Syria Live Blog
Violence in Syria has escalated into what the Red Cross calls a civil war. Activists say at least 18,000 people have died since the uprising began in March last year. The government of Bashar al-Assad, increasingly losing territory to rebel fighters, blames "terrorists" and "armed gangs" for the unrest, while the opposition and other nations have accused Assad's forces of crimes against humanity.
Syria
Syrians fleeing war start to trickle into Europe:
Ali Jamal travelled thousands of miles on foot, by train and road to flee violence in Syria while Jomaah piled his family into a camper van to smuggle them north to Europe.
They have now reached safety in Sweden, some of the growing thousands of Syrians who are evading the European Union's frontier controls to escape the turmoil of the past 18 months.
That is raising calls for a more focused European response to a refugee crisis that has seen over 200,000 Syrians flee to Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon and, especially, Turkey.
[Source: Reuters]
Syria
The Syrian government has said that there will be no dialogue with the opposition before the army crushes the rebels, the latest sign that President Bashar al-Assad is determined to solve the crisis on the battlefield even if many more of his people have to pay with their lives.
The statement comes a day after activists reported that August was the bloodiest month since the uprising began in March 2011.
"There will be no dialogue with the opposition prior to the Syrian army's imposition of security and stability in all parts of the country," Information Minister Omran al-Zoebi told reporters at a news conference in Damascus.
The opposition has long rejected any talks with the regime until Assad is removed from power.
Muhieddine Lathkani, an opposition figure based in Britain, responded to the minister's comments by saying "the key to any dialogue will be the departure of Assad and dismantling of the regime's security agencies that committed all these crimes".
Lathkani told The Associated Press by telephone that after that happens, there could be a dialogue.
[AP]
Syria
The Syrian city of Aleppo has come under renewed government shelling, opposition activists say. At least 34 people are reported to have been killed following a military bombardment in the rebel-held al-Bab area.
Al Jazeera's Dominic Kane reports.
Al Jazeera's Dominic Kane reports.
Warning: Discretion is advised, as some viewers may find images in this report distressing.
Syria
Russia has issued a strongly worded statement expressing its "deep concern" at a warning that Syrian rebels plan to target civilian airports in Damascus and Aleppo from Tuesday.
"In Moscow we have seen with deep concern the statements distributed in the media by representatives of the so-called Free Syria Army that international civilian airports of Damascus and Aleppo are from now on seen as military targets," the Russian foreign ministry on Monday said in a statement.
State-owned RIA Novosti news agency on Friday reported on a rebel statement cited by London-based Asharq al-Awsat newspaper saying Damascus and Aleppo airports and commercial flights would be targeted from Tuesday because they were being used for military aviation.
"We consider such threats absolutely unacceptable," the Russian foreign ministry said.
"From a moral and legal point of view this means the opposition's critical proximity to a red line, beyond which are acts that are no different from the crimes of Al-Qaeda."
"The most recent statement by the Free Syria Army essentially confirms that terrorism is turning into one of its main methods of activity," the ministry added.
Russia called for "taking action on the leaders of the Free Syria Army in the most decisive manner to excluse such threats, not to mention their being carried out", and reiterated calls for Russians to avoid travel to Syria.
Rebel forces have increasingly targeted the Syrian regime's military air power and claimed to have shot down a MiG fighter jet and destroyed a dozen aircraft on the ground last week.
Russia continues to lobby for a short-lived agreement struck by world powers in Geneva on June 30 calling for a rapid ceasefire and supports a move towards a transition government that would decide President Bashar al-Assad's future.
Russia continues to lobby for a short-lived agreement struck by world powers in Geneva on June 30 calling for a rapid ceasefire and supports a move towards a transition government that would decide President Bashar al-Assad's future.
[AFP]
Syria
Syria has hit back at Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi on Monday saying that his Islamist beard is the only thing that distinguishes him from the veteran strongman he replaced after last year's Arab Spring uprising.
