Wednesday 8 February 2012

Syrian Uprising 2011 Information Centre: SUMMARY (08/02/2012): More than 100 martyrs today including at least 21 children and 6 women as the regime continues to bombard Homs. The situation now is very bad with a lack of food, fuel and medicine and dozens more tanks are still being sent to the city. It is a similar story in Zabadani and Madaya near Damascus and the regime is carrying out attacks on several other towns from Daraa to Quriyah in Deir Ezzor. The death toll since 1 Feb is at least 550. Make sure you check out the map for more info. Syria – Wednesday 08/02/2012 – Google Maps

HOMS (07/02/2012): Report by Syrian-British activist Danny Abdul Dayem from Baba Amru neighbourhood of Homs yesterday. He shows how women and kids are crowding into the basements of civilian houses to try to escape the bombardment. “This is not an invasion by an outside enemy, this is an invasion by our own government. Our own government is killing us”
 Homs Syria: Danny’s report about Baba Amr Shelter 7-2-2012

DAMASCUS (08/02/2012): This is a protest in Mazra’ah in Damascus city centre tonight. For those who don’t know the city, it is an upscale residential neighbourhood that also has many official buildings. This protest is taking place outside the Ministry of Education. They are chanting in support of Homs. ”Curse your soul, Abu Hafez (Bashar).”
 Damascus 08/02/2012

Amnesty report about Assad crimes in Syria. Please SHARE. https://www.amnesty.org/en/for-media/press-releases/syria-brutal-assault-homs-must-end-2012-02-08

DARAA (08/02/2012): This is the funeral of the martyr Mohammed al-Masalmeh in Daraa today. Nearly a year of killing, mass arrests, torture, checkpoints and military occupation has still not crushed them.
“Death but not humiliation”… from the birthplace of the revolution to Homs, Houla, Rastan, Zabadani, Madaya, Tafas, Tasil, Ariha, Quriyah and all the other besieged towns and cities.
 Daraa 08/02/2012

Update (08/02/2012): At least 70 martyrs have now fallen today. As you see in this video, the shelling has caused a lot of destruction in Baba Amro in Homs. Some shells have fallen next to Homs refinery. And military reinforcements – including dozens of tanks – were seen heading north to Homs this morning. Zabadani, Madaya, Tafas, Tasil are also under attack while Assad’s forces are surrounding Palmyra and Sermin. Most of the military checkpoints in Hama have been removed and military forces are now deployed all around the city – we fear that regime is about to bombard Hama as well.
 Homs, Baba Amru, 08/02/2012

CORRECTION – UPDATE (08/02/2012): Already 50 martyrs have fallen in Homs, 21 of them are kids including 18 infants who died inside hospital in Waer due to lack of electricity. Baba Amru is completely isolated and more martyrs have fallen there but nobody is able to reach them or deliver any help to the injured due to the continuous fall of shells.
 Homs, Baba Amru, 08/02/2012
 Baba Amru  8-2-2012

The boxer Nasser al-Shami is the last Syrian to win an Olympic medal (bronze at the 2004 Olympics) – “Once Syria’s boxing champing, now disabled at 29. Nasser al-Shami and his wife were taking his sister-in-law to hospital in Hama last July when Syrian security forces on a tank shot at him… ”
 Syria’s injured seek treatment in Jordan

