Protests in Syria - Discussion Thread

[BulletForTheBear]

The head of Russia's army said Tuesday that Moscow had no intention to end its military presence in Syria despite the escalating violence and threat of President Bashar al-Assad's fall.
"Why are you so worried about Syria?" Chief of Staff General Nikolai Makarov demanded in response to a question about reports that Russia was in the process of evacuating its Syrian naval base and pulling out senior military personnel.
"All the plans that we have in place are working and no one is running away from there," news agencies quoted Makarov as saying.
"I would think it is premature to start making any conclusions and saying that we ran away," Makarov said.
The Russian media have been swirling with unconfirmed reports of the military winding down its presence in the Tartus naval center that Moscow has leased from its closest Arab ally since Soviet times.
The Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily this month also said the navy had decided to end prematurely its summer exercises near Syria and to pull out of the region in a signal to the West of its refusal to defend Assad with force.

http://english.al-akhbar.com/content...ia-stay-moscow

[BulletForTheBear]

Fighting persisted Tuesday in Aleppo — the nation's largest city and commercial capital — as well as the southern province of Daraa and eastern and northern provinces of Deir el-Zour and Idlib.In Damascus, military helicopters dropped thousands of leaflets over the city and its suburbs, urging rebels to hand over their weapons or face "inevitable death."
The psychological warfare is part of a widening and deadly offensive to recapture areas near the capital that have fallen into rebel hands.
In Jaramana, the car bomb badly damaged a five-story apartment building, knocking out windows and shaving off balconies, according to an AP reporter who visited the scene. At least 10 cars also were charred.
The windows from two nearby buildings were shattered from the impact of the blast, and vegetables and fruits from a nearby vendor were strewn across the street.
SANA earlier reported that the blast targeted a funeral procession for two people who were killed a day earlier in the area. It was the third bombing in Jaramana in the past 24 hours, according to SANA.
No further details were immediately available. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a bomb exploded during the funeral of two pro-regime civilians killed in overnight bombings in Jaramana.
Jaramana, southeast of Damascus, has a majority of Christians and Druze and is close to the capital's international airport. Pro-regime youth groups have recently set up checkpoints in the area to try to stop rebels from the neighboring Ghota neighborhood from crossing over.
Those killed Tuesday included a 6-year-old girl, Farah, who was playing in the street with her brother when the blast hit. Her brother was wounded.
"Where is my Farah?" her 24-year-old mother Hoda Mohammed, asked repeatedly as she wept on the street.
For more than a month, the military has been fighting major battles against rebels in the outskirts of Damascus and its suburbs while engaged in what appears to be a stalemated fight in the north against rebels for control of Aleppo, the nation's largest city and commercial capital.

http://www.azfamily.com/news/world/167653865.html

[BulletForTheBear]

Three Armenians were killed under unknown circumstances Tuesday evening in an Armenian neighborhood of the Syrian capital, Damascus reported Aztag Daily.Bedros Mattosian, 49. Kevork Matossian, 46, and 22-year-old Levon Bedros Matossian, were identified as the latest Syrian Armenians to be killed in the continuing civil unrest in Syria, the Damascus Diocese told Armenpress Tuesday.
On Monday evening, three car bombs exploded in the Armenian-populated Djarmana neighborhood of Damascus, Aztag Daily reported.

http://asbarez.com/105045/more-armen...aths-in-syria/

[BulletForTheBear]

Syrian Rebels Claim to Take Over Chemical Weapons

A statement published by the Syrian rebels says that they have taken over a military base and found missiles with non-conventional warheads.

The Supreme Military Council of the Syrian rebels released on a statement on Tuesday which said that the rebel forces took control of an army missile base in Damascus, in which ten ready-to-launch missiles were found. Some of the missiles, according to the statement, were converted to carry non-conventional warheads.
“During the successful operation, the operatives of the Free Syrian Army found a large number of rockets ready for launching, with enormous destructive capability, and they were very surprised to find missiles that were converted to carry non-conventional warheads and which can be equipped with chemical or biological warheads,” said the statement which was translated by Arab affairs expert Dalit Halevi.
The Supreme Military Council of the rebels went on to claim that it had confirmed the report by examining photographic documentation of the scene.

