Syrian Freedom

#Syria’s humanitarian crisis is being forgotten in the blood and thunder of the revolution

04/09/12

Syrian refugee children who fled the violence in their country play with guns at the Zaatari refugee camp in Jordan (AFP/Getty)

Amid the clash and thunder of Syria’s civil war, the suffering of the country’s civilian population is often overlooked. The latest figures drive home the sheer scale of the country’s humanitarian crisis. According to the United Nations High Commission for Refugees, about 100,000 people fled Syria during the course of last month alone. That means there are now 234,368 registered refugees, concentrated mainly in Turkey and Jordan.

Another 1.5 million people have been displaced within the country’s borders, according to the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, meaning that 8 per cent of the entire national population have fled their homes since the fighting began in March last year. If the same proportion of the British population were to suffer this fate, we would have 4.8 million refugees.

Then there are those who are still living in their homes but need humanitarian aid – whether food supplies or health care – because of the breakdown of essential services. That number comes to another 1 million, according to the UN. Combine that total with the number of displaced persons – both within Syria and in neighbouring countries – and 2.7 million people are now dependent on humanitarian aid – or 13 per cent of the national population. And the UN expects this number to grow still further. Privately, UN officials say they are planning for the day when 4 million Syrians need humanitarian help of some kind.

Just two years ago, a crisis on this scale in Syria was pretty much inconceivable. The fact that it has developed so quickly shows the underlying fragility of the country. And it serves as a reminder that when things go wrong in the Middle East, it happens with bewildering speed.

U.N. aid chief to visit #Syria but options limited

13/08/2012

GENEVA (Reuters) - United Nations humanitarian chief Valerie Amos will go to Syria on Tuesday to discuss ways of increasing emergency aid to civilians, but fighting must ebb before there is any real hope of gaining access to hot spots, diplomats said on Monday.

During her three-day trip, Amos will also visit Lebanon to meet Syrian families who have fled the violence and hold talks on providing support to the growing number of refugees, a U.N. statement said.

The humanitarian situation in Syria has worsened in recent weeks as fighting spread to Damascus and Aleppo. “Two million people are now estimated to have been affected by the crisis and over one million have been internally displaced,” it said.

Amos’ schedule of meetings was not released, but the statement said that she would meet Syrian authorities, the Syrian Arab Red Crescent and other aid agencies.

She went to Syria in March to seek unhindered access for aid workers to the worst-hit areas and secured an agreement from the government for a joint but limited assessment of the humanitarian situation.

But U.N. efforts to launch a major aid operation since then have been stymied by both bureaucracy and insecurity.

The escalation in the 17-month conflict between government forces and rebel fighters means there are few options for boosting relief operations unless the guns fall silent, diplomats said.

“As long as you have violence going on areas with the greatest needs, it becomes an access question. You can’t do it with bullets flying,” a Western diplomatic source told Reuters.

“Announcing someone has access is insignificant if the shells are still falling,” he said.

WINDOWS OF OPPORTUNITY

Despite growing needs, Syria has refused to grant visas to Western aid workers, a U.N. official said last month.

Growing insecurity forced the world body to withdraw some expatriate aid workers from Syria in late July.

The U.N. still deploys some 36 expatriates and 1,000 Syrian aid workers in the country, while a further 3,600 Syrians work for the U.N. agency helping Palestinian refugees known as UNRWA.

“The distribution network is there. National staff are implementing the programme. We are mobile and whenever there is a window of opportunity, we will deliver assistance,” said Jens Laerke, spokesman of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

U.N. agencies including the World Food Programme (WFP) have relied on the Syrian Arab Red Crescent to distribute its aid supplies, including food rations to 542,000 people in July - falling well short of the WFP target of 850,000.

Up to 3 million Syrians are likely to need food, crop and livestock aid in the next 12 months as the conflict has prevented farmers harvesting crops, the WFP and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said last week.

Many of the main drug makers in Syria have closed down, causing severe shortages of medicines for treating chronic diseases and a rising number of casualties, the World Health Organization (WHO) said a week ago.

Hospitals or health centres have stopped functioning due to a lack of staff or supplies, while others have been damaged or taken over by fighters, the U.N. agency said.

