursday he had been told by Damascus that troop withdrawals were underway from Idlib, as well as Zabadani and Deraa. But UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday the conflict was worsening and attacks on civilian areas persisted.

The flow of refugees has been a big concern for Turkey which long saw Damascus as a regional friend but is now in the forefront of diplomatic opposition to Assad and gives refuge to civilian and military forces ranged against him.

Turkey fears that a complete breakdown in Syria would unleash a flood of refugees reminiscent of the half million who descended on Turkish territory from Iraq during the Gulf War in the early 1990s.

Ankara officials have cited such a development as one of the few that might make it consider establishment of a safe zone on the Syrian side. The presence now of Syrian troops so close to the border would make such a move perilous.

Abdallah said government forces were trying as far as possible to cut off refugees and intercept rebel aid well before the border. The two main highways into Turkey from Aleppo and the provincial capital of Idlib had been cut off by army roadblocks.

Control

A member of the FSA who goes under the nom de guerre of Abu Seif said that for government forces “the name of the game is control”.

“The tactic being used to stop the flow of refugees is heavy bombardment of strategic villages or towns on the border with Turkey. Then they mine around these towns and villages.”

An opposition activist said the refugee flow into Turkey varied greatly from day to day because government troops would find open areas and shut them down. Refugees would then probe for new crossings and then pour across until they were blocked.

One particularly dangerous crossing is the Orontes River, which marks the border and is famous for its strong currents. Syrian army tents could be seen pitched amid lush farmland on the other side.

“Behind the tents there are army machinegun positions. If Assad lets the people escape you would see hundreds of thousands of Syrians here,” said Mohammad Hijazi, who was elected as a representative of refugees in Boynuyogun camp, one of several camps Turkish authorities set up right on the border.

“Every time the regime is given a deadline it is a catastrophe. Assad interprets it as a licence for unlimited killing and another deadline is set,” Hijazi said.

#Syria: Assad rebuffs Kofi Annan peace bid as killing continues

The Syrian government rebuffed a peacemaking mission by Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary general on Sunday, mounting a major offensive against rebel strongholds that left more than 130 people dead over the weekend.

Syrian Grand Mufti Ahmed Hassun (C) and other religious figures meet with UN-Arab League envoy for Syria, Kofi Annan, in Damascus Photo: AFP/GETTY

By Adrian Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent

8:51PM GMT 11 Mar 2012

Mr Annan, the joint UN-Arab League special envoy to Syria, ended two days of talks with President Bashar al-Assad insisting that he was still “optimistic” despite failing to make any headway in his diplomatic efforts to end the crisis.

In a sign that Mr Assad remains determined to crush the yearlong uprising against his rule, pro-regime forces swept through the northwest province of Idlib, making significant gains against outgunned rebel units.

By Sunday morning, the city of Idlib, the provincial capital, appeared to have fallen to the Syrian army following an intense artillery bombardment.

As tank shells struck the city from all directions, panicked civilians clutching blankets attempted to flee, although many remained trapped after the army sealed off exit points.

Human Rights groups said that 54 civilians, mostly in and around Idlib, were killed over the weekend. Rebel fighters, many of them army defectors, held their positions for several hours, sheltering behind walls to return fire against the advancing tanks with automatic weapons. But as their casualties began to mount, most fighters withdrew, leaving only pockets of resistance, activists in Idlib said.

They were pursued by regime forces, with a major tank assault being reported on the nearby town of Jisr al-Shughour and surrounding villages. Both sides in the conflict suffered significant casualties, with 44 rebels and 24 soldiers being killed in clashes both in Idlib and the city of Homs, scene of the uprising’s bloodiest pro-regime offensive last month.

Mr Annan’s mission was never going to achieve instantaneous results, but the scale of the violence that accompanied his first visit to Damascus — the most high-profile by any foreign official — will discourage even his most ardent supporters.

Buoyed by a string of battlefield victories, in particular the subjugation of the Baba Amr district of Homs, Mr Assad showed little inclination either to rein in his forces or to begin negotiations with the opposition.

While saying he would support “any honest effort” at international mediation, the Syrian president insisted that a political solution was impossible as long as “terrorist groups” — his term for the rebels — threatened the country.

Mr Annan, one of the world’s most experienced conflict negotiators, said he would not be deterred despite his failure to make any headway.

“It’s going to be tough,” he said. “It’s going to be difficult; but we have to have hope. The situation is so bad and so dangerous that all of us cannot afford to fail.”

Complicating his efforts, the former secretary general appears to enjoy little confidence from either side in the conflict with the main opposition group signalling its outrage at his calls for all parties to end violence and begin negotiations.

“Negotiations can never take place between the victim and torturer,” the Syrian National Council said in a statement. “Assad and his entourage must step down as a condition before starting any serious negotiations.”

But in a significant policy shift, Arab League ministers distanced themselves from previous calls for regime change following a meeting in Cairo with Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister. In an effort to win Moscow’s backing for a draft United Nations Security Council resolution, the League backed a Russian proposal that rejected foreign intervention and called on all sides to end the violence.

