Crisis in Syri� #19

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Syrian leaders should face justice at ICC, UN says

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Syrian leaders should be brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC) to face justice for murder and torture, UN investigators urged on Monday as the EU renewed its blanket arms embargo on both sides in Syria's bloody conflict.

Britain, however, secured the agreement of its partners to make it easier to supply "non-lethal" equipment and training to maintain security in rebel-held areas, which was not previously possible. But it had not sought agreement to send weapons, Whitehall officials insisted, rejecting claims from Brussels that it had.

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In a small corner of Syria, rebels attempt to reconcile

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Our new host is Abu Oday, the commander of the armed opposition in this town in the western corner of Syria, and what we are witnessing is one of the most extraordinary facets of the country's catastrophic civil war: the birth pangs of a truce that has restored calm to one small area after almost two years of violence.

Abu Oday carries no gun, nor do any of the dozen men who stand around us curiously as plastic chairs are drawn up. By agreement they no longer show their weapons while, for its part, the Syrian army has ended the regular hail of mortar fire that terrorised this side of Talkalakh.

The architect of the change is Sheikh Habib or, to give him his full name, Mohammed Habib Fendi. Barely mentioned in Syria's official media, he prefers to keep a low profile even though he seems a rare hero in the country's brutal conflict.

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Bloedbad Aleppo na raketaanval

Syrische opstandelingen zeggen dat een raketaanval van het leger een bloedbad heeft aangericht in Aleppo. Meldingen over het dodental vari�ren van acht tot zo'n honderd.

De raket sloeg in in Jabal Badro, een wijk die in handen is van opstandelingen. Nieuwsuur-verslaggever Jan Eikelboom is in de getroffen wijk: "De verwoeste plek is zo groot als een half voetbalveld. Tussen het puin wordt nog gezocht naar lichamen", twittert hij.

Eikelboom spreekt van afschuwelijke beelden. "Overal lijken, wat een drama filmen we hier."

Een ooggetuige zegt tegen persbureau Reuters dat door de raketinslag van gisteravond drie gebouwen zijn ingestort.

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janeikelboom twitterde op dinsdag 19-02-2013 om 13:27:40 We zijn Aleppo uit. Omdat ook de dorpen in de omgeving met scuds worden beschoten gaan we vanavond in Turkije slapen. reageer retweet

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Op dinsdag 19 februari 2013 15:08 schreef rakotto het volgende:
Presidentiele paleis in Damascus schijnt aangevallen te zijn met twee raketten volgens Aljazeera. Ik heb geen kennis over raketten/wapens, maar als ik het zo vertaal waren het: HOUN? HAWN? Raketten.

Iemand die weet wat het is of wat het kan zijn?

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Op dinsdag 19 februari 2013 15:15 schreef deleriouz het volgende:

[..]

Volgens mij Google Translate zijn dat mortieren.

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Op dinsdag 19 februari 2013 15:08 schreef rakotto het volgende:
Presidentiele paleis in Damascus schijnt aangevallen te zijn met twee raketten volgens Aljazeera. Ik heb geen kennis over raketten/wapens, maar als ik het zo vertaal waren het: HOUN? HAWN? Raketten.

Iemand die weet wat het is of wat het kan zijn?

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Syria in ruins: civilians suffer as military stalemate drags on

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Every conversation is dominated by the rumble of bombing and the misery it causes as the regime seeks to keep control of "old Damascus", the area that lies inside the ring road and where regime supporters' homes and most government ministries are situated. Beyond it, to the east of the city, the rebels have seized a large area of farmland known as the Orchards, where settlements of low-cost housing have sprung up over recent decades. To the south the rebels occupy Deraya and are fighting in Yarmouk, a once largely Palestinian district.

"When I asked the army why they bomb, the explanation I got was that it bolsters troop morale. It also protects troops from having to go into areas on foot," said a senior government official, now retired. "When I said: 'Isn't it collective punishment of the civilian population?', they said nothing."

The punishment seems to have two variants. The lighter one was described to me by an elderly resident of Qudsaya, a district about five miles north-west of central Damascus. I visited it during an illegal protest last February when some 2,000 euphoric young people paraded through the main street, shouting: "Down with Bashar!" There was no police presence or any sign of regime reaction. Now every shop is in ruins or under slow repair as owners try to rebuild their livelihoods. The wrecks of burnt-out cars litter the street, and many houses have shell-holes in their facades.

My informant recalled the regime's revenge. "At 5am one morning in August the government started firing shells and mortars from al-Areen, an Alawite district on the other side of the valley. About an hour later soldiers and shabiha [pro-government militias] arrived and warned everybody they had an hour to leave Qudsaya. Anyone who remained would be shot," he said.