Nearly 150,000 Syrian refugees have registered in Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey since the conflict began, the U.N. refugee agency said on Friday.

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Jon Hemming)

More assistance reaches civilians in Aleppo and other areas #Syria

09/08/2012

(ICRC)

Thousands of civilians, especially in the governorates of Damascus and Aleppo, are struggling to stay safe. Despite facing increasing challenges over the past three weeks, the ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent assisted over 125,000 people affected by violence in several parts of Syria.

“Though the ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent are doing everything possible to assist civilians affected by the violence, it is also up to the parties to the conflict to take every feasible measure to spare the civilian population the effects of the fighting,” said Marianne Gasser, the head of the ICRC delegation in Syria.

“As the situation began to worsen in Damascus, it became very difficult for our staff to move about in and around the city to bring aid to the civilian population,” said Ms Gasser. “Needs have been growing very fast, so the ICRC has had to quickly adapt its way of working to be able to meet them in partnership with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.”

As fighting flared up in the governorate of Aleppo, in the north of Syria, thousands of people left their homes and began pouring into public buildings, now used as temporary shelters. Over 80 schools in several parts of the governorate are currently hosting civilians who have fled the fighting. “Aleppo is of particular concern to the ICRC, not only because of its distant geographical location, but because the Syrian Arab Red Crescent had to suspend most of its activities owing to extreme danger on the ground,” said Ms Gasser. “Still, dozens of volunteers have continued to work under extremely difficult conditions to meet the growing needs of the civilian population.”

To help the Red Crescent cope with the mounting need for humanitarian aid, the ICRC managed to deliver enough food and other essentials to Aleppo governorate today to cover the needs of at least 12,500 people.

Many health-care facilities are also finding it ever more challenging to treat the injured because their services have been disrupted by the violence, and medical items are scarce. The ICRC has sent enough medical supplies to treat between 250 and 1,000 casualties, depending on the seriousness of their injuries. Over the past two weeks, the ICRC arranged repeatedly for water and sanitation technicians to ensure that schools had enough clean water to cover the needs of the displaced people taking shelter in them and to preserve sanitary conditions despite frequent overcrowding.

Though humanitarian efforts over the past few weeks have focused on Damascus and Aleppo, needs in other parts of the country remain high. In Homs city, thousands of people have taken shelter in schoolhouses and other public buildings, some for several weeks already. The ICRC has delivered a one-month supply of food for over 20,000 people in the city. For several months, access to water has also been a serious concern for the majority of the people in Homs. To help the city cope with water shortages, the ICRC has installed a 1,000 kilowatt-amp generator to boost the capacity of the Ain Al-Tanour pumping stations, which supply 80 per cent of the drinking water for the city’s combined resident and displaced population of 800,000. To help the Syrian Arab Red Crescent deal with the persisting humanitarian needs in Hama, Idlib, Lattakia, Raqqa and Hassakeh governorates, the ICRC has delivered a one-month supply of food for more than 43,000 civilians.

The ICRC currently has 50 staff members working in Syria. Together with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, ICRC staff have been assisting tens of thousands of people in all parts of the country who have so far been affected by the violence.

Over the past three weeks, in cooperation with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, the ICRC has:

delivered enough supplies to treat between 250 and 1,000 casualties to Aleppo, and wound-dressing and other materials to the Syrian Arab Red Crescent in Damascus;
equipped the Red Crescent’s four mobile health units, which have been providing primary health care and medicines in schools hosting displaced people in Damascus;
provided more than 125,000 mainly displaced people in and around Damascus city and in Aleppo, Homs, Hama, Idlib, Lattakia, Hassakeh and Raqqa with over 25,000 food parcels, together with one-kilogram packs of dates and dried apricot to mark the holy month of Ramadan, to help them cope for one month;
helped the Red Crescent’s Aleppo branch improve access to safe drinking water in 10 schools hosting an estimated 2,000 people, and also helped improve access to safe drinking water and improve sanitary conditions in Damascus and Rural Damascus for over 68,000 people who recently fled the fighting and are staying in 27 schools and residential areas;
continued to ensure that more than 300,000 people accommodated in over 100 schoolhouses in Homs have an ample supply of clean water;
delivered nearly 10,000 mattresses to schoolhouses and other public buildings hosting displaced people in and around Damascus city and in Aleppo and Homs, and 2,000 sets of hygiene items to Aleppo.

