02/19/2013 - #Syria - Aleppo - Rescuing the wounded and lifting the bodies after SCUD missile attack on Jabal Badr neighborhood
3 Nov 2012 #Syria : Idlib Body Parts Litter the Ground
After strenuous recovery efforts, residents were finally able to extract this boy from underneath the rubble. The child was trapped after Assad forces bombarded homes in Maarret Misreen with MiG fighter jets. This footage showing his rescue and body parts littering the area was uploaded on November 3, 2012.
Viewer discretion advised. Scenes are distressing.
24/08/12
IT IS NOT EVEN SAFE TO TRY AND RESCUE YOUR OWN IN #SYRIA
#Syria, shell lands on the people in Idlib, they were rescuing other injured!
08/08/12 Graphic 18+
#Syria, LCC Rescuing One of the Injured Due to the Shelling at the Mreej Town in Lattakia
Turkish rescue plane also attacked by #Syria
ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News
Al-Assad forces fired on a Turkish-flagged search and rescue plane which rushed into Syrian airspace to locate the downed Turkish jet and its two missing pilots, Western diplomats reveal to Hürriyet Daily News
By Serkan Demirtaşserkan.demirtas@tdn.com.tr
Syrian security forces fired on a Turkish-flagged search and rescue plane which rushed into Syrian airspace to locate the downed Turkish F4 jet and its two missing pilots June 22, the Hürriyet Daily News has learned from Western diplomatic sources.
“[In addition to] what we have seen in the media, we have been informed that Syrian forces opened fire on another Turkish plane [which had come to the region] as part of the search and rescue operation,” sources told the Daily News on the condition of anonymity.
This information was shared with the ambassadors and defense attachés of the Arab League, European Union and NATO countries during a briefing at the Foreign Ministry yesterday. The Turkish search and rescue plane immediately left Syrian airspace after the shots. Local eyewitnesses reported a second plane leaving the same region over the Mediterranean Sea the afternoon of June 22, which could possibly be this Turkish search and rescue plane. Amid sound and fury over the shooting down of the Turkish jet, there was also another row between Turkey and Syria on the coordination of the search and rescue operation. The Syrian side offered to conduct a joint operation but attached certain conditions.
One of the conditions was that Syria wanted to seize the Turkish jet and take the Turkish pilots for the completion of necessary procedures as they had been in Syrian territorial waters. The Turkish side strongly rejected the idea and informed Syrian forces that Turkey would carry out its own search and rescue operations and would not leave its pilots and jet in the hands of Syria.
For this reason Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu denied that there was a joint search and rescue operation with Syria in his remarks yesterday. “This cannot be described as a joint operation. We are in coordination with the Syrians as this operation is being carried out in their territorial waters,” Davutoğlu said. The search and rescue operation is expected to end tomorrow.
In the same briefing, Turkey told foreign ambassadors that Syrian air forces had violated the Turkish border five times in recent months but had not been intercepted as these had not been considered “hostile” moves. The Turkish side implemented rules of engagement in these cases but did not respond to them in the way Syria did to the Turkish jet.
Searches go on for hit jet
ANKARA
Turkey sent additional vessels to the eastern Mediterranean after the wreckage of the downed jet was identified at a depth of 1,300 meters in the Mediterranean Sea. “Our priority is to save our pilots. We have sent another search and rescue vessel to the area [where] we believe our jet fell..The sea depth is around 1,300 meters in the region” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said and requested steadiness from the families of the two pilots. The missing pilots are Capt. Gökhan Ertan and Lt. Hüseyin Aksoy. Turkish naval and air forces have been carrying out search and rescue operations since late Friday but no wreckage of the plane or pilots could be found. A vessel equipped with the technology necessary for a more detailed search has already been dispatched to the area to assist ongoing efforts of Turkish and Syrian guard boats.An eyewitness account from besieged Homs #Syria
By Michael Weiss Last updated: February 29th, 2012
A wounded Syrian boy lies half-buried in a shelled house in Baba Amr (Photo: AFP/Getty)
I’ve just had a chilling Skype conversation with a resident in Homs who wishes to be identified as “Sammy”. He’s in an area of the city close to Baba Amr, though for his safety I won’t disclose it.
Sammy told me that the shelling started in the late afternoon there and it “was one of the most terrible days we have ever seen. Everything was shaking”.
So is Sammy. It’s snowing in Homs right now and I could hear his voice quaver from the cold. He’s using a satellite phone to connect to the internet and his laptop runs on a battery that also, inconveniently, has to heat his home. Our conversation was brief.