But in a sign of how far Russia’s stock in the Middle East has fallen because of its support for the Assad regime, Mr Lavrov faced a withering lecture from his Saudi counterpart Prince Saud al-Faisal.

“We must stop issuing hollow resolutions and taking spineless positions,” Prince Saud said. “The position of those countries which thwarted UN Security Council resolutions and voted against the resolution of the General Assembly gave the Syrian regime a licence to extend its brutal practices against the Syrian people.”

Russia, along with China, has twice vetoed Security Council resolutions condemning the Assad regime. William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, has convened a meeting of the Council on Monday when efforts to win Russian backing for a watered-down resolution calling for both sides to end violence and grant access for humanitarian aid.

Russia has demanded revisions to the draft, but there are signs that its support for Mr Assad, one of Moscow’s most important arms clients, is wavering. Russia’s respected Kommersant newspaper quoted a senior Kremlin source as saying that the Syrian leader has only “a ten per cent chance” of surviving in power.

The Syrian army has been unable to inflict a decisive blow against the rebels. Its recent victories mask the fact that it is only capturing towns that it retook in offensives last year, when parts of Homs, Idlib and Jisr al-Shughour were supposedly pacified, only to once again fall under rebel control.

At the same time, the pace of defections, though still slow, is increasing, with a deputy minister and two generals all deserting Mr Assad in the last week alone.

U.S. officials: Iran is stepping up lethal aid to #Syria

By Joby Warrick and Liz Sly,

U.S. officials say they see Iran’s hand in the increasingly brutal crackdown on opposition strongholds in Syria, including evidence of Iranian military and intelligence support for government troops accused of mass executions and other atrocities in the past week.

Three U.S. officials with access to intelligence reports from the region described a spike in Iranian-supplied arms and other aid for Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad at a time when the regime is mounting an unprecedented offensive to crush resistance in the key city of Homs.

“The aid from Iran is increasing, and is increasingly focused on lethal assistance,” said one of the officials, insisting on anonymity to discuss intelligence reports from the region.

The expanded Iranian role in the conflict has been underscored by reports — supported by U.S. intelligence findings — that an Iranian operative was recently wounded while working with Syrian security forces inside the country.

The flow of military aid to Assad comes as Arab states are considering arming the regime’s opponents, raising the risk of a wider conflict that U.S. officials fear could spread to neighboring countries.

In addition, the intelligence reports about rising Iranian support for Syria come as U.S. officials are seeking to rally international support for efforts to drive Assad from power without resorting to arming the rebels — a move the Obama administration has opposed. The portrayal offered by the three officials quoted in this article is more detailed than previously reported; such accounts are generally difficult to verify independently.

Iran has made no secret of its support for the Assad regime, though President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made repeated calls for a peaceful solution to the conflict, which began almost a year ago.

‘Big guys wearing black’

The U.S. intelligence assessments are in line with recent reports by Syrian rebels, who say Iran’s involvement in the crackdown has escalated. Opposition leaders, citing high-ranking defectors from the Syrian military, say Iran has dispatched hundreds of advisers, security officials and intelligence operatives to Syria, along with weapons, money and electronic surveillance equipment.

“Iran has been involved in the crackdown by Assad on a much larger scale than previously thought,” said Ammar Abdulhamid, a Washington-based Syrian activist and a member of the Syria Working Group of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank.

Stories of Syrian troops being accompanied by black-bearded men speaking a foreign language and assumed to be Iranian have circulated widely inside Syria for many months, but activists acknowledge they have little hard evidence that Iranians are actually participating in the offensives.

“We saw some evidence, but we can’t prove it,” said Omar Shakir, who fled to Lebanon from the former opposition stronghold of Bab Amr in Homs a week ago. “We have seen tall guys, big guys wearing black.”

The Free Syrian Army is holding seven Iranians captured in Homs in December. The Iranian government says they are power-plant workers, but the rebels assert that they were working for the Revolutionary Guard Corps. Eleven Iranian pilgrims abducted in January are still missing, Iran’s Press TV reported Saturday.

The belief that Shiite-dominated Iran is aiding the Syrian crackdown has helped sharpen sectarian sentiments among those in the mostly Sunni country seeking to topple the Assad regime, which is dominated by members of Assad’s minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

There have also been widespread but unproven allegations that the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah militia is aiding the crackdown. Sunni-dominated Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have advocated arming the opposition.

U.S. officials declined to address allegations about specific acts. But one of the officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said intelligence agencies have documented reports of a wide range of assistance.

“They’ve supplied equipment, weapons and technical assistance — even monitoring tools — to help suppress unrest,” the official said. “Iranian security officials also traveled to Damascus to help deliver this assistance.”

A second senior U.S. official said members of Iran’s main intelligence service, the Ministry of Intelligence and Security, are assisting Syrian counterparts in charge of the crackdown. Last month, the Obama administration imposed sanctions against the intelligence service, citing “financial, material and technological support” for the Syrian crackdown. The Obama administration had previously imposed sanctions against Iran’s elite Quds Force for providing training and equipment to Syrian security units.