For further information, please contact:

Rabab Al-Rifaï, ICRC Damascus, tel: +963 993 700 847 or +963 11 331 0476
Cecilia Goin, ICRC Beirut, tel: +961 353 1694
Hicham Hassan, ICRC Geneva: tel: +41 22 730 25 41 or +41 79 536 92 57

U.N. to survey health needs in 4 #Syria cities

Nazem Najar, 12, recovers in a hospital after being wounded by a Syrian Army sniper, in the northern Syrian city of Idlib, Wednesday, March 7, 2012. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd)

(AP) GENEVA - The Syrian government will allow the United Nations to assess the basic medical needs of Syrians in four areas where opposition forces have clashed with government troops and to also carry out a preliminary humanitarian needs assessment, officials said Friday.

But the rare access to strife-torn areas of Syria gained by two U.N. agencies for health and population needs depends on the cooperation of local medical students, Syrian Arab Red Crescent aid workers and other non-government organizations to conduct the survey.

A third U.N. agency, for humanitarian needs, announced Friday it had gained access for its own preliminary assessment.

For the past year, Syria’s government has engaged in a bloody crackdown on a popular uprising inspired by the Arab Spring movements in other countries in the region. The U.N. says more than 7,500 people have been killed. Activists put the death toll at more than 8,000.

World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic says a “very preliminary and basic survey” overseen by his agency and the U.N. Population Fund will be carried out next week with the cooperation of Syria’s health ministry.

Medical students and aid workers will fan out in four areas affected by the crisis: the rebellious city of Homs, the southern town of Daraa where protests began, the northeastern city of Deir al-Zour and rural parts of the capital Damascus, he told reporters in Geneva.

“It is very difficult to assess needs and provide an independent evaluation in order to get a clear overview of the situation and the needs on the ground,” Jasarevic said. “The results will be analyzed by a technical committee composed of most of the agencies of the health sector.”

In particular, he said, local aid workers say they already know there is a critical lack of medical help ranging from not enough ambulances to sparse medicine and other supplies, particularly for trauma care and chronic diseases.

The U.N. health agency says that since the start of the crisis last year its office in Syria has been providing the nation’s health ministry and the Red Crescent with ambulances, surgery supplies, and equipment such as ventilators and incubators for newborn babies.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, which has been negotiating for access in Syria, said Friday it has gained permission to take a “first step” toward providing badly needed medical help, food and basic supplies.

After a three-day tour of Syria that included Homs and parts of its devastated suburb of Baba Amr, OCHA head Valerie Amos said in Ankara, Turkey, that she was “horrified by the destruction.”

“Almost all the buildings had been destroyed and there were hardly any people left there,” she said.

Amos said in a statement provided to reporters in Geneva that she is “extremely concerned as to the whereabouts of the people who have been displaced from Baba Amr.”

She said her meetings with Syrian government ministers ended with an agreement for “a joint preliminary humanitarian assessment mission” that would be done in areas where people most urgently need help.

“While this is a necessary first step, it remains essential that a robust and regular arrangement be put in place, which allows humanitarian organizations unhindered access to evacuate the wounded and deliver desperately needed supplies,” she said. “A proposal has been submitted to the government of Syria, and I ask them to consider this matter with the utmost urgency.”

#Syria: UN relief chief ‘horrified’ by violence, urges unrestricted access for aid agencies

Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Valerie Amos

9 March 2012 –

The United Nations relief chief today urged Syrian authorities to allow unrestricted access to humanitarian organizations to deliver aid to people affected by the ongoing violence, saying she was “horrified” by the destruction she had seen in some of the areas she visited during her two-day visit to the country.

Valerie Amos, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, met with Syrian Foreign Minister, Walid al-Moallem, and other Government ministers, who agreed to a joint preliminary assessment mission to areas where people urgently need assistance.