Responding to high-profile criticism from Morsi at a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Tehran last week, Information Minister Omran al-Zohbi charged that the Egyptian leader was complicit in the armed revolt rocking his country.
"He is responsible for spilling Syrian blood, as are the Qataris, the Saudis and the Turks," Zohbi said. "The only difference between him and (ousted strongman Hosni) Mubarak is that he has a beard."
The Syrian government prides itself on its secularism. The Muslim Brotherhood, for which Morsi successfully ran for Egypt's presidency earlier this year, has long been outlawed in Syria on pain of death. It is one of the most powerful factions within the opposition Syrian National Council.
Morsi caused a storm on Thursday when, on the first visit to Iran by an Egyptian leader in decades, he slammed Syria's government as "oppressive" and urged support for rebels seeking President Bashar al-Assad's ouster.
"Our solidarity with the struggle of Syrians against an oppressive regime that has lost its legitimacy is an ethical duty, and a political and strategic necessity," he said.
[AFP]
Syria
The Syrian army will recapture Aleppo from rebel forces within ten days, a senior commander in charge of the five-week military offensive on the commercial capital told AFP on Monday.
The city would fall once Saif al-Dawla, one of the two "toughest" neighbourhoods, was conquered as the other, Salaheddin, had already been seized back from the "terrorists" concentrated in the two areas, the general said.
"They are the most difficult given the urban geography. After that other parts will be easier to take," he said on condition of anonymity.
The general said that about 3,000 government troops were involved in the fight against about 7,000 "terrorists," a term used by regime officials to describe the rebels.
He added that 2,000 rebels had been killed since the start of the assault on Aleppo at the start of August.
The rebels had on July 20 opened a new front in the Syrian conflict by launching an attack on the city before the army dislodged them from several sectors, including Salaheddin, one of their main strongholds.
"Salaheddin has been totally under the control of the military since August 9," said the commander of a unit from the south of the country that is part of the offensive.
AFP journalists who were able to go with the army to Salaheddin found that the neighbourhood was effectively under the control of the government forces.
Under dangling electricity cables, volunteers from civil defence groups helped police to remove bodies from the streets and put them into bags. But fighting continued in Saif al-Dawla, a suburb that resembled a ghost town.
"We control the top of Saif al-Dawla. It will be easy to conquer the rest," another colonel said on condition of anonymity, as widespread destruction of the district was clearly evident.
Syria
Lebanon's prime minister says that Beirut will urgently protest to Damascus over Syria's violations of its territory, warning of "negative repercussions" on the stability of the border areas.
"Prime Minister Najib Mikati asked the ambassador of Lebanon to Damascus Michel Khoury... to send an urgent letter to the Syrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to say that Syrian posts continue to shell Lebanese border villages," read a statement from the PM's office.
"These violations could have negative repercussions... on stability and calm at the border," despite "security measures taken by the Lebanese army," said Mikati.
Shelling from Syria into Lebanon and cross-border shootings have become near-daily occurrences in recent months according to Lebanese officials, and the spillover of the conflict has worried the international community.
President Michel Sleiman accused Syria of violating Lebanese territory on July 23, and the Syrian government has frequently blamed Lebanon for allowing "terrorists" to cross over and smuggle weapons into the strife-torn country.
More than 150,000 Syrians have fled to Lebanon, where supporters and opponents of President Bashar al-Assad's regime have frequently clashed notably in the northern city of Tripoli.
[AFP]
Syria
Any use of chemical or bacterial weapons by government forces in Syria would trigger a "massive and lightning fast" response from the West, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Monday.
"We talk about this, in particular with our American and British partners, and follow it closely on a day-to-day basis.
"Our response ... would be massive and lightning fast," Fabius told BFM television, saying chemical weapons were a "big, big risk" in the Syrian crisis.