Iran’s intelligence service played a key role in Tehran’s crackdown on the country’s Green Movement in 2009 and is associated with allegations of sexual abuse, torture and mock executions of protesters.

It now is believed be “exporting its vicious practices to support the Syrian regime’s abhorrent crackdown on its own population,” said David S. Cohen, the Treasury Department’s undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence

The head of the Quds Force, Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, also has paid at least one visit to Damascus in recent weeks, U.S. officials said.

Syrian Vice President Najah al-Attar, hosting a group of visiting journalists Saturday in Damascus, hailed the “importance of the historical relations between Syria and Iran.”

“Syria’s ties with Iran will remain strong, being built on a principled basis as they serve the two countries’ peoples and contribute to boosting stability in the Middle East,” she said, according to the official Syrian Arab News Agency.

Report of a mass execution

In the latest offensive, Syrian troops swept into the rebel enclave of Bab Amr late last week, routing opposition fighters. The move ended a 27-day siege on the Bab Amr neighborhood, which had been in the hands of opposition forces for weeks. Activists and human rights groups have since accused Syrian forces of waging a campaign of revenge on the neighborhood, executing captives, looting homes and systematically shelling hundreds of buildings.

The New York-based group Human Rights Watch said at least 700 people have been killed in weeks of fighting in the area.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland described the situation in Homs as “absolutely horrific.”

Violence continued to rage across Syria on Saturday, with the opposition Local Coordination Committees reporting the deaths of 80 people nationwide. They included 47 soldiers said to have been shot in a mass execution after they tried to defect in the restive northern province of Idlib.

There were also reports of renewed shelling in several other neighborhoods of Homs where the Free Syrian Army holds sway.

The Syrian Arab News Agency reported that three people died in a suicide bombing in the southern province of Daraa. It also said 21 members of the security forces killed in the violence the previous day were given funerals.

The Syrian authorities continued to deny the International Committee of the Red Cross access to Bab Amr, two days after it was overrun by Syrian government forces in the wake of a retreat by the Free Syrian Army. An ICRC spokesman in Geneva told the Associated Press that the government was citing security concerns for its refusal to allow the aid group to enter.

Sly reported from Beirut.

Syria’s desperate rebels flee new northern offensive by Assad’s army #Syria

Far from bowing to international pressure over the brutal siege of Homs, Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad is extending his military clampdown across the country.

China calls on both sides in Syrian conflict 'to unconditionally end violence'

Rebel Syrian soldiers from Lattakia on the northern coast forced to flee yesterday after heavy bombing and a renewed onslaught by government forces Photo: DAVID ROSE

By Nick Meo, in Guvecci, on the Turkish-Syria border

8:07PM GMT 03 Mar 2012

Comment

The last defenders of the free Syrian village of Ain al-Beida were huddling from a biting wind in a Turkish border town. They were still covered with mud from their desperate escape over the mountains.

The previous day, the unit of 50 ragged fighters were driven out of their village by 500 Syrian soldiers backed with tanks. Afterwards, President Bashar al-Assad’s forces burnt the buildings and planted landmines.

“We’ve never seen them fight like that before, they were crazed,” said Jamal, a rebel commander, on Saturday. “You shot them and they didn’t drop. They must have been drugged or something.”

Many other villages in Idlib province, in the north along the Turkish border, got the same treatment last week. While the world’s attention was focused on the horror being inflicted on Homs, where Syrian troops were accused of “medieval barbarity” by David Cameron, President Assad expanded his scorched-earth policy northwards in an apparent bid to destroy the rebel movement altogether.

“There are soldiers everywhere now,” said one man who escaped out of Idlib province on Friday night. “They have flooded the countryside, shelling the villages, searching and raiding everywhere.”

Witnesses described finding beheaded bodies left in village streets, badly wounded locals trapped in their homes unable to reach hospitals, and bands of militia roaming the countryside. Fears were growing that these armed groups were massacring populations sympathetic to the rebels, although with communications blocked and only a trickle of refugees crossing the snow-covered mountainous frontier, newly sown with landmines, it was impossible to be sure what was really happening.

What was clear, though, was that some of the main rebel enclaves in northern Syria have been overrun, in an area which had been spoken of as a possible rebel stronghold where the Free Syrian Army (FSA) could be trained and equipped.

“It is very dangerous now,” said Wasim Sabbagh, 35, a spokesman with the Free Syrian Army. “One of our commanders couldn’t get across the border into Syria, and he is one of the bravest men we have. The Assad forces are everywhere.” News of the northern offensive came as government troops ignored international pleas to relax their stranglehold on the Baba Amr district of Homs, the former rebel stronghold that they finally surrounded on Thursday.

Up to 4,000 people have been trapped there for days without access to food, water or medical supplies, yet an aid convoy from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was denied access for a second day yesterday.