“While this is a necessary first step, it remains essential that a robust and regular arrangement be put in place, which allows humanitarian organizations unhindered access to evacuate the wounded and deliver desperately needed supplies,” said Ms. Amos in a statement.

“A proposal has been submitted to the Government of Syria and I ask them to consider this matter with the utmost urgency.”

Ms. Amos, who is also the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, visited the city of Homs and part of the suburb of Baba Amr with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent.

“Almost all the buildings had been destroyed and there were hardly any people left there. I am extremely concerned as to the whereabouts of the people who have been displaced from Baba Amr,” she said.

During her visit, Ms. Amos also went to facilities for displaced Syrians in the Hatay province on the Turkish side of the border, and met the Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu with whom she discussed regional contingency planning efforts.

Last week, Ms. Amos also held consultations with the Lebanese and Jordanian governments and praised their readiness to assist Syrian exiles. “I commend all three governments for keeping the borders open for people in distress and for providing relief to them in a sustained manner,” she said.

Earlier this week, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said that as many as 2,000 refugees from Syria may have crossed into Lebanon in just two days.

Yesterday, Joint Special Envoy of the UN and the League of Arab States for Syria, Kofi Annan, called for an immediate end to the killings and warned against the use of force.

“I hope no one is thinking very seriously of using force in the situation. I believe any further militarization will make the situation worse,” Mr. Annan said at a joint press conference in Cairo with the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Nabil El-Araby.

The uprising in Syria is part of the broader Arab Spring protest movement that began at the start of last year and has toppled several long-standing regimes in North Africa and the Middle East.

#Syria trying to cover up executions, say activists

By Albert Aji, Beirut

Thursday, March 08, 2012

The UN humanitarian chief entered the shattered Syrian district of Baba Amr, where activists accuse regime forces of trying to cover up evidence of execution-style killings and reprisal attacks following a bloody military siege.

Valerie Amos was expected to give the first outside assessment of the conditions in the neighbourhood in the central city of Homs.

The government had sealed off Baba Amr since regime forces recaptured the neighbourhood from rebels last Thursday following a deadly assault that lasted nearly four weeks. Activists accuse the government of using the past six days to try to cover up evidence of atrocities by the regime.

Khaled Erq Sousi, head of the emergency committee of the Syrian Red Crescent, said that Amos was allowed into Baba Amr. The government had rebuffed an earlier request by Amos to visit the country this month as regime troops attacked Baba Amr, finally wresting it back from rebels who had held it for months.

Amos has said the aim of her visit is “to urge all sides to allow unhindered access for humanitarian relief workers so they can evacuate the wounded and deliver essential supplies.”

Despite international appeals, the Syrian government still has not allowed any aid workers into Baba Amr, saying there was a security risk. But activists say the government has been engaged in a “mopping-up” operation to hide their activities.

After seizing Baba Amr from the rebels, regime forces appeared to be turning their attention to other rebellious areas, including the northern province of Idlib near Turkey. The shift suggested that the Syrian military is unable to launch large operations simultaneously, even though the security services remain largely strong and loyal.

According to witnesses, Syrian troops shelled the northern villages in Idlib yesterday.

Syrian President Bashar al Assad defies mounting international pressure to end the year-old crackdown on an uprising against him.

According to state news agency Sana, Assad said he will continue to confront “foreign-backed terrorism.” Since the uprising began last March, he has blamed armed gangs and foreign terrorists for the unrest, not protesters seeking change.

The UN says more than 7,500 people have been killed since Syria’s uprising began. Activists put the death toll at more than 8,000.

Despite the growing bloodshed, president Barack Obama has said unilateral US military action against Assad’s regime would be a mistake.

In Washington, Defence Secretary Leon Panetta pushed back against fresh demands for US military involvement in Syria to end Assad’s deadly crackdown on his people.

The panel’s top Republican, Sen John McCain of Arizona, said the estimated 7,500 dead and the bloodshed calls for US leadership that a Democratic president, Bill Clinton, displayed during the Bosnian war in the 1990s and that Obama eventually showed on Libya last year.

#Syria: Aid Allowed Into ‘Nearly Empty’ Baba Amr

Watch video here.