 Syria Under Siege: Photographs by Alessio Romenzi | LightBox | TIME.com

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NOW! Lebanon
[local time]  22:06 The White House on Wednesday rejected Russia’s call for talks between President Bashar al-Assad’s government and Syrian rebels who are reeling under a brutal assault from government forces.
 21:50 Syrian security forces killed on Wednesday 177 people, including 93 people in Homs, Al-Arabiya reported.
 21:06 French President Nicolas Sarkozy Wednesday urged his Russian counterpart Dmitry Medvedev to give full support to an Arab League peace plan to persuade Bashar al-Assad to quit as Syria’s leader.
 20:42 US announced an upcoming meeting for the “contact group” of countries trying to end the violence in Syria, Al-Arabiya reported.
 20:32 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev told his French counterpart, Nicolas Sarkozy, that “unilateral” steps on Syria should be avoided, AFP reported.
 20:14 The Syrian army is continuing its shelling of Daraa as soldiers reportedly defect, Al-Arabiya reported.
 19:44 Syrian security forces are heavily shelling the Deir az-Zour town of Qouraya amid electricity and communication cuts, activists told Al-Jazeera.
 19:29 Syrian security forces killed 73 people Wednesday, most of them in Homs, Al-Arabiya reported.
 19:05 Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Mouallem on Wednesday voiced “Syria’s determination to hold national dialogue” amid a backdrop of “aggressive attack against Syria by foreign-backed armed terrorist groups,” the Syrian Arab News Agency reported.
 18:07 A crowd of more than 2,000 people demonstrated on Wednesday in the Qatari capital against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over his deadly crackdown on protests, an AFP correspondent reported.
 17:39 An unnamed source close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said that IRGC Major General Mohammad Ali Jafari asked the Iranian troops in Syria to move to the Lebanese region of Bekaa, Al-Arabiya website reported on Wednesday.
 17:20 Russian President Dmitry Medvedevwants the search for a solution to the Syrian crisis to continue, including within the United Nations Security Council, the Kremlin said Wednesday.
 17:12 The Syrian army attacked the Daraa town of Taseel, Al-Arabiya reported.
 17:06 The Syrian army is using human shields while attacking the Homs neighborhoods of Al-Khaldiyeh and Bayyada, Al-Arabiya reported.
 16:05 An anti-Syrian regime protest was held on Wednesday at the Lebanese University’s Science Faculty in Tripoli, the National News Agency reported.
 15:42 Several people were killed and wounded on Wednesday when a car bomb ripped through a neighborhood of the central city of Homs, Syrian television reported, blaming the blast on “armed terrorist gangs.”
 15:35 Gulf foreign ministers have rescheduled their meeting on Syria to Sunday in Cairo, a Gulf Cooperation Council official said on Wednesday.
 15:33 Syrian government troops are slowly tightening the noose on besieged Homs, cutting off power, communications and supplies in a determined bid to crush resistance, activists in the city said on Wednesday.
 15:17 Head of the Syrian National Council Burhan Ghalioun commented Wednesday on Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s recent visit to Syria, saying the credibility of Russia’s foreign policy was “gone” amid the “continuous shelling by the regime against the Syrian people.”
 15:02 Syrian Ambassador to Lebanon Ali Abdel Karim Ali said on Wednesday that “the political reforms” led by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad “are yielding practical results.”
 14:48 Syrian security forces’ gunfire killed 61 people on Wednesday, Al-Arabiya television quoted activists as saying.
 14:42 British Prime Minister David Cameron said on Wednesday he had little confidence in promises made by Syria to Russia over the violent crackdown by the regime in Damascus.
 14:35 The Syrian regime is persecuting the doctors and health workers treating wounded demonstrators and denying medical care to its opponents, aid agency Doctors Without Borders (MSF) said Wednesday.
 13:56 President Bashar al-Assad’s promises to Russia to work toward ending bloodshed in Syria were merely manipulation and should not be believed, French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Wednesday.
 13:48 Syrian security forces are shelling the Edleb town of Maarat an-Naaman, activists told Al-Jazeera television, adding that communication has been cut in the area.
 13:40 UN rights chief Navi Pillay called Wednesday for urgent international action to protect civilians in Syria, as troops continued to shell the city of Homs, a center of protest in the country.
 13:21 The European Union is making contingency plans in case it needs to evacuate EU citizens from Syria and is mulling a ban on flights into and out of the country, senior officials said Wednesday.
 14:04 Russian strongman Vladimir Putin warned Wednesday against foreigners behaving “like a bull in a china shop” toward Syria after his envoy returned from talks with President Bashar al-Assad.
 12:30 Syrian forces stormed Duma near Damascus on Wednesday, Al-Arabiya television reported.
 12:20 A Turkish minister said that his country planned an international conference on Syria, AFP reported on Wednesday.
 12:19 Armed “terrorist” groups on Wednesday attacked the oil refinery in Syria’s embattled central city of Homs, setting two storage tanks ablaze, state television reported.
 12:18 Rockets are being launched on Syria’s Jabal az-Zawiyah, Al-Arabiya reported on Wednesday.
 11:42 Three entire families, including women and children, were massacred overnight in the flashpoint city of Homs by the Syrian government’s security forces and thugs, activists said on Wednesday.
 10:53 Beijing Wednesday rejected as “irresponsible” accusations by Britain’s foreign secretary that China had let the Syrian people down by vetoing a UN resolution condemning a bloody crackdown in the country.
 10:46 The Syrian army shelled Edleb’s Ariha on Wednesday, Al-Arabiya quoted activists as saying.
 10:40 Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, back from talks with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, pointedly declined to say Wednesday whether Moscow asked the embattled leader to go, stressing that Syrians themselves should decide his fate.
 10:38 The Syrian army shelled Taseel in Daraa, Al-Jazeera quoted activists as saying on Wednesday.
 10:35 The Syrian National Council welcomed the Gulf countries’ decision to expel Syrian envoys, Al-Arabiya reported on Wednesday.
 10:34 The Syrian army besieged Palmyra and conducted arbitrary detentions, Al-Jazeera quoted activists as saying.
 10:30 Syrian forces on Wednesday stormed the town of Houran, Al-Arabiya quoted activists as saying.
 10:12 Families have been “slaughtered” by knives in Syria’s Homs, Al-Arabiya quoted the High Syrian Council of the Revolution as saying on Wednesday.
 9:30 MORNING LEADER: Russia said on Tuesday that President Bashar al-Assad was “fully committed” to ending the bloodshed in Syria, as his regime pounded the city of Homs for a fourth day and vowed no let-up.
 8:44 “Omar the Syrian” was the pseudonym of Mazhar Tayyara, a stringer for Agence France-Presse and activist killed in overnight shelling of the city of Homs, where regime forces stand accused of having carried out a “massacre.”
 8:42 Russia’s UN envoy on Tuesday slammed efforts to “poison” his country’s relations with the Arab world but also warned Arab opponents of Russia’s veto of a UN Security Council resolution on Syria.
 8:17 An activist said on Wednesday that Homs’ neighborhood of Baba Amro in Syria was “completely destroyed,” Al-Arabiya reported.
 7:50 Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem al-Thani discussed latest Syrian developments with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Saudi news agency (SPA) reported on Tuesday evening.
 7:15 Dozens of civilians were killed on Wednesday as government troops pressed a relentless assault on the flashpoint Syrian city of Homs for a fifth straight day, flattening many buildings, activists said.
 7:05 Australian Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd on Wednesday summoned the Syrian envoy to convey his “grave concerns” about the nation’s worsening crisis to the Bashar al-Assad regime.