Syrian commanders on the ground said it was because of fears that the fleeing rebel troops had sown the area with booby traps, although rebel activists claimed the delay was to give the army time to cover up evidence of summary executions carried out in recent days.

“We are not going in today, negotiations continue to try to get in tomorrow,” Sean Maguire, a spokesman for the ICRC told The Sunday Telegraph last night. “One of the reasons we were given was the security situation on the ground; we are not in a position to make a judgment on that.

“But since we have not yet been into Baba Amr, we can’t make any assessment of the humanitarian or human rights situation, which is unfortunate as we believe there are pressing needs there.”

Meanwhile, diplomatic pressure continued to mount on President Assad. The Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said the Syrian regime’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid into Baba Amr showed how “criminal” it had become. China, which has so far vetoed United Nations Security Council resolutions condemning Damascus, urged both sides to stop fighting and “launch an inclusive political dialogue with no preconditions”.

As they did so, members of the FSA who had fought in Baba Amr spoke of the enormity of the military arsenal deployed against them.

“They used more firepower in the last five days than they did in the first three weeks of besieging the city,” said Omar al Homsi, a senior FSA fighter who escaped last week to Lebanon. “They were using tanks equipped with rockets with a 3km range, and in the final days they were using multiple rocket lauchers.”

Three days before he left, he added, he witnessed a government unit turn against their division. “We found two tanks smouldering, bodies scattered on the ground,” he said.

“Intercepting the army’s military frequencies, we heard officers complaining to their superiors in Damascus that their men would not follow orders. They complained that their men were under orders to deploy rockets on a particular area but had refused.”

The regime had prepared for the risk of large-scale defections, however. “In the five days of fighting, the regime replaced the battalions fighting us four times. After a day of fighting, they would swap the battalions, their soldiers had to fight for no more than 36 hours.”

While a tense calm hung over Baba Amr yesterday, other districts of Homs came under heavy mortar and machinegun fire, adding to fears that the military campaign was being ratcheted up. Further north, the city of Idlib, another major rebel stronghold, also came under shellfire, prompting talk that it was about to become “the next Homs”.

“They are slaughtering people,” said Mr Sabbagh, the Free Syrian Army spokesman, listing other places that had he said had been attacked. Kafur Nabel, a village famous for its witty banners mocking President Assad, was shelled, while another town, Darkush, was surrounded by tanks. Wounded civilians were trapped and could not reach treatment, Mr Sabbagh said.

One of the most troubling reports was from the village of Kurim, in the hills near the Turkish border, where rebels fear a massacre may have been carried out. The quiet farming hamlet, whose population is Sunni, is surrounded by villages populated by members of President Assad’s fellow Alawite sect. Many Alawites in the area have been armed by the government, which is accused of stirring up sectarian tensions. Mr Sabbagh said nobody had come out of Kurim for several days, although the village was hard to get in touch with as it was cut off from the FSA.

Poorly armed and largely untrained, the rebel fighters have been unable to hold back a sophisticated modern army equipped with tanks and artillery, and which has not hesitated to use firepower, whatever the civilian cost.

Ain al-Beida, a frontier village near the coast, had been a stronghold of the Free Syrian Army for several months, but its defenders were forced out by a fierce attack on Friday.

After six terrifying hours of one-sided battle, the rebel fighters took refuge in the Turkish village of Guvecci, a hilltop town overlooking the border, where they gave an interview to The Sunday Telegraph. The rebels are not welcomed by Turkish locals, one of whom threw a shoe – an insult in the Arab world – as they walked up the town’s main street.

A couple of miles away, across olive groves and pine-scented forest, their comrades had made a camp hidden in woods 200 yards from a Turkish border tower. Syrian soldiers patrolled within sight.

About 30 men, bearded and wearing camouflage jackets, lounged round a fire drinking tea brewed from melted snow. They looked like armed down-and-outs.

“We will soon be back in Beida,” claimed Mazan, 29, a regular army defector, who said he deserted when he was asked to kill civilians.

His colleagues had a few automatic rifles and one rocket launcher. They looked puzzled when asked if there had been any offers of weapons or money from abroad, but seemed confident, despite the defeats the uprising has suffered in the past month. “We can beat Assad’s army. I don’t know how long it will take,” he said. “Many of us will be killed, it is true. But we are ready to be martyrs.” Until about 10 days ago, much of Idlib province was in rebel hands, with villages defended by ragtag defence forces of lightly armed young men.

The army controlled main roads and some towns, occasionally sending large columns out on missions that could usually be spotted from some distance.

But now, instead of confining their patrols to the main roads, soldiers and thuggish militia men have started attacking villages, stepping up their campaign massively in the past week.

While villages such as Ain al-Beida are small settlements that appear on no maps, the fact the FSA has been able to hold even a speck of Syrian territory has been an important morale booster. Its loss this weekend will be a blow.

The fighters claimed to have killed about 15 Syrian army soldiers, and said only one of their comrades had been injured. He was recovering in a hospital in Antakya, the main Turkish town near the border. From there, the government in Ankara, which last week accused President Assad of war crimes, has allowed rebels to operate discreetly.