Wednesday, 7th March 2012 13:31

A UN humanitarian chief and a Syrian Red Crescent team of aid workers have been allowed into the devastated Baba Amr district of Homs but most civilians had already fled.

It comes as an International Red Cross convoy was still unable to go there since arriving in the city last Friday - a day after rebel fighters left following nearly a month of shelling by government forces.

UN official Baroness Valerie Amos went to the district as part of a three-day mission to try to persuade Syrian authorities to grant full access to aid workers into the towns and cities affected by fighting so they can deliver life-saving assistance to civilians.

The International Red Cross said most Baba Amr residents had left for areas such as Abel that have already been visited by the organisation.

Their teams provided assistance to 450 families, about 2,700 people, in Abel during the day.

Baroness Amos has also held talks with foreign minister Walid Moualem in the capital Damascus.

He said she could visit anywhere in Syria, according to her spokeswoman, who added Ms Amos and her team had heard gunfire while they were in Baba Amr.

“She (Amos) said that security was obviously an issue, and they heard gunfire while they were there,” said Amanda Pitt, a spokeswoman for the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

“The parts of Baba Amr that they saw, she said they were pretty devastated.”

International Committee of the Red Cross spokesman Sean Maguire confirmed the Syrian Red Crescent team had been allowed in to Baba Amr, but said the Red Cross had not entered the area.

Baroness Amos had been denied access to the country for more than a week. Her mission will end just as the new UN/Arab League envoy, Kofi Annan, arrives.

She says her aim is to “urge all sides to allow unhindered access for humanitarian relief workers so they can evacuate the wounded and deliver essential supplies”.

The British Ambassador to Damascus, Simon Collis, said: “I hope her visit is the beginning of something, but I can’t help noticing that the regime always wants to haggle.”

Diplomatically, little is expected to happen until Mr Annan’s visit and even that will probably just be a series of preliminary meetings.

Recent attempts to put together a new UN Security Council resolution may be put on hold until he reports back to New York.

The Russians maintain that their position that there should be no outside interference in Syria has not changed and US President Barack Obama has repeated his stance that unilateral US military intervention would be a mistake.

US considering assistance to #Syria’s Opposition forces

The United States is considering direct assistance to Syria’s opposition forces, including technical and communications equipment, to help in their fight against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

The US is against taking unilateral military action in Syria.

Instead it’s focused its efforts on pursuing diplomacy and sanctions to force President Assad to step down.

The US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta has told a Senate Committee the US is considering direct assistance to Syria’s rebels.

“Plans are being made to provide an array of non-lethal assistance including technical assistance,” he said.

The Defence chief left open the possibility of military action saying while the Obama administration continues to assess the situation, a military plan is underway that’ll provide the President with some options.

Red Cross convoy enters Syrian suburb of Baba Amr

The UN humanitarian chief, Valerie Amos, who is currently visiting Syria, has described the Baba Amr district in the city of Homs as devastated and devoid of people.

She visited the area with members of the Syrian Red Crescent.

The Red Cross was blocked from delivering aid to Baba Amr for the past five days.

Red Cross spokeswoman Carla Haddad says it’s a case of too little, too late.

“We kept saying we need to enter to assess things first hand,” she said.

“Now the fact that the Syrian Arab Red Crescent entered is important but then if no one is left, what the point.

“I mean the point was to help people when they needed it, and we think we’ve managed to do that outside of Baba Amr and we’ve been doing that for days. “

Anti-government activists say military tanks bombarded other opposition areas in Homs throughout the evening, although an ICRC spokesman in Damascus said the city was quieter than before.

In the latest of several accounts of killings and other abuses, local activist Mohammed al-Homsi said troops and militiamen in support of president Bashar al-Assad had stabbed to death seven males, including a 10-year-old, from one family on Tuesday.

“Their bodies were dumped in farmland next to Baba Amr,” he said.

Syrian media curbs make it hard to verify such reports.

ABC/wires

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

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

AMMAN | Wed Feb 29, 2012 4:53am EST

(Reuters) - Syrian troops launched a ground attack in Homs on Wednesday in an apparent attempt to overrun the rebel-held Baba Amro neighborhood that has endured 25 days of siege and fierce bombardment, opposition sources said.