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/159391

[Hisroyalhighness]

Anti-Assad Figure Resigns Citing Syria Opposition Discord

Bassma Kodmani, a prominent voice of the Syrian National Council, resigned from the main political opposition body to President Bashar al-Assad, citing disappointment in the group’s failure to work together more than 17 months after the uprising began.
“I decided to leave the council because of a difference of views over how to move forward and because thought I could be more productive working on the outside,” Kodmani, a Paris-based academic turned revolutionary, said today in a telephone interview.
Without going into details, the former chief spokeswoman for the SNC said that in “general terms, I’ve been disappointed with how the council has worked on several levels.” She said she will work with other groups, mainly in humanitarian relief.
Kodmani said her resignation was unrelated to France’s signal yesterday that it was prepared to confer legitimacy on the SNC, a political umbrella for anti-government factions that includes the Muslim Brotherhood.
French President Francois Hollande, who came to power in May as the Syria conflict raged, called for the opposition to form a provisional government, echoing similar overtures made by his predecessor Nicolas Sarkozy on Libya last year.
United Nations efforts to end the 17-month conflict have faltered. Military monitors left the country last week, and the organization’s envoy, Kofi Annan, this month resigned and accused world powers of “finger-pointing and name-calling.”
Death Toll

The pullback has been accompanied by a surge in fighting, with battles engulfing areas of the country’s two biggest cities, Damascus and Aleppo.
At least 41 people were killed across Syria today, 18 of them in Idlib, and seven in the suburbs of Damascus, the Local Coordination Committees in Syria said in an e-mail. The day after the UN monitors left, Aug. 25, was the bloodiest since the uprising began, with 440 people reported dead by the LCC, an activist group. The death tolls couldn’t be verified.
The Syrian uprising, which began as a peaceful protest movement in March 2011, has defied regional and international efforts to resolve it. More than 23,000 lives have been lost during the unrest, the U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights estimates.
-- Editors: Terry Atlas, Larry Liebert
To contact the reporters on this story: Flavia Krause-Jackson in United Nations atfjackson@bloomberg.net;
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...n-discord.html

[ISNJH]

There are reports coming in that Taftanaz mil airport in Idlib is under heavy mortar attack by the FSA in a predawn attack..

[themacedonian]

Syrian Rebels Claim to Take Over Chemical Weapons
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/159391

Some news yesterday of US, French and Uk special forces sent to Syria to find and secure chemical weapons. Sure these are rebels?

[gresh]

Some news yesterday of US, French and Uk special forces sent to Syria to find and secure chemical weapons. Sure these are rebels?

Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) took over that base.

[gresh]

Samaha transcript indicates high level Syrian involvement in plot


BEIRUT: Former Information Minister Michel Samaha has confessed to plotting bomb attacks with Syria’s national security chief with the knowledge of Syrian President Bashar Assad, according to alleged leaked interrogation transcripts published by a local newspaper Monday.

Samaha was charged earlier this month by Lebanon’s chief military prosecutor with planning attacks in Lebanon and transporting explosives.


According to the transcript published by Al-Joumhouria, the former minister, who has close links to the Damascus regime, said Assad was aware of the terror plot.


He was quoted as telling an informer, who was later identified as Milad Kfouri, that the only four people who knew of the plot were Assad, Syrian National Security Chief Maj. Gen. Ali Mamlouk, Kfouri and Samaha himself.


Samaha sought to use Kfouri to execute the plot, but Kfouri set him up by informing the Internal Security Forces Information Branch after holding a meeting with the former minister to plan the killings and identify the targets.

http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Pol...#axzz24uQDxqF0

http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=54061

Assad government trying to stir sectarian violence? Nah, couldn't be.

[OrangeWolf]

Can Hezbollah Survive the Fall of Assad?
By HANIN GHADDAR

Hezbollah has an interest in keeping the violence at a simmer for the moment, but the longer Mr. Assad stays, the greater the risk that sectarian tensions will boil over in Lebanon.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/29/op...&smid=tw-share

[Franzuu]

Some confusion about what really happened in Daraya http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/op...-16203638.html interesting read

Seems to be a mix of FSA, shabiha and military who killed those people.

[Camera]

Assad: Western-imposed buffer zone in Syria 'unrealistic'

Turkey wants UN to house refugees inside Syria; Iran plans to propose NAM troika committee for settling Syrian crisis.


Syrian President Bashar Assad said on Tuesday that talk of a Western-imposed buffer zone on Syrian territory was unrealistic and that the situation in his country, where rebels have been fighting to overthrow him, was "better."

Assad was speaking in a rare interview with Syrian Addounia television, excerpts of which were broadcast by the station on Wednesday. The president, responding to rumors of his whereabouts since a July bombing in Damascus, said he was speaking from the presidential palace in the capital.

Meanwhile, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said on Wednesday Turkey had discussed with the United Nations the possibility of housing Syrian refugees inside Syria and that Ankara expected the world body to take concrete steps toward this.

CONTINUED: http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-e...istic-1.461407

[poolboy]

Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) took over that base.

thats worrying

[TG211]

A little question : we all know that the West threatens Assad with open attacks if he resorts to chemical warfare. But if (and yes, it's theoritical supposition) the FSA uses them, will the West ditch them ?

Liwa al-Islam (Brigade of Islam) took over that base.

Unpleasant news...

[Jµµso]

A little question : we all know that the West threatens Assad with open attacks if he resorts to chemical warfare. But if (and yes, it's theoritical supposition) the FSA uses them, will the West ditch them ?

More likely that FSA uses those weapons to stage "false flag" attack.