Paris and Washington have said that despite the deadlock at the United Nations Security Council over taking firm action to stem the crackdown by President Bashar al-Assad's army on a 17-month-old uprising, the use of chemical weapons would be justification for a military intervention.
Syria acknowledged in July that it had chemical and biological weapons, but said that it would only use them in case of a foreign military intevention.
The announcement prompted US President Barack Obama to threaten "enormous consequences" if Damascus even moved such weapons in a menacing way. Asked whether Western powers agreed on what form a response to the use of chemical weapons could take, Fabius said he believed they would be united.
"Russia has been very firm on this point and the Chinese have the same position," he added.
[Reuters]
Syria
David Petraeus, the chief of the US Central Intelligence Agency is visiting Turkey for meetings on regional issues, a US official told AFP on Monday.
The official would not say with whom the CIA chief would be meeting and where.
According to local media, Petraeus arrived in Istanbul on Sunday and his meetings with Turkish officials on Monday would focus on the Syrian crisis and anti-terror fight.
Turkish and US officials last month held their first operational planning meeting aimed at bringing about the end of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's embattled government.
During that meeting, the two parties discussed contingency plans in the case of potential threats including a chemical attack by Assad's regime, as well as the threat of armed groups including outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and al-Qaeda which could exploit a power vacuum in Syria.
This is the second visit to Turkey by the CIA chief who held closed-door talks with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Turkish intelligence chief Hakan Fidan in March.
[AFP]
Syria
Al Jazeera's Sue Turton has just been on live from Antakya, in southern Turkey, reporting on the situation in Syria.
Regarding the bomb blast in Damascus, she said:
The government has said that its blaming "terrorists", the same accusation it put out [on Sunday] after the bombs exploded in the heart of the military [district] of Damascus. Now that was an obvious target of the FSA and indeed they did claim responsibility, but this isn't quite the same thing. The area is a quite religiously diverse sector. Christians and Druze mostly make up the population there, and its the sort of bomb blast that if the FSA did plant it would make it extremely unpopular.
An FSA colonel conjectured to Al Jazeera that the bomb had been detonated by the government as part of a tactic to cause explosions and mayhem in certain areas in the hope of making the FSA unpopular, or to stop people from harbouring FSA fighters in central Damascus.
Regarding clashes in the western mountains, Turton reported:
We're also hearing of the area to the west, the western mountains. When we were there, we knew that the FSA had managed to push the line of government forces all the way down from the Turkish border to Salma. We're now hearing that ... there have been clashes [in the neighbouring village to Salma] and across to the west right next to the coast in the town of Kasab. A really large and strategically important town really for the government. [...]Fighters are saying 11 of their number have died and 40 have been injured. The government it seems is really shoring up its defences there and really pushing hard to keep Kasab. If it managed to be pushed out of the way by the FSA, then they'd have a line all the way to the sea, something they don't have [presently].Any sea access could mean supplies of medicines, which they desperately need, weapons and ammunition as well.
Syria
These images from the AFP news agency show the scene of the car bombing that struck the capital's Jaramanah neighbourhood, a mixed area of Sunni Muslims, Christians and Druze, killing at least five people, according to the activist Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Syria
Western powers are preparing a tough response in case Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime deploys chemical or biological weapons, France's foreign minister said on Monday.
Syria's leadership has said the country, which is believed to have nerve agents as well as mustard gas and Scud missiles capable of delivering these lethal chemicals, could use chemical or biological weapons if it were attacked from outside.
Speaking on RMC radio, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said "we are discussing this notably with our American and English partners" and that if Syria uses such weapons "our response ... would be massive and blistering."
Speaking on RMC radio, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said "we are discussing this notably with our American and English partners" and that if Syria uses such weapons "our response ... would be massive and blistering."
Fabius added that Russia and China are "of the same position,'' but acknowledged frustration at their continuing support for Assad.
The foreign ministries of both China and Russia declined immediate comment.s
