Syrian security forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad pounded rebel hideouts in Damascus today in retaliatory attacks for the blast that killed three top anti-insurgency leaders.
The troops used helicopters and heavy artillery against the rebels, while snipers took up positions on rooftops on the outskirts of the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in an e-mailed statement. “Explosions are heard throughout the capital,” it said.
“The regime has gone mad,” Rima Flaihan, spokeswoman for the Local Coordination Committees in Syria, said in a telephone interview today from Jordan.
She said at least 200 people were killed across Syria yesterday. “The regime is in a horrid state of savagery, seeking revenge for the killings of the military leaders,” she added.
Yesterday’s blast targeted members of Assad’s military establishment as they met at the national security headquarters in Damascus. Three people were killed, according to state-run media. They included Assad’s brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat; Defense Minister Dawoud Rajhah; and the vice president’s military adviser, Hasan Turkmani. Other officials including the interior minister were injured, state television said. Shawkat served as deputy defense minister and deputy chief of staff for security.
They were the most senior officials to die since the uprising began in March 2011.
[h=2]Losing Control[/h]It “makes clear” that the 46-year-old Assad is losing control of the country, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said yesterday. The international community has been powerless to stop the rising death toll in an insurgency that has reached Damascus, the capital, where security forces have battled rebels for the past four days.
“It pains me to say, but we are not on the track for peace in Syria and the escalations we have witnessed in Damascus over the past few days is a testimony to that,” said Major-General Robert Mood, commander of the UN observer mission in Syria.
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron called on Assad to leave power. “The message to President Assad is: It is time for transition, it is time for you to go,” Cameron said today in the Afghan capital, Kabul. When asked if he had a message for Syrian ally Russia, he said: “It’s time for the UN Security Council to pass clear and tough messages about sanctions and be unambiguous in this.”
[h=2]‘Beginning of the End’[/h]“This is very much the beginning of the end for Assad,” Salman Shaikh, the director of the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center in Qatar, said in a telephone interview. “This was an extremely professional operation by the rebels and a big blow.”
The United Nations Security Council is due to vote today on a new resolution threatening Syria with non-military sanctions unless Assad complies with a UN peace plan that so far has failed to quell the violence. A vote was postponed for another bout of diplomacy yesterday.
Russia, which has twice blocked measures against its Soviet-era ally, has signalled it is again unwilling to concede. Responding to the blasts, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow that “the UN has no business here.” A vote is scheduled for 10 a.m. in New York.
Russia has backed itself into a corner, and now its best option is to offer Assad asylum, according to George Lopez, a former UN sanctions investigator.
[h=2]‘Take their Course’[/h]“Lavrov could not be clearer: Let events take their course,” said Lopez, who teaches at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.
U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, spoke yesterday on the phone and “noted the differences” in their approaches to Syria, according to a White House statement that highlighted the current stalemate.
With little sign of a breakthrough at the UN, Assad’s fate is being decided on the Syrian streets.
Rebel fighters, mostly armed with light weapons, have been pushing into the capital this week and battling government forces armed with tanks, artillery and attack helicopters.
The fighters are mostly led by Sunni Muslims, who form the majority of Syria’s population. Assad and many of his top officials come from the country’s Alawite minority, an offshoot of the Shiite branch of Islam that stands to lose privileges, property and even lives if his regime falls.
[h=2]Responsibility Claim[/h]The Free Syrian Army, a loose collection of deserters and armed youths, claimed responsibility for yesterday’s attack on Assad’s military leaders.
“The person who carried out the operation is in a safe place now, and he is a person very close to the regime,” Brigadier General Mustafa al-Sheikh, head of the Supreme Council of the Free Syrian Army, told Al Jazeera. “It was not a suicide mission, just explosives that were placed in a small room.”
The operation took place a day sooner than planned, he said.
Damascus and Aleppo, Syria’s largest cities, had until recently been spared the worst of the violence as the army shelled towns in mainly Sunni areas such as Homs and Hama.
“Recent clashes in the capital reflect a major improvement in the military and intelligence capabilities of opposition forces, and are most likely to prove a prelude to broader political and military defections, particularly among the Sunni community,” said Ayham Kamel, a Middle East analyst for the Eurasia Group, which monitors political risk.
They don’t signal the imminent collapse of the government, as “Assad’s Alawite-dominated elite forces remain coherent,” he said in an e-mailed comment.
To contact the reporters on this story: Donna Abu-Nasr in Manama at [email protected]; Flavia Krause-Jackson in United Nations at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: John Walcott at [email protected]; Andrew J. Barden at [email protected]
The troops used helicopters and heavy artillery against the rebels, while snipers took up positions on rooftops on the outskirts of the city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in an e-mailed statement. “Explosions are heard throughout the capital,” it said.
