Syria rebels target Assad air power

Syria rebels target Assad air power




Free Syrian Army fighters aim at aircraft in the city of Aleppo as regime forces stepped up air attacks. (AP)





REUTERS

Monday 3 September 2012


BEIRUT: Rebels seized an air defense facility and attacked a military airport in eastern Syria yesterday, a monitoring group said, hitting back at an air force on which President Bashar Assad is increasingly relying to crush his opponents.
The attacks in eastern oil-producing Deir Al-Zor province follow rebel strikes against military airports in the Aleppo and Idlib areas, close to the border with Turkey.
Rebels in Deir Al-Zor overran an air defense building early yesterday, taking at least 16 captives and seizing an unknown number of anti-aircraft rockets, said Rami Abdulrahman of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Video posted on the Internet by activists showed the officers and soldiers captured by the rebel fighters, and Al Arabiya television broadcast footage of what it said were rockets and ammunition seized in the raid.
Abdulrahman said rebels also attacked the Hamdan military airbase at Albu Kamal, close to Syria’s eastern border with Iraq, but did not succeed in breaking into it.
The attacks come three days after rebels attacked the Taftanaz air base in Idlib province, where they said several helicopters were damaged. The insurgents also said they have shot down a fighter jet and a helicopter last week.
Bombardments of northern towns such as Azaz and Anadan, of which Assad lost control weeks ago, have led to thousands of residents fleeing to safety in Turkey.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said it would be wrong to press Damascus alone to end the violence.

“It is absolutely unrealistic to say that the unilateral capitulation of one of the parties in conflict is the only way out, in a situation when there’s ongoing urban fighting,” he told students of the Moscow Institute of Foreign Relations.
Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi replaced Kofi Annan yesterday as the UN-Arab League mediator trying to end the war. Ban said he lobbied governments at the Tehran summit to support Brahimi, but he did not say how the negotiating strategy might change under the new mediator.
Brahimi’s efforts will rely to some extent on a six-point plan that was promoted, so far unsuccessfully, by Annan, Ban said. The plan envisages a UN-supervised cease-fire, prisoner releases by the Syrian government and other steps.
Meanwhile, 18 unidentified bodies were found in the Damascus area yesterday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that summary executions by both sides in the conflict were on the increase.
Most of the bodies had their hands tied and some showed signs of torture, the Britain-based watchdog said.

Five of the bodies were found in the south Damascus district of Qadam, while the others were found outside the capital, most of them in the suburb of Kafr Batna, an opposition stronghold, it added.
In second city Aleppo, meanwhile, state media said that a “terrorist” group had killed five members of a family in the central Marjeh district.
The official SANA news agency identified the dead as Ali Merhi, his brother Khaled, 42, and “three children under the age of 17.”
On Aug. 15, a UN Commission of Inquiry said it had found evidence that Syrian government forces and their militia allies had committed crimes against humanity during the conflict now in its 18th month.
It found that rebel fighters were also guilty of crimes, albeit on a smaller scale.
Jordan needs $700 million in international aid to cope with an influx of 240,000 refugees from the conflict across the border in Syria, its planning and international cooperation minister said yesterday.
“The cost for Jordan to continue to welcome our Syrian brothers ... is almost $700 million, to take in over 240,000 residents and refugees at Zaatari camp and outside,” Jaafar Hassan told a joint news conference with the UN refugee agency.
He said the Jordanian government would not be able to provide aid to the refugees without international assistance.
There are currently 177,000 Syrians in Jordan, with around 26,000 in the Zaatari refugee camp, north of Amman, that the UN opened five weeks ago, according to the minister.

Denmark will free up another two million euros to help provide aid to Syrian refugees and displaced people as a civil war rages in their homeland, Danish public television DR reported yesterday.
Out of the 15 million kroner (two million euros), 13 million will go to the UN refugee agency (UNHCR) and two million to the Danish crisis agency, which sends personnel and equipment to Syrian refugees in Jordan.
“It is a very hard and frightening conflict,” Christian Friis Bach, the country’s development cooperation minister said on television.

“The money will go toward the construction of a camp, sanitation and tents, food and administration, which are the most pressing needs,” he said. The extra two million euros worth of aid takes Denmark’s total contribution to the humanitarian effort in Syria to 10 million euros.

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