“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)

#Syria: Bid to rescue two wounded journalists fails

Shelling: A woman holds her daughter as she looks at a building hit by Syrian Army bombings

Attempts to evacuate two wounded journalists from the besieged city of Homs failed as ambulances carrying injured civilians left without them.

Sunday Times photographer Paul Conroy and French reporter Edith Bouvier, of Le Figaro newspaper, were injured in a deadly bombardment which killed war correspondent Marie Colvin and French photojournalist Remi Ochlik on Wednesday.

Teams from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent made their way into the embattled neighbourhood of Baba Amr yesterday to remove casualties but parted without the wounded journalists or the bodies of their colleagues.

A spokesman for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said last night: “We were not able to evacuate the foreign journalists or the bodies of those journalists killed last week.
“We do not know the reason why.

“The situation on the ground is very tense and communications are very difficult.”

The ambulances left Baba Amr, which has been devastated by a month of shelling by Syrian government forces, carrying an elderly woman and a pregnant woman with her husband.

Efforts to rescue Mr Conroy and Ms Bouvier were launched last week following the rocket attack on the makeshift media centre where they were working.

On Sunday, Mr Conroy’s wife Kate said her husband had rejected an opportunity to leave Homs with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent for fear it was “not to be trusted”.

International Development Secretary Andrew Mitchell has said there was evidence of people on the ground “infiltrating” the humanitarian organisation and “posing an additional danger” to anyone seeking to leave the city.

Foreign Office officials are understood to be working alongside the French embassy to try to retrieve the journalists and are said to be pressing the Syrian ministry of foreign affairs.
Mr Conroy, 47, from Totnes, Devon, has appealed for help in a video posted on YouTube.

Lying on a sofa in a darkened room and covered in a blanket, he said he sustained “three large wounds” to his leg in the attack and was being looked after by the Free Syrian Army medical staff.

The freelance photographer and film-maker, who was also hit in the stomach by shrapnel, added that he wanted to reassure family and friends in Britain that he was “absolutely OK”.

Ms Bouvier, who suffered multiple leg fractures, was also seen begging for help in being evacuated to safety in Lebanon.

On Friday, teams from the ICRC were deployed to Homs to evacuate seven wounded and 20 women and children.

The organisation has since stressed the “urgent” need to evacuate those who require help and bring in vital assistance.

The Foreign Office has said “all the necessary work” was being done to repatriate Ms Colvin’s body and ensure Mr Conroy “gets to safety”.

The award-winning war reporter, 56, was killed after defying an order from her editor to leave the opposition stronghold of Homs because she wanted to finish “one more story” her mother Rosemarie has said.

At the time, she was the only British newspaper reporter in the city, which has become a symbol of the 11-month uprising against Syrian president Bashar Assad.

Syrian activists have accused his forces of deliberately targeting the journalists.
The Syrian foreign ministry has offered condolences to the families of Ms Colvin and Mr Ochlik but denied any responsibility for their deaths.

Activist group: 144 dead in #Syria fighting

By Ben Hubbard Associated Press

Posted: 02/27/2012 11:15:29 PM MST

Updated: 02/27/2012 11:16:17 PM MST

BEIRUT — A Syrian activist group reported Monday that 144 people have been killed across the country, scores of them in the embattled opposition stronghold of Homs by security forces as they tried to flee. A team from the Syrian arm of the Red Cross delivered aid to one of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods after days of trying to reach the area.

The activist group did not say whether all 144 died on Monday or were killed over the past few days. Many of the casualties were believed to be from the rebel-controlled Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs, which the Syrian Arab Red Crescent entered late Monday. Also in the neighborhood are two wounded foreign journalists along with the bodies of two of their colleagues who were killed last week.

European and American diplomats and aid workers have been trying desperately to find a way to evacuate them, but Red Cross spokeswoman Carla Haddad said late Monday that the Red Crescent had not managed to get them out. She did not know whether the group had stopped trying for the evening.