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 BBC:  Syria: Homs under ‘heaviest’ shelling yet

The Syrian city of Homs has come under renewed bombardment for the fifth day running – the heaviest so far, residents have told the BBC.

Activists say tanks are on the streets, and pro-government militias are murdering civilians in their homes.

On Tuesday, President Bashar al-Assad had promised to end the violence.

The US says it has run out of tools it can use to stop the killings in Homs, after Russia and China blocked a UN Security Council resolution last week.

“In the coming days we will continue our very active discussions … to crystallise the international community’s next steps in that effort to halt the slaughter of the Syrian people,” White House press secretary Jay Carney said.

He said the US was not actively considering military intervention, but “pursuing a path that includes isolating and pressuring the Assad regime so that it stops its heinous slaughtering of its own people”.

‘You have to be lucky’

The BBC’s Paul Wood, reporting from the outskirts of Homs with rebel fighters, says most people in the hardest hit areas of the city are huddled indoors, too terrified to venture outside.

A resident of the Baba Amr area of Homs, Omar, told the BBC that the rocket and mortar attacks were indiscriminate.

“Every house here in Baba Amr is a target,” he said. “You have to be lucky to survive.”

He said a baby was killed when a rocket landed on a nearby house.

Activists’ estimates of the number of people killed on Wednesday range from about 40 to more than 100.

Unconfirmed reports claimed that pro-government militiamen known as “shabiha” were going door-to-door and killing indiscriminately.

There are also reports that 18 premature babies died after their incubators failed as a result of power cuts. State TV denied the reports and said Homs hospitals were operating normally.

