New Syria Fighting Reported as U.N. Monitors Blocked
A hotel employee raised the
Syrian national flag in Damascus on Thursday. United Nations monitors
were unable to gain access to the village of Qubeir, the site of a
reported massacre on Wednesday.
Shelling by government forces was reported in Homs on Friday, a day
after government troops and civilian supporters blocked unarmed United
Nations monitors from looking into a mass killing.
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New Syria Fighting Reported as U.N. Monitors Blocked
Youssef Badawi/European Pressphoto Agency
A hotel employee raised the Syrian national
flag in Damascus on Thursday. United Nations monitors were unable to
gain access to the village of Qubeir, the site of a reported massacre on
Wednesday.
ANTAKYA, Turkey — With the Syrian conflict escalating perilously after
government troops and civilian supporters prevented unarmed United
Nations monitors from investigating a massacre, fresh fighting was
reported elsewhere on Friday as the authorities sought to extend their
writ in an area under stubborn rebel control.
The new shelling by government forces in the central city of Homs came a
day after sharp denunciations of Damascus from diplomats who have
struggled vainly to find a workable, consensus solution to the crisis.
On Thursday, the United Nations monitors were thwarted from reaching the
tiny hamlet of Qubeir, just west of Hama, to check on what activists
say was the slaying of as many as 78 people, half of them women and
children, who were shot, garroted and in some cases burned alive. The
monitors themselves were fired upon, United Nations officials said.
While the monitors were planning a fresh attempt to reach Qubeir on
Friday, activist groups quoted in news reports spoke of a renewed
bombardment by government of the Khaldiyeh neighborhood in Homs, south
of Hama, possibly as a prelude to storming the rebel-held area. Few
details of the clashes were immediately available.
Amateur video posted online showed a small white plane, apparently a
drone, flying over Homs, The Associated Press reported.
Thursday’s standoff at a government checkpoint seemed to symbolize the
international paralysis over how to stem the bloodshed. It would be the
fourth massacre in two weeks and suggested that the Syrian conflict was
spiraling, seemingly daily, toward a sectarian civil war, pitting a
government dominated by the Alawite sect against members of a Sunni
Muslim majority feeling vulnerable to slaughter with no consequence. The
Qubeir victims were all thought to be Sunnis.
On Friday, China, regarded along with Russia as the leading allies of President Bashar al-Assad,
urged both sides in the conflict to stop fighting but declined to
endorse calls for stronger international pressures on the authorities in
Damascus, as advocated by the United States and its allies seeking the
removal of Mr. Assad.
“I think the Syrian government and opposition should both truly shoulder
their responsibility and cease fire and halt violence,” Liu Weimin, the
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman, told a daily news briefing in
Beijing, according to Reuters. “Both sides have this responsibility
because they both undertook this commitment.”
“We express strong condemnation of the recent barbarity involving
attacks on innocent civilians, especially women and children, and we
hope that the perpetrators will be punished according to the law as soon
as possible,” Mr. Liu said.
The massacre and the government’s attempt to prevent the monitors from
investigating it came as Kofi Annan, the special envoy from the United
Nations and the Arab League, addressed both the General Assembly and the
Security Council in an effort to
salvage his six-point peace plan from irrelevance. He warned that the
already terrible violence would only increase without concerted
international pressure, which should be exerted through some kind of
“contact group” involving key international powers and Syria’s neighbors.
“We cannot allow mass killing to become part of everyday reality in
Syria,” Mr. Annan told the General Assembly, while blaming both sides
for the intensification. “If things do not change, the future is likely
to be one of brutal repression, massacres, sectarian violence and even
all-out civil war. All Syrians will lose.”
Mr. Annan said that since his visit to Damascus last week, and despite
promises from Mr. Assad to respect the peace plan, which includes a
cease-fire, there had been more violence throughout Syria with worse
shelling of cities. The government-backed militia “seem to have free
rein with appalling consequences,” he said. Armed opposition elements
had intensified their attacks as well, he said.
In Beijing, Mr. Liu said that, in light of
the violence, “the importance of envoy Annan’s mediation efforts has
not diminished but rather increased. The support of all sides for the
envoy Annan should strengthen, rather than weaken.”
United Nations monitors stationed across the country, including Deir al-Zour, Idlib, Homs and Hama, as well as Aleppo, Syria’s biggest city,
have all reported increased shelling and firing. “You see a more than
serious uptick in violence in all the places where we are,” said
Jean-Marie Guehenno, a senior deputy to Mr. Annan.
Neil MacFarquhar reported from Antakya,Turkey, Rick Gladstone from New York, and Alan Cowell from London. Ellen Barry contributed reporting from Moscow. copy : http://g7finance.com/
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