“The regime has gone mad,” Rima Flaihan, spokeswoman for the Local Coordination Committees in Syria, said in a telephone interview today from Jordan.
She said at least 200 people were killed across Syria yesterday. “The regime is in a horrid state of savagery, seeking revenge for the killings of the military leaders,” she added.
Yesterday’s blast targeted members of Assad’s military establishment as they met at the national security headquarters in Damascus. Three people were killed, according to state-run media. They included Assad’s brother-in-law, Assef Shawkat; Defense Minister Dawoud Rajhah; and the vice president’s military adviser, Hasan Turkmani. Other officials including the interior minister were injured, state television said. Shawkat served as deputy defense minister and deputy chief of staff for security.
They were the most senior officials to die since the uprising began in March 2011.
[h=2]Losing Control[/h]It “makes clear” that the 46-year-old Assad is losing control of the country, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said yesterday. The international community has been powerless to stop the rising death toll in an insurgency that has reached Damascus, the capital, where security forces have battled rebels for the past four days.
“It pains me to say, but we are not on the track for peace in Syria and the escalations we have witnessed in Damascus over the past few days is a testimony to that,” said Major-General Robert Mood, commander of the UN observer mission in Syria.
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron called on Assad to leave power. “The message to President Assad is: It is time for transition, it is time for you to go,” Cameron said today in the Afghan capital, Kabul. When asked if he had a message for Syrian ally Russia, he said: “It’s time for the UN Security Council to pass clear and tough messages about sanctions and be unambiguous in this.”
[h=2]‘Beginning of the End’[/h]“This is very much the beginning of the end for Assad,” Salman Shaikh, the director of the Brookings Institution’s Doha Center in Qatar, said in a telephone interview. “This was an extremely professional operation by the rebels and a big blow.”
The United Nations Security Council is due to vote today on a new resolution threatening Syria with non-military sanctions unless Assad complies with a UN peace plan that so far has failed to quell the violence. A vote was postponed for another bout of diplomacy yesterday.
Russia, which has twice blocked measures against its Soviet-era ally, has signalled it is again unwilling to concede. Responding to the blasts, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Moscow that “the UN has no business here.” A vote is scheduled for 10 a.m. in New York.
Russia has backed itself into a corner, and now its best option is to offer Assad asylum, according to George Lopez, a former UN sanctions investigator.
[h=2]‘Take their Course’[/h]“Lavrov could not be clearer: Let events take their course,” said Lopez, who teaches at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.
U.S. President Barack Obama and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, spoke yesterday on the phone and “noted the differences” in their approaches to Syria, according to a White House statement that highlighted the current stalemate.
With little sign of a breakthrough at the UN, Assad’s fate is being decided on the Syrian streets.
Rebel fighters, mostly armed with light weapons, have been pushing into the capital this week and battling government forces armed with tanks, artillery and attack helicopters.
The fighters are mostly led by Sunni Muslims, who form the majority of Syria’s population. Assad and many of his top officials come from the country’s Alawite minority, an offshoot of the Shiite branch of Islam that stands to lose privileges, property and even lives if his regime falls.
[h=2]Responsibility Claim[/h]The Free Syrian Army, a loose collection of deserters and armed youths, claimed responsibility for yesterday’s attack on Assad’s military leaders.
“The person who carried out the operation is in a safe place now, and he is a person very close to the regime,” Brigadier General Mustafa al-Sheikh, head of the Supreme Council of the Free Syrian Army, told Al Jazeera. “It was not a suicide mission, just explosives that were placed in a small room.”
The operation took place a day sooner than planned, he said.
Damascus and Aleppo, Syria’s largest cities, had until recently been spared the worst of the violence as the army shelled towns in mainly Sunni areas such as Homs and Hama.
“Recent clashes in the capital reflect a major improvement in the military and intelligence capabilities of opposition forces, and are most likely to prove a prelude to broader political and military defections, particularly among the Sunni community,” said Ayham Kamel, a Middle East analyst for the Eurasia Group, which monitors political risk.
They don’t signal the imminent collapse of the government, as “Assad’s Alawite-dominated elite forces remain coherent,” he said in an e-mailed comment.
To contact the reporters on this story: Donna Abu-Nasr in Manama at [email protected]; Flavia Krause-Jackson in United Nations at [email protected]
To contact the editors responsible for this story: John Walcott at [email protected]; Andrew J. Barden at [email protected]