You have commented 338 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
Syria-Lebanon-Iran
20 Dead as Syrian Forces Fire on Huge Protests
2012-05-19
[An Nahar] Regime forces fired on protesters who erupted into the streets of Aleppo
...For centuries, Aleppo was Greater Syria's largest city and the Ottoman Empire's third, after Constantinople and Cairo. Although relatively close to Damascus in distance, Aleppans regard Damascenes as country cousins...
on Friday, wounding several people at the biggest rally seen in Syria's second city since a revolt erupted last year, as at least 20 people were killed across the country, a rights group and activists said.

The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said security forces killed nine people in the central province of Homs, three in the central province of Hama, three in the northwestern province of Idlib, two in the southern province of Daraa, two in the northern province of Aleppo and a person in the Damascus
...Capital of the last remaining Baathist regime in the world...
suburb of Douma.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said demonstrators suffered gunshot wounds in Douma, a key protest hub, but did not provide any casualty figures.

"Thousands of people demonstrated in various districts (of Aleppo) despite the repression," said Observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman.

"These are the most important events in Aleppo since the beginning of the revolt," he told Agence La Belle France Presse.

The government said its forces foiled a suicide kaboom in Aleppo last Friday, a day after twin bombings in Damascus killed 55 people and maimed nearly 400. It has repeatedly blamed such attacks on "terrorists".

U.N. chief the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon
... of whom it can be said to his credit that he is not Kofi Annan...
said on Thursday he believes al-Qaeda committed the Damascus attack.

"Very alarmingly and surprisingly, a few days ago, there was a huge serious massive terrorist attack. I believe that there must be al-Qaeda behind it. This has created again very serious problems," Ban said.

Syrian Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck al-Assad
One of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators...
, as well as the United States and Russia, has already pointed to an al-Qaeda presence in the country since the revolt against his regime began.

The Observatory said at least seven died in violence across the country on Friday, including two children and a woman killed by regime forces.

Besides Aleppo, protests demanding the ouster of Assad also took place in Damascus, the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, northeastern Hasaka, Homs in central Syria, and northwestern Idlib, said the Britannia-based Observatory.

The Observatory said tens of thousands of people rallies across the country, in the biggest demonstrations since an April 12 ceasefire which has been violated on a daily basis.

"We want freedom, whether you like it or not, Bashar, enemy of humanity," protesters chanted in Deir Ezzor.

The rallies came after a call by activists for Syria-wide protests under the rallying cry, "heroes of Aleppo University", in solidarity with students in the northern city who demonstrated there the day before despite brutal repression.

On Thursday, the students were met with brutal repression by security forces, despite the presence of U.N. military observers, who now number more than 250 across the country out of the total of 300.

One protester was killed in a separate demonstration Thursday night in the Aleppo neighborhood of Salaheddin, according to the Observatory, while an officer was killed in a bomb kaboom in the city on Friday.

On May 3, security forces killed four students in a night time raid on their dormitories at Aleppo University, bringing Syria's second largest city into the forefront of its deadly unrest.

Violence persisted elsewhere, with regime forces renewing their bombardment of Rastan in central Homs province on Friday, according to the Observatory -- only a day after a blistering assault on the rebel stronghold.

Heavy gunfire and shelling was reported in several neighborhoods of Homs city, said the watchdog.

In Damascus province, heavy gunfire was reported near the town of Harasta, while the army suffered casualties in an attack on a military checkpoint at the town of Dariya.

Artillery attacks on towns have declined since the U.N. observer mission began deploying in mid-April, but the corpse count is still high.

With the violence unabated, U.N. Arab League
...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing...
envoy Kofi Annan
...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo...
plans to return to Damascus "soon" to further efforts to find a peaceful solution to the crisis, his front man said on Friday, without saying when.

The head of the U.N. observers' mission, Major General Robert Mood, told news hounds in Damascus his mission "will reach full operational capabilities in record time."

Nearly 260 military observers out of a planned 300 were now in Syria.

"No volume of observers can achieve a progressive drop and a permanent end to the violence if the commitment to give dialogue a chance is not genuine from all internal and external factors," Mood acknowledged.

"We are very committed to the Syrian people, innocent women and kiddies, to return back to normality," he told news hounds in Damascus. "But we must be given a real chance to do that from the fighting parties and their supporters."

In an apparent first, Syrian authorities have sentenced to death for "treason" an activist who was jugged
... anything you say can and will be used against you, whether you say it or not...
in April and "brutally tortured," the Syrian League of the Defense of Human Rights said on Friday.
Posted by:Fred

00:00