Our correspondent says the city is full of rumours, with five days of almost constant shelling creating an atmosphere of hysteria and despair.

Hundreds of people are reported to have died in heavy shelling since Friday.

State TV reported that “armed terrorists” had attacked an oil refinery in the city.

The government blames the violence on foreign-backed groups and insisted the Homs offensive would continue until “order” is restored in the city.

At the scene

Paul Wood BBC News, near Homs

It is very difficult to move around. I interviewed somebody yesterday about the shortage of bread. He had very bravely gone to another area of the city to get bread because his local bakery had been shelled. This morning he is lying in hospital with a bullet wound from a sniper.

There is a kind of hysteria here. People are absolutely terrified. There are all sorts of rumours – we heard people saying the army was coming, that the army was using chemical weapons. People are beside themselves. That is the effect that constant shelling produces.

We counted hundreds of what appeared to be tank shells and heavy artillery shells. They’re using air-burst shells as well. There is a lot of sniper fire. They appear to be deliberately targeting civilians. We saw an old lady and an old man shot by snipers as they crossed an intersection. Whatever the Syrian army’s intention, it is clear that civilians are bearing the brunt.

• Homs: ‘Who will help us now?’

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Reuters: U.S. mulls humanitarian aid, new coalition for Syria

The United States hopes to meet soon with international partners to consider how to halt Syria’s violence and provide humanitarian aid to civilians under attack from their own government, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.

“In the coming days we will continue our very active discussions … to crystallize the international community’s next steps in that effort to halt the slaughter of the Syrian people,” White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters.

Carney said the discussions, which would include the opposition Syrian National Council, were aimed at helping the process “move toward a peaceful, political transition, (a) democratic transition in Syria,” but gave no details.

The State Department said the new group could take the form of a “Friends of Democratic Syria” and would look at tightening sanctions on the Syrian government and ways to get humanitarian aid to its people.

“We on the U.S. side have already been looking at what we can do to prepare ourselves on both the financial and the legal side so that we’re ready to provide humanitarian aid such as food and medicine,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told a news briefing.

“But we’re going to have to work with our international partners, we’re going to have to work with neighboring states, to identify coordinators on the ground who can assist in receiving this aid and in distributing it.”

Any international move to bring in humanitarian aid could open a dangerous and complicated new chapter in Syria’s crisis, with air drops seen as expensive and ineffective and any land routes open to attack from Syrian forces.

The weekend failure of a U.N. Security Council resolution against Syria, vetoed by Russia andChina, has focused attention on how to tighten sanctions already in place and target the finances of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

ISOLATING, PRESSURING

But the White House continued to stress it was not actively considering military intervention to prevent a crackdown on opponents of Assad’s rule in which thousands have been killed.

“We never rule anything out in a situation like this. But we are pursuing a path that includes isolating and pressuring the Assad regime so that it stops its heinous slaughtering of its own people,” Carney said.

Syria’s neighbor Turkey, a U.S. ally in NATO, has called for more help for Syria’s opposition and offered to host an international conference to discuss next steps. U.S. officials said a number of other countries had also offered to host such a meeting.

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who is due to meet U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington early next week, suggested that a way must be found to get humanitarian assistance to civilians trapped by military assault, particularly in the opposition bastion of Homs.

Nuland said the United States was looking at a number of possibilities for aid delivery, although it was not ready to publicly discuss moves that could boost chances for open confrontation with Syrian forces.

“There are always land, sea and air options. Frankly we are not at the stage of ventilating options. We are talking to various partners in preparation for the forming of this friends group,” Nuland said.

“As we’ve repeatedly said, we are not looking for military options,” she said.

(Reporting By Alister Bull, Matt Spetalnick and Andrew Quinn; Editing by Xavier Briand)

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Guardian: Syria: rockets rain down on Homs as violence escalates

More than 200 rockets fall in space of three hours on opposition-controlled suburb of Baba Amr, according to residents 

The Assad government escalated its military onslaught on the Syrian opposition with the most intense bombardment of rebel-held areas so far, as the west and the Arab world scrambled to find a new diplomatic strategy without Russian and Chinese help.