Humanitarian conditions in Idlib province have worsened in the past few weeks. Food is in short supply – with many people surviving off dry bread – and power cuts are frequent. There are few doctors because, say the rebels, the regime has targeted them so that fighters and demonstrators cannot receive treatment.

The FSA, which was started by army defectors last summer and has about 15,000 fighters, is short of weapons, leadership and support. As President Assad’s campaign of destruction has been stepped up in the past month, some foreign sympathisers have arrived to help. Last week, Saudi and Kuwaiti benefactors were in Antakya, trying to find Syrians to give cash to. One Kuwaiti businessman said: “They are short of everything, especially weapons. And they have no bullets.”

Mr Sabbagh added: “The politicians in the West are arguing about whether to arm us, but they are doing nothing and for the past month 100 people every day have been killed in Syria.”

But he remained buoyed by big new demonstrations against the regime across the country on Friday, including in cities such as Aleppo, traditionally a bastion of Assad support. “It is because people feel horrified and angry at what the regime has done to Homs,” he said. “It is enough to make a stone cry.”

Additional reporting by Ruth Sherlock in Beirut and Magdy Samaan in Cairo

06/02/12 Andy Carvin of NPR on CNN talking about situation in #Syria

Syrian forces launch renewed assault on Homs #Syria

By FRANCE 24 (video)

Syrian forces began bombing the restive city of Homs at dawn on Monday, killing at least 50 people, residents said. Opposition groups and activists reported more than 200 deaths in the embattled city over the weekend.

News Wires (text)

REUTERS - Syrian forces bombarded Homs on Monday, killing 50 people in a sustained assault on several districts of the city which has become a centre of armed opposition to President Bashar al-Assad, the Syrian National Council opposition group said.

Western countries seeking Assad’s downfall were scrambling to find a new diplomatic strategy after failing to enact a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have backed an Arab League call for Assad to stand aside.

The United States shut its embassy in Damascus and said all staff had left the country due to worsening security. Britain said it withdrew its ambassador from Syria, and would seek further European Union sanctions against Syria.

Russia fought back against blistering criticism from the West for vetoing the resolution on Saturday. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who is due in Damascus on Tuesday, said condemnations of Moscow’s veto had verged on “hysteria”.

FOOTAGE FROM HOMS ON SATURDAY

U.S. President Barack Obama said that, however hard Western countries are prepared to lean on Assad diplomatically, they still have no intention of using force to topple him, as they did against Muammar Gaddafi in Libya last year.

“I think it is very important for us to try to resolve this without recourse to outside military intervention. And I think that’s possible,” he told NBC’s Today show.

Catherine al-Talli of the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) told Reuters bombardment of Homs resumed early on Sunday, killing 50.

Assad’s opponents say his tanks and artillery killed more than 200 people in the city on Friday night in the bloodiest incident of the 11-month-old uprising against his rule.

That attack, branded a “massacre” by France and “unspeakable” by Obama, had set the stage for intense efforts over the weekend to lobby Moscow not to block the U.N. Security Council resolution.

But Russia has argued that the resolution was one-sided and would have amounted to taking the side of Assad’s opponents in a civil war. China also vetoed the measure, by most accounts following Russia’s lead.

“It is sad that the co-authors decided to hastily put the resolution to a vote, even though we appealed to them with a request to give it a few more days” until after his own planned trip to Damascus, Lavrov said.

“Some of the voices heard in the West with evaluations of the results of the vote in the U.N. Security Council on the Syria resolution sound, I would say, improper, somewhere on the verge of hysteria,” Lavrov told reporters after meeting the foreign minister of Bahrain, one of the Arab states that has sought a tougher stance against Assad.

Lavrov has said Russia favours a peace dialogue in Syria that is free of outside interference and preconditions.

He repeated the message in a phone conversation with Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said it had the names of 43 people killed in Monday’s bombardment of Homs. Television footage showed smoke rising from buildings, with explosions echoing in the background.

“This is the most violent bombardment in recent days,” said one activist in Syria who was in touch with Homs residents. Another activist said government troops were using multiple rocket launchers in the attack.

Damascus denies firing on houses and says images of dead bodies on the Internet have been staged. State media said on Monday “armed terrorist groups” were firing mortars in the city, setting fire to tyres and blowing up empty buildings to give the impression that Homs was under fire from Assad’s forces.

State news agency SANA described attacks in the city by “terrorists” who it said killed a textile factory worker. It said they also killed three officers and abducted several soldiers in Jabal al-Zawiya in the northern Idlib province.

Reports from activists and authorities are hard to verify because Syria restricts access for independent media.

Several neighbourhoods hit

The latest assault in Homs appeared to be widely targeted, with explosions in Khalidiya, Baba Amro, Bayada and Bab Dreib neighbourhoods, the activists said.