Sammy confirmed that intense gun battles have raged throughout the city, presumably between the Free Syrian Army and the regime’s forces. “We have seen Assad’s forces trying to enter the area. They came back in a very fast way, so we know that someone is banning them from entering.” (Another eyewitness interviewed early by the Today Programme estimated that 400 FSA fighters were stationed in Baba Amr and that they’d fight to the death to defend the besieged district.)
I asked about activists’ accounts of helicopter gunships and even military fighter jets overhead. Sammy said he saw helicopters flying but didn’t witness any firing from the air.
He’s effectively trapped where he is. Escape isn’t possible now because there are snipers stationed everywhere and “they shoot at everything that moves”.
“I saw a lot of tanks, they are directly under my home. They move in and out of my street where I am now. When they go out, they become more violent.”
I asked what message he had to relay to the world.
“I want them to stop this nightmare. I want them to rescue civilians. There are children here who haven’t done anything, they have no fault and they need to be rescued immediately. The world should act seriously. It’s not a good situation to say that we’re in the 21st century and we can see such horrible things here.”
Syrian army assaults rebel district in Homs #Syria
Blood stains left by a 70-year-old woman who was killed in the room after heavy shelling by government forces in Sermeen near the northern city of Idlib February 28, 2012.
Credit: Reuters/Zohra Bensemra
AMMAN |
“The army is trying to go in with infantry from the direction of al-Bassel football field and fierce confrontations with automatic rifles and heavy machineguns are taking place there,” activist Mohammad al-Homsi told Reuters from Homs. He said the military had shelled Baba Amro heavily on Tuesday and overnight before the ground attack started. Several Western journalists are trapped in the battered district, although Syrian activists escorted British photographer Paul Conroy to safety in nearby Lebanon on Tuesday in a messy escape in which some of his rescuers were killed. Reports from Baba Amro could not immediately be verified due to tight government restrictions on media work in Syria, where President Bashar al-Assad is struggling to repress an almost year-long uprising against his 11-year rule. Activists say hundreds of civilians have been killed in besieged opposition districts of Homs, including at least 20 on Tuesday. Shells and rockets have been crashing into Baba Amro since February 4. Army snipers pick off civilians who venture out. The International Committee of the Red Cross and its local partner, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, have been pushing for a ceasefire to enable them to extricate wounded civilians and bring in desperately needed supplies of food and medicine. The United Nations says Assad’s security forces have killed more than 7,500 civilians since the revolt began last March. “There are credible reports that the death toll now often exceeds 100 civilians a day, including many women and children,” U.N. Under-Secretary-General for political affairs Lynn Pascoe told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday. “The total killed so far is certainly well over 7,500 people.” Syria’s government said in December that “armed terrorists” had killed over 2,000 soldiers and police during the unrest. DRAFT U.N. RESOLUTION As world dismay grew over the bloodshed, France said the Security Council was working on a new Syria resolution and urged Russia and China not to veto it, as they have previous drafts. An outline drafted by Washington focused on humanitarian problems to try to win Chinese and Russian support and isolate Assad, Western envoys said. But they said the draft would also suggest Assad was to blame for the crisis, a stance his longtime ally Russia in particular has opposed. Asked by a U.S. senator whether Assad could be called a war criminal, Clinton told a Senate hearing: “There would be an argument to be made that he would fit into that category”. She added, however, that using such labels “limits options to persuade leaders to step down from power”. Russia and China vetoed a draft resolution on February 4 that would have backed an Arab League call for Assad to step down. China indicated a possible shift late on Tuesday when it told the head of the Arab League it supported international efforts to send humanitarian aid to Syria. But Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi also urged political dialogue in Syria, something ruled out by Assad’s opponents while the bloodshed goes on, and Russia has warned against interference in Syria under a humanitarian guise. Syria’s U.N. envoy in Geneva stormed out of the U.N. Human Rights Council after saying other nations must stop “inciting sectarianism and providing arms” to Syrian rebels. Conroy, who works for London’s Sunday Times, was spirited safely out of Homs into Lebanon on Tuesday. “He is in good shape and in good spirits,” the newspaper said. He had been among several journalists trapped in Baba Amro, where Marie Colvin, a veteran war correspondent also with the Sunday Times, and French photographer Remi Ochlik were killed in a bombardment on February 22. Their bodies are still there. Confusion surrounded the fate of French freelance reporter Edith Bouvier, who was wounded in the same attack. President Nicolas Sarkozy initially said he had been informed that Bouvier had been evacuated, but later said that had not been confirmed. Activists said Bouvier was back in Baba Amro, along with Spanish journalist Javier Espinosa and French photographer William Daniels, after a failed attempt to smuggle them out. (Additional reporting by Dominic Evans, Erika Solomon and Mariam Karouny in Beirut, Louis Charbonneau and Michelle Nichols at the United Nations and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Alistair Lyon; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