Tanks and heavy artillery were used on an unprecedented scale, according to witnesses. More than 200 rockets fell in the space of three hours on just one part of Homs, the opposition-controlled suburb of Baba Amr, residents said.

One activist, Raji, speaking from a basement inside Baba Amr, said Syrian forces were now using a heavier artillery round with devastating effect. In addition to the 27 people killed , he said many people were lying dead under the rubble of their houses. There were also reports that 18 premature babies had died in hospital after power cuts caused their incubators to fail, according to the BBC. State TV denied the reports.

The Guardian has been unable to independently verify eyewitness accounts or casualty figures, but similar reports came from rebel areas around the country as Bashar al-Assad – spared from a UN resolution calling for his departure by Russian and Chinese intervention on his behalf – appeared to speed up attempts to eliminate the threat to his regime.

In the face of the increase in violence, western and Arab governments urgently sought a new response. The Pentagon was reported to be reviewing contingency plans for intervention in Syria, from providing humanitarian relief to direct military action. There was no sign that the Obama administration was seriously contemplating military options, but the president is under increasing pressure in an election year to respond decisively to the reports of mass killing in Syria.

“We are seriously dying here. It is really war,” Waleed Farah told the Guardian via satellite phone from al-Khaldiyeh, another rebel-held neighbourhood in Homs.

Hopes of quickly healing the global rift caused by the weekend’s security council vote came to nothing. When William Hague spoke to the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, to ask Moscow to reconsider its vote and its arms sales to Damascus, Lavrov said there was no independent confirmation of the regime’s use of heavy weaponry in Homs and elsewhere and insisted that the supply of Russian arms was legal, according to British officials. After visiting Damascus on Tuesday, Lavrov called for a political dialogue and a UN resolution backing the deployment of more observers in Syria, but the opposition Syrian National Council has rejected Moscow as a broker and is insisting that Assad step down in line with an Arab League peace plan.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, said: “We of course condemn all violence regardless of its source, but one cannot act like an elephant in a china shop. Help them, advise them – limit, for instance, their ability to use weapons – but do not interfere under any circumstances.”

China also defended its decision to veto the UN resolution and rejected Hague criticism’s of the vote as “extremely irresponsible” and “totally unacceptable”.

With no sign of a break in the diplomatic deadlock, urgent efforts were under way aimed at building as broad an international coalition as possible to keep up the diplomatic pressure on Damascus. A “friends of Syria” conference is expected to be called in the next few days to agree joint measures, including new sanctions, anti-Assad resolutions at the UN general assembly, and diplomatic support for the opposition Syrian National Council with the aim of molding it into a credible alternative to the Assad regime. The next steps will be decided at meetings of the Gulf Co-operation Council on Saturday and the Arab League on Sunday. Most observers, however, believe Assad can weather such pressure as long as he can rely on backing from Moscow and Beijing.

Turkey declared it was launching its own initiative to confront what it warned was becoming a grave political and humanitarian crisis. The prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, spoken by telephone to the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, and the foreign minister, Ahmet Davotuglu, flew to Washington to press for an emergency international conference. Western capitals support the Turkish initiative but argue the leading role and venue is better left to Arab states.

Turkey’s ambassador to London, Ahmet Ünal Çeviköz, said Turkey would not insist on being hosts. He said: “The important thing is to form as wide as possible an international platform of like-minded countries to show the determination of the international community that there is no possibility of a return to the status quo ante. Assad thinks he can buy time but we have to show we have no more confidence in him.”

Çeviköz said his government believed the death toll was “much more severe” than the 5,000-7,000 reported, and argued that priority should be given to ending the violence and addressing the humanitarian needs of the Syrian people.

“The people of Homs are facing not just bombardment but a blockade of the city, with a serious lack of food and medicine,” the ambassador said. “There needs to be contingency planning on ways of reaching out to people and regions in Syria which are facing this crisis.”

Turkey has floated the idea of a humanitarian corridor or a safe zone for displaced populations, but Çeviköz said those decisions would have to be taken at the proposed international conference.

If Russia and China continued to oppose such concerted action, he added: “They will have the responsibility of being the culprits in a humanitarian crisis.”