“They want to drive the Free Syrian Army out,” said Baba Amro resident Hussein Nader by telephone, referring to the force of army deserters and rebels who have held parts of Homs for months. “Rockets are falling seconds apart on the same target.”

Another resident, Omar Shakir, said activists had obtained information that the shelling would continue until Thursday, when troops were expected to move into Homs. “We have no one but God - everybody abandoned us,” he said.

Activists said an blast hit an oil pipeline feeding a main refinery in Homs, the second attack on the pipeline in a week, and that three people died when the opposition-held town of Zabadani, near the Lebanese border, came under fire on Monday.

Syrian army defectors announced they were organising a new “Higher Revolutionary Council” to supercede the Free Syrian Army (FSA) as the main armed force battling Assad’s rule. The new body would be commanded by General Ahmed al-Sheikh, the highest-ranking officer to defect to Turkey from government forces.

A local wing of the FSA in Zabadani warned it would start attacking “sensitive and strategic (targets) of the regime” unless the army pulled back from the town by Tuesday morning.

Arab League chief Elaraby said the escalation was pushing the country toward civil war. The League’s strong stance towards Assad - it suspended Syria last year and withdrew inspectors last month after concluding Assad’s government was not fulfilling a peace plan - has put Assad’s powerful Arab neighbours on the same side as the West.

‘Kick in the ass’

Condemnation of Russia’s veto in the West has been extraordinarily strong by diplomatic standards. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the veto a “travesty”. A chorus of European and American officials said Russia and China would bear responsibility for future bloodshed.

French Defence Minister Gerard Longuet said on Monday: “There are political cultures which deserve a kick in the ass … To accept that a dictator can operate freely is disgraceful for governments that accept it.”

The Syrian National Council said the Russian and Chinese vetoes of the resolution had given Assad a “licence to kill”.

Syria is a long-serving ally of Moscow, one of the few in the region, and a buyer of its arms exports. Russia clearly still hopes to play an important diplomatic role with Assad, and says it wants to encourage him to adopt reforms.

Fawaz Tello, a senior member of the opposition SNC called the Russian position “shameful” and Moscow’s talk of reform hypocritical, telling Reuters: “The Russians know that such a thuggish secret police regime cannot be reformed.”

The veto bore the stamp of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who intends to return in a March election to the presidency he held from 2000-2008, when he was known for firmly opposing what he saw as efforts by the West to extend its influence at Russia’s expense.

In an article in a government newspaper published on Monday, former Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov said Washington was seeking to oust Iranian ally Assad as part of a strategy to increase its influence in the Arab world and isolate Tehran.

“The United States and its NATO allies want to exploit the situation that arose in the spring of 2011 in the Arab world with the aim of getting rid of Arab regimes it dislikes,” wrote Primakov, an Arabic-speaking Middle East expert who also served as Russian foreign minister and spy chief.

Assad troops fight back against #Syria rebels

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

AMMAN | Mon Jan 30, 2012 1:18pm EST

Click Reuters at bottom to see video

(Reuters) - Street battles raged at the gates of the Syrian capital on Monday as President Bashar al-Assad’s troops sought to consolidate their grip on suburbs that rebel fighters had taken only a few miles from the center of government power.

Russia, a U.N. Security Council member and one of Syria’s few allies, said Assad’s government had agreed to talks in Moscow to end the Syrian crisis, but a major opposition body rejected any dialogue with him, demanding he step down.

The new fighting and Russian diplomacy came as the Arab League andFrance prepared to lobby the Security Council to act on a peace plan that would remove Assad from power, in a bid to staunch the flow of blood from Syria’s attempt to crush a popular uprising and armed insurgency against Assad.

Activists and residents said Syrian troops now had control of Hamouriyeh, one of several districts where they have used armored vehicles and artillery to beat back rebels who came as close as 8 km (5 miles) to Damascus.

An activist said the Free Syrian Army (FSA) - a force of military defectors with links to Syria’s divided opposition - mounted scattered attacks on government troops who advanced through the district of Saqba, held by rebels just days ago.

“Street fighting has been raging since dawn,” he said, adding tanks were moving through a central avenue of the neighborhood. “The sound of gunfire is everywhere.”

Rebels, emboldened in their struggle against Assad’s forces, are risking heavier clashes and fierce reprisals in an attempt to create “liberated” territories across Syria. In the past three weeks they have taken Zabadani - a town of 40,000 in mountainous near the border with Lebanon - but have been beaten back from the outskirts of the capital.

“God willing, we will liberate more territory, because the international community has only offered delayed action and empty threats,” said a lieutenant colonel who had defected to the FSA but declined to be named.

Rebels, emboldened in their struggle against Assad’s forces, are risking heavier clashes and fierce reprisals and speak of creating “liberated” territories across Syria. In the past three weeks they have taken Zabadani - a town of 40,000 in mountainous near the border with Lebanon - but their forays near the capital have been beaten back.

“God willing, we will liberate more territory, because the international community has only offered delayed action and empty threats,” said a lieutenant colonel who had defected to the FSA but declined to be named.

