Crisis in Syri� #15 23.000 doden.

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http://www.volkskrant.nl/vk/nl/2664/Nieuws/article/detail/3306363/2012/08/25/Syrisch-leger-voert-aanvallen-uit-op-Damascus.dhtml

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Volgens de oppositie maken de aanvallen deel uit van een operatie van het leger om de stad 'voor eens en altijd' weer onder controle te krijgen.

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Syria: '200 bodies' found in town near Damascus

Assad's forces accused of massacre in Daraya after scores killed 'execution-style', Syrian activists claim

Syrian opposition activists accused President Bashar al-Assad's forces of committing a massacre of scores of people in a town close to the capital that the army had just retaken from rebels.

More than 200 bodies were found in houses and basements around Daraya, a working-class Sunni town to the southwest of Damascus, according to activists who said most had been killed "execution-style" by troops on house-to-house raids.

Due to restrictions on non-state media in Syria, it was impossible to independently verify the accounts.

"Assad's army has committed a massacre in Daraya," said Abu Kinan, an activist in the town, using an alias to protect himself from reprisals.

"In the last hour, 122 bodies were discovered and it appears that two dozen died from sniper fire and the rest were summarily executed by gunshots from close range," Abu Kinan told Reuters by telephone.

The activist said he witnessed the death of an 8-year-old girl, Asma Abu al-Laban, shot by army snipers while she was in a car with her parents.

"They were trying to flee the army raids. Three bullets hit her in the back and her parents brought her to a makeshift hospital. Nothing could be done for her," he said.

The official state news agency said: "Our heroic armed forces cleansed Daraya from remnants of armed terrorist groups who committed crimes against the sons of the town and scared them and sabotaged and destroyed public and private property."

The Local Coordination Committees, an activists' organisation, said Assad's forces killed 440 people across Syria on Saturday, including dozens of women and children, in one of the highest death tolls since the uprising against his rule broke out in March last year.

The organisation, which monitors Assad's military crackdown, said 310 people were killed in Damascus and its environs, including Daraya, 40 in the northern province of Aleppo and 28 in Syria's Sunni tribal heartland region of Deir al-Zor.

The rest were reportedly killed in the Idlib, Deraa, Hama and Homs, outlying provinces where poverty and discontent with Assad's minority Alawite rule have been building up since bloody repression by Assad's father, the late President Hafez al-Assad, killed tens of thousands of people in the 1980s.

Video footage from activists showed numerous bodies of young men side-by-side at the Abu Suleiman al-Darani mosque in Daraya, many with what looked like gunshot wounds to the head and chest.

"A massacre," said the voice of the man who appeared to be taking the footage. "You are seeing the revenge of Assad's forces … more than 150 bodies on the floor of this mosque."

The southern fringe of Damascus is a frontline in what has snowballed over the last 17 months from anti-Assad protests into a sectarian civil war.

Tanks deployed on the Damascus ring-road shelled the southern neighbourhoods of al-Lawwan and Nahr Aisheh late into Saturday night and fighting raged in the eastern Ghouta suburbs of the capital, residents said.

The army overran Daraya, one of a series of mostly rundown Sunni Muslim towns that surround Damascus, on Saturday after three days of heavy bombardment that killed 70 people, according to opposition sources and residents. They said most of the dead were civilians.

UN investigators said in a report this month that both sides in the conflict had performed summary executions - a war crime - but that Assad's troops and militia loyal to the president had committed many more offences than the rebels.

The report said government forces and militiamen loyal to Assad committed a massacre of more than 100 civilians in the town of Houla in May that the government blamed on Islamist "terrorists".

The UN estimates that more than 18,000 people have been killed in the conflict that pits a mainly Sunni opposition against a ruling system dominated by the Assad family for the last five decades.

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'Chef geheime dienst luchtmacht Syri� gedood'

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Tegenstanders van het regime van president Bashar al-Assad hebben al-Arabiya laten weten dat Hassan zaterdag is vermoord door een medewerker die de kant van de oppositie heeft gekozen.

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Op dinsdag 28 augustus 2012 14:39 schreef penny-wise het volgende:


Ben niet pro-VS maar als ze nu daar zouden binnenvallen zou ik het toejuichen...

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Iran Said to Send Troops to Bolster Syria

Commanders and Hundreds of Elite Soldiers Deployed to Damascus, Members Say, as Deepening Conflict Worries Key Ally

BEIRUT—Iran is sending commanders from its elite Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and hundreds of foot soldiers to Syria, according to current and former members of the corps.

The personnel moves come on top of what these people say are Tehran's stepped-up efforts to aid the military of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad with cash and arms. That would indicate that regional capitals are being drawn deeper into Syria's conflict—and undergird a growing perception among Mr. Assad's opponents that the regime's military is increasingly strained.

A commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, appeared to offer Iran's first open acknowledgment of its military involvement in Syria.

"Today we are involved in fighting every aspect of a war, a military one in Syria and a cultural one as well," Gen. Salar Abnoush, commander of IRGC's Saheb al-Amr unit, told volunteer trainees in a speech Monday. The comments, reported by the Daneshjoo news agency, which is run by regime-aligned students, couldn't be independently verified. Top Iranian officials had previously said the country isn't involved in the conflict.

Iran has long trained members of the Syrian security apparatus in cybersecurity and spying on dissidents, U.S. officials and Syrian opposition members have said. The decision to send Iranian personnel comes after rebel attacks this summer in Syria's biggest cities, Damascus and Aleppo, in particular an explosion in July that killed four members of Mr. Assad's inner circle, according to the people familiar with the IRGC.

Syria's regime is increasingly relying on a core of loyalists to conduct operations, say Syrian opposition members and rebel fighters. In recent weeks, Mr. Assad's army has been hobbled by defections, losing territory in Kurdish areas as well as near Turkey's border, these people say. On Monday, a Syrian military helicopter crashed in a ball of fire in Damascus, according to the Associated Press, citing activists and video footage.

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Bashar al-Assad says there is no end in sight to Syrian civil war

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"The truth is that Syria doesn't need a green light when dealing with its internal affairs, neither from our allies or our enemies,"

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In northern Syria, an armed Islamist rebel group claimed it had carried out a major attack on the Taftanaz airbase near the town of Idlib. At least five helicopters were destroyed, it said, with the rebels assaulting the airbase using tanks captured from a Syrian military checkpoint and rocket-propelled grenades.