With his wife he joined hundreds of frantic families, who fled on foot or in their cars. His 27-year-old son stayed behind with some Druze neighbours who had once worked for the defence ministry and seemed to be trusted by the soldiers. According to the son's account, over the next three days the soldiers and militias proceeded to break into houses and smash the metal shutters of shops, loot TVs and other electronic goods, and then set the buildings on fire. An unknown number of people were executed.

Most residents have now returned to Qudsaya, traumatised but apparently having "learned their lesson". The message has gone out to would-be protesters to lie low and to the armed opposition not to come into the area. The same message has been absorbed by people in the districts of Midan and Old Mezzeh, which rebels penetrated briefly last summer before being driven back by a massive army counter-attack. Residents have urged the rebels to keep out and not provoke total destruction.

In the capital's eastern districts and the Orchards area civilians had less chance. Rebels advanced and joined local people who took up guns in Qaboun, Douma, Harasta, and Jobar and the government is still responding with the rain of bombs and shells that you hear in central Damascus. As well as collective punishment it amounts to a "strategy of denial". Recognising that it cannot regain control without risking excessive numbers of soldiers' lives, the regime's fallback is to prevent civilians going home under rebel protection and have the opposition proclaim them as "liberated areas" where normal life is resuming.

The latest district to suffer from this strategy is Adra, a new zone of industrial investment about 20 miles north-east of Damascus. Half the apartment blocks are incomplete, a forest of raw concrete buildings with no doors, windows, water or electricity. This bleak wasteland now houses at least 100,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) who have fled from the Orchards.

A fortnight ago the war reached them again. A military airfield is located near the original village of Adra, where another 20,000 people live a few miles from the industrial zone. The rebels have started to make airfields their prime targets throughout Syria and the government feared armed groups were infiltrating Adra in preparation for an attack. It launched bombing and artillery strikes on Adra on 31 January. On 4 February, some 2,000 families set off on foot to the already overcrowded industrial zone. Volunteers from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent broke the locks of five schools and helped them to move in. According to witnesses, less than 20% of these desperate people are male. They fear the army will assume all males are rebels and arrest or kill them.

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Mortiergranaten ingeslagen bij paleis Assad in Syri�

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De aanval is een teken dat de oorlog doordringt op plekken die tot voor kort nog relatief veilig waren.

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Syrische voetballer gedood in stadion

Een Syrische voetballer is woensdag omgekomen toen twee mortiergranaten insloegen in het stadion in Damascus waar hij op dat moment met zijn team aan het trainen was.

Dat meldt de staatsomroep. Ook andere bronnen bevestigen het bericht. Een aantal andere voetballers raakte gewond.

Dinsdag ontploften twee mortiergranaten bij een paleis van president Assad. Toen was er alleen materi�le schade.

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Doden bij zware explosie in centrum Damascus
In het centrum van de Syrische hoofdstad is een zware explosie geweest vlak bij het hoofdkantoor van de regerende Baath-partij. Ook de Russische ambassade ligt in de buurt.

De Syrische staatstelevisie spreekt van een terreuraanval. Op tv-beelden zijn zeker vier lijken te zien. Ooggetuigen zeggen dat een autobom ontplofte tussen het gebouw van de Baath-partij en de Russische ambassade.

Door de explosie hangt er een dikke zwarte rookwolk boven de stad.

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A correspondent for Syrian state television said he saw seven body bags with corpses in them at the scene. He said he counted 17 burnt-out cars and another 40 that were destroyed or badly damaged by the force of the blast, which ripped a crater 1.5 metres deep into the road.

The official SANA news agency said casualties included children at a nearby school in Mazraa, which it described as a busy residential district of the capital.

Activists reported at least two further blasts in the city after the Mazraa explosion. The Observatory said two car bombs exploded outside security centres in the north-eastern district of Barzeh, but there were no details of casualties.

Syrian TV said security forces had detained a would-be suicide bomber with five bombs in his car, one of them weighing 300 kg.

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Syrian health ministry says 53 dead, 235 wounded in Damascus car bombing

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Assad duikt op in Duitse documentaire: 'Ik heb niet voor deze oorlog gekozen'

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De Syrische president Bashar al-Assad laat zich zelden interviewen. Dat was al zo voor de opstand, maar zeker nu er een burgeroorlog aan de gang is. Het is de Duitse documentairemaker Hubert Seipel wel gelukt. In 'Die Syrien-Falle, Deutschland und der Krieg gegen Assad' ontkent de president dat hij verantwoordelijk is voor het bloedige conflict.

Die Syrien Falle - Deutschland und der Krieg gegen Assad