RUSSIA SEEKS TALKS

Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Syria agreed to Russian-brokered negotiations over the crisis, but senior members of the council that claims to speak for a fragmented Syria opposition said there was no point in talking to Assad, who must quit.

“We rejected the Russian proposal because they wanted us to talk with the regime while it continues the killings, the torture, the imprisonment,” Walid al-Bunni, foreign affairs chief for the Syrian National Council, told Reuters.

The rebels said at least 15 people had been killed as they pulled back in Saqba and Kfar Batna. Activists claim a death toll of more than 100 people in three days of fighting in the districts, which have seen repeated protests against Assad’s rule and crackdowns by troops on the 10-month-old uprising.

The escalating bloodshed prompted the Arab League to suspend the work of its monitors on Saturday. Arab foreign ministers, who have urged Assad to step down and make way for a government of national unity, are due to discuss the crisis on February 5.

Syria’s state news agency said six soldiers died in a single attack near Deraa in the south and “terrorists” had blown up a gas pipeline. Pipelines have been targeted frequently during the uprising.

The state news agency SANA has reported funerals of more than 70 members of the security forces members since Friday.

Residents of Deraa - where anti-Assad unrest first flared - said firefights between army defectors and government troops killed at least 20 people, most of them government forces.

In Homs, the central Syrian city that has seen heavy attacks by Assad’s forces and sectarian reprisal killings, residents said government troops backed with armor fought rebels near its marketplace.

Syria limits access for journalists and the details of events could not be immediately verified.

Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby is to seek support on Tuesday for the Arab peace plan from the U.N. Security Council, which France’s foreign minister said, through a spokesman, must act against “crimes against humanity committed by the regime.”

Elaraby, who wants to overcome Russian and Chinese objections to the plan, will be joined by Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, whose country heads the League’s committee charged with overseeing the Syrian crisis.

Russia’s deputy foreign minister earlier on Monday said Moscow first wanted to hear directly from the observers whom the Arab League sent - a move likely to delay any vote.

A Syrian government official said any Arab League decision to suspend monitoring would “put pressure on (Security Council) deliberations with the aim of calling for foreign intervention and encouraging armed groups to increase violence.”

Assad blames the violence on foreign-backed militants.

IRAN SAYS ASSAD NEEDS TIME

After mass demonstrations against him erupted last spring, Assad launched a military crackdown. Growing numbers of army deserters and gunmen have joined the protesters in a country of 23 million people regarded as a pivotal state at the heart of the Middle East.

The insurgency has crept closer to the capital. The suburbs, a string of mainly conservative Sunni Muslim towns known as al-Ghouta, are home to the bulk of the 3 million population of Damascus and its outlying districts.

The rebel force said on Monday medicine and blood were running low in field hospitals, some set up in mosques, and that advancing government forces were carrying out mass arrests.

The Damascus suburbs have seen large demonstrations demanding the removal of Assad, a member of the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi’ite Islam that has dominated the mostly Sunni Muslim country for the last five decades.

Iran, Syria’s regional ally and once unconditional supporter of Assad’s crackdown, said Assad must be spared foreign interference to enact constitutional reforms, hold an election and carry out other measures floated after months of killing.

“We think that Syria has to be given the choice of time so that by (that) time they can do the reforms,” Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said on Sunday.

Syria has said it will hold a referendum on a new constitution soon, before a multi-party parliamentary election that has been much postponed. Under the present constitution, Assad’s Baath party is “the leader of the state and society.”

The United Nations said in December more than 5,000 people had been killed in the protests and crackdown. Syria says more than 2,000 security force members have been killed by militants.

On Friday, the U.N. Security Council discussed a European-Arab draft resolution aimed at halting the bloodshed. Britain and France want to put it to a vote next week, and a French diplomat said it had backing of at least 10 members.

Russia and China blocked a previous Western draft resolution in October, and Moscow said it wants a Syrian-led political process, not “an Arab League-imposed outcome” or Libyan-style “regime change.

(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi, Yasmine Saleh, Mariam Karouny, Steve Gutterman and John Irish; Writing by Joseph Logan; Editing by Peter Graff)

#Syria military offensive in Damascus suburbs aims to drive out rebels

Free Syrian Army fighters patrol a street in the Damascus suburb of Saqba. Photograph: Ahmed Jadallah/Reuters

Syria launched a major military offensive to seize back parts of Damascus under de facto rebel control on Sunday, a day after the Arab League said it was abandoning its monitoring mission in the face of out-of-control violence.

Government forces killed at least 19 people, activists said, in some of the bloodiest fighting in the capital since Syria’s 10-month uprising began. Witnesses inside Damascus described scenes of mayhem, with troops shelling residential areas and fierce house-to-house fighting.

“It’s urban war. There are bodies in the street,” one activist, speaking from the suburb of Kfar Batna, told Reuters.

Around 2,000 troops, together with at least 50 tanks and armoured vehicles, began a major operation at dawn, when they headed towards the al-Ghouta area in eastern Damascus. The foray was part of a wider offensive against the suburbs of Saqba, Hammouriya and Kfar Batna, activists said.