Homs has emerged as the center of the 11-month-old uprising seeking to oust authoritarian President Bashar Assad and has borne the brunt of his regime’s bloody crackdown on dissent. Parts of the city have been surrounded for weeks, making it impossible for rescue workers to reach the wounded and for families to bring their dead and injured to the hospital.

Reports by numerous activists that more than 60 bodies were brought to the hospital, all of whom appeared to have died in one incident, reflect the spreading carnage.

The high death toll reported by the Local Coordination Committees activist group is sure to add to the growing international pressure on Assad to give up power. But so far, his regime has shown no signs that it is ready to leave peacefully.

Syrian officials announced the results of a referendum on a new constitution held Sunday that Syrian authorities lauded as a step toward political reform.

The referendum allows at least in theory for opening the country’s political system. It approves a new constitution, which allows for a multiparty system in Syria, which has been ruled by the Baath party since it took power in a coup in 1963. Assad’s father, Hafez, took power in another coup in 1970.

It also imposes a limit of two seven-year terms on the president, meaning Assad could remain legally in power through 2028.

The U.S. and its allies dismissed the vote as a “farce” meant to justify the regime’s bloody crackdown on dissent. Syria’s main opposition groups boycotted the vote, and violence elsewhere prevented polling.

Syrian state TV said 89 percent of eligible voters approved the new document, while nine percent rejected it. It put turnout at 57 percent of Syria’s 14.9 million eligible voters.

Representatives of more than 60 countries met in Tunisia last week to forge a unified strategy to push Assad from power and began planning a civilian peacekeeping mission to deploy after the regime falls. On Monday, the European Union imposed new sanctions.

Syria has been able to count on allies China and Russia to protect it from condemnation by the U.N. Security Council. Both staunchly opposed any interference in Syria’s affairs.

Death toll mounts as Assad sends elite Syrian troops to embattled Homs #Syria

Syrians attend a mass funeral for more than a dozen of people, whom anti-government protesters said were killed during clashes with Syrian forces in Homs. (Reuters)

Tuesday, 28 February 2012

By Al Arabiya with Agencies

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad sent units of an elite armored division into Homs on Tuesday as rebel-held districts came under the heaviest bombardment of a three-week-old offensive, opposition sources in the city said. Syrian forces killed as many as 138 people on Monday, Al Arabiya reported citing activists.

Opposition sources told Reuters that tanks and troops of the Fourth Division, which is commanded by Assad’s brother Maher moved overnight into main streets around the besieged southern area of Baba Amro. The tanks had “Fourth Division Monsters” painted on them, they said.

There was no independent confirmation of the deployment. Syrian authorities tightly restrict media access to the country.

The outside world has proved powerless to halt the killing in Syria, where repression of initially peaceful protests has spawned an armed insurrection by army deserters and others.

The Syrian Arab Red Crescent did manage to enter the besieged Baba Amro district of Homs and evacuate three people on Monday, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said. Foreign reporters trapped in the area were not evacuated and the bodies of two journalists killed there had not been recovered, it said, according to Reuters.

President Bashar al-Assad’s government announced that voters had overwhelmingly approved a new constitution in a referendum derided as a sham by his critics at home and abroad.

While foreign powers argued over whether to arm the rebels, the Syrian Interior Ministry on Monday said the reformed constitution, which could keep Assad in power until 2028, had received 89.4 percent approval from more than 8 million voters.

Syrian dissidents and Western leaders dismissed as a farce Sunday’s vote, conducted in the midst of the country’s bloodiest turmoil in decades, although Assad says the new constitution will lead to multi-party elections within three months.

Voting turnout

Officials put national voter turnout at close to 60 percent, but diplomats who toured polling stations in Damascus saw only a handful of voters at each location.

Assad says he is fighting foreign-backed “armed terrorist groups” and his main allies — Russia, China and Iran — fiercely oppose any outside intervention intended to add him to the list of Arab autocrats unseated by popular revolts in the past year.

But Qatar joined Saudi Arabia in advocating arming the Syrian rebels, given that Russia and China have twice used their vetoes to block any action by the U.N. Security Council.

“I think we should do whatever is necessary to help them, including giving them weapons to defend themselves,” Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani said in Oslo.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe criticized the U.N. Security Council’s “impotence” on Syria, shown by the Russian and Chinese vetoes, and accused the Syrian authorities of “massacres” and “odious crimes.”