Video footage showed tanks trundling forward, followed by government soldiers on foot. The army pushed deep into the centre of Kfar Batna. Witnesses reported four tanks in the main square.

Activists said 14 civilians and five insurgents from the opposition Free Syrian Army (FSA) were killed. Gruesome unconfirmed video showed the mangled bodies of what appeared to be civilians caught by mortar or shellfire.

The unprecedented operation appears an attempt to regain the initiative from the rebels, who have grown increasingly bold in recent weeks. The BBC’s Middle East correspondent, Jeremy Bowen, discovered the FSA openly manning roadblocks in Damascus last week, just 30 minutes away from Bashar Al-Assad’s presidential palace.

The insurgency, which is still raging in towns and cities across Syria - with further protests in Aleppo on Sunday — has now definitively reached the capital. The suburbs are made up of conservative Sunni Muslim towns, surrounded by countryside and farmland, known as the al-Ghouta.

The area has seen large demonstrations demanding the overthrow of Assad and his minority Alawite regime. The Alawite sect has traditionally dominated Syria’s government and armed forces.

One activist in Saqba suburb told Reuters that mosques there had been turned into field hospitals and were appealing for blood supplies.

“They cut off the electricity. Petrol stations are empty and the army is preventing people from leaving to get fuel for generators or heating,” he said.

Sunday’s army offensive came after the Arab League said on Saturday that it was suspending its widely-criticised monitoring mission, which has proved incapable of stopping the killing. The League’s chief, Nabil Elaraby, flew to New York to try to win support on the UN security council for his peace plan, designed to end the violence through political means.

Under the plan, Assad would step down in favour of his vice-president, allow free and fair elections to take place and a national unity government to be formed. The plan is modelled on the solution to the crisis in Yemen, which saw the country’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh reluctantly hand over power to his deputy, albeit after months of delay. Saleh is now seeking medical treatment in the US.

Syria has categorically rejected the Arab League’s plan as “foreign interference”. There were also indications that Russia, Syria’s closest strategic ally and key military supplier, would not accept it either.

Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said Moscow would not sign off on any deal that forced Assad out. Additionally, Moscow wanted a clear commitment that there would be no Libya-style foreign intervention in Syria, he said.

Speaking shortly before he left Cairo for New York, Elaraby said he hoped to overcome resistance from China and Russia, both of which have veto powers on the security council. “There are contacts with China and Russia on this issue,” he said. A Syrian government official, meanwhile, was quoted as saying Damascus was surprised by the League’s decision to suspend operations, and interpreted it as an attempt to prepare the way for foreign intervention in Syria. The aim was also to encourage violent armed groups, he suggested.

Assad has repeatedly dubbed the uprising against his rule as the work of terrorists. State news agency SANA reported the funerals on Saturday of 28 soldiers and members of the security forces killed by “armed terrorist groups” in Homs, Hama, Deraa, Deir al-Zor and Damascus province.

Another 16 soldiers were reported killed on Sunday. SANA said six soldiers died in a bombing sout-west of Damascus, while the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 10 soldiers were killed when their convoy was attacked in Jabal al-Zawiya in northern Syria.

In Rankous, 20 miles north of Damascus by the Lebanese border, Assad’s forces have killed at least 33 people in recent days in an attack aimed at dislodging army defectors and insurgents, locals reported. Rankous is a mountain town of 25,000 people. It has been under tank fire since Wednesday, when several thousand troops laid siege to it, they added.

The foreign secretary, William Hague, said he was deeply concerned by the violence in Syria and the decision by the Arab League to call a halt to its monitoring activities. Hague called on the international community to unite this week and to agree a UN security council resolution that would stop “the killing and the repression of civilians”.

France, which has been leading calls for a stronger international response, said the Arab League decision highlighted the need to act.

“France vigorously condemns the dramatic escalation of violence in Syria, which has led the Arab League to suspend its observers’ mission,” the French foreign ministry said.

“Dozens of Syrian civilians have been killed in the past days by the savage repression undertaken by the Syrian regime … Those responsible for these barbarous acts must answer to their crimes.”

The Arab League mission began at the end of last year. Its brief was to observe Syria’s supposed implementation of a peace plan, but the plan failed. Gulf states withdrew monitors last week, saying their team could not stop the violence.

In December the UN said more than 5,000 people had been killed in the protests and crackdown. Syria says more than 2,000 security force members have been killed by militants.

On Friday, the UN security council discussed a European-Arab draft resolution aimed at halting the bloodshed. Britain and France said they hoped to put it to a vote next week. Russia joined China in vetoing a previous western draft resolution in October, and has said it wants a Syrian-led political process, not “an Arab League-imposed outcome” or Libyan-style “regime change”.

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Syrian forces began bombing the restive city of Homs at dawn on Monday, killing at least 50 people, residents said. Opposition groups and activists reported more than 200 deaths in the embattled city over the weekend.