In a speech to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva, Juppe said the time was ripe for referring Syria to the International Criminal Court and warned Assad he would be brought to justice.

“The day will come when the Syrian civilian and military authorities, first among them President Assad himself, must respond before justice for their acts. In the face of such crimes, there can be no impunity,” Juppe told the 47-member Geneva forum, which will hold an emergency debate on Syria on Tuesday.

Shells and rockets crashed into districts of Homs that have already endured weeks of bombardment as Assad’s forces try to stamp out an almost year-long revolt against his 11-year rule.

Red Cross evacuates Bab Amr wounded #Syria

Aid group in talks to reach further casualties after ambulances move 27 women and children from besieged Homs district.

Watch video here.

Syrian Red Cross workers have moved 27 people from a neighbourhood in the besieged city of Homs and are in negotiations with the government to reach all casualties, a spokesman for the group has said.

Ambulances from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent drove into the suburb of Bab Amr, an opposition stronghold which has been under heavy shelling and gunfire, after negotiations earlier on Friday, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.

The news came as a major conference was held in Tunisia pushing for aid access.

“The convoy did arrive in Bab Amr, earlier this afternoon, so far they have evacuated seven injured persons, and 20 women and children,” Hicham Hassan, a Red Cross spokesman, told Al Jazeera on Friday.

The injured were taken to a privately owned local hospital, the Red Cross said.

No men, however, chose to be allowed to leave, fearing arrest and torture if they left, Al Jazeera’s James Bays reported from Beirut.

“There have previously been allegations that people have been taken from those hospitals and taken to prisons, and that people have even been tortured, we’ve been told, in the hospitals,” Bays said.

The Red Cross is continuing to negotiate for more access to all the wounded in the city, and injured Western journalists trapped inside have refused to leave until they are assured they will not receive preferential treatment over locals.

Hassan said the situation in the area was getting worse by the hour.

“This for us remains the first step, we want to evacuate all persons who are injured, as long as it takes,” said Hassan.

Journalists remain in Homs

Two injured foreign journalists and the bodies of two others who died in a shelling attack on a media centre were not among those taken out of Bab Amr, according to Hassan.

Syria’s foreign ministry accused “armed groups” of refusing to hand them over, but an opposition activist in the area said the journalists had refused to leave, the Associated Press reported.

A friend of French reporter Edith Bouvier who has been in direct contact with the journalist told Al Jazeera that she and British photographer Paul Conroy had refused to leave until they were guaranteed diplomatic or Red Cross escort. They also said they would not go until a humanitarian corridor had been opened for all Syrians in the city.

Bouvier and Conroy suffered leg wounds in the same shelling in which two other journalists, US reporter Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik, were killed.

Bouvier needs surgery for a broken leg, though her situation is not yet life-threatening, her friend said. Conroy reportedly has less-severe leg injuries. Two other journalists who were present during the shelling but uninjured have also remained in Homs.

The activist said the surviving journalists were unwilling to release Colvin and Ochlik’s bodies to Syrian authorities.

A spokesperson for the Red Cross told the AFP news agency that negotiations in their case were under way.

“Negotiations continue with the Syrian authorities and the opposition in an attempt to evacuate all persons, without exception, who are in need of urgent help,” said Saleh Dabbakeh.

The evacuation was the first time rescuers had entered Bab Amr in 21 days of siege. If a ceasefire results, the flow of people attempting to flee will likely increase, possibly raising tensions in Lebanon, whose border lies just 30km to the west.

There, politicians are deeply divided over Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which has long asserted itself in Lebanese affairs.

“If there is a pause in the fighting … then it’s likely I think that more people will come across the border, and I think there is going to be a problem, it’s not only a humanitarian problem,” Bays said. “The Lebanese government does not even want to call these people refugees.”

The Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC) activist network reported the deaths of rat least 50 of people on Friday as footage of street protests emerged from Homs, Qamishili, Aleppo, Idlib, Deraa and the suburbs of Damascus.

The LCC said most of the deaths occurred in the central city of Hama.