Tag Archives: Damascus

Syrian walkout from talks ‘an embarrassment to Russia’: opposition

Syrian government negotiator quits Geneva talks, says may not return

By Tom Miles

GENEVA (Reuters) – The Syrian government’s decision to quit peace talks last week was an embarrassment to its main supporter Russia, which wants both sides to reach a deal quickly, opposition spokesman Yahya al-Aridi said on Monday.

The delegation left the U.N.-backed talks in Geneva on Friday, blaming the opposition’s demands that President Bashar al-Assad should play no role in any interim post-war government.

“I don’t think that those who support the regime are happy with such a position being taken by the regime. This is an embarrassment to Russia,” Aridi said at the hotel where the opposition delegation is staying in Geneva.

“We understand the Russian position now. They are… in a hurry to find a solution.”

There was no immediate comment from Russian officials at the talks on the withdrawal of the government delegation.

Russia helped to turn the Syrian war in Assad’s favor and has become the key force in the push for a diplomatic solution. Last month Russian President Vladimir Putin said a political settlement should be finalised within the U.N. Geneva process.

The opposition, long wary of Russia’s role, now accepts it. Western diplomats say Putin’s Syria envoy Alexander Lavrentiev was present at the Riyadh meeting last month where the opposition drew up its statement rejecting any future role for Assad.

Asked if the opposition was willing to compromise on Assad’s role in any post-war government, Aridi said his delegation’s demands were based on the wishes of the Syrian people.

“I believe that our mere presence in Geneva is in itself a compromise. We are sitting with a regime that has been carrying out all these atrocities for the past seven years. What other compromise could we make?”

A source close to government delegation told Reuters on Monday that Damascus was still studying the feasibility of participation in the talks and when a decision was reached it would be sent through ordinary diplomatic channels.

 

(Reporting by Tom Miles, additional reporting by Kinda Makieh in Damascus; Editing by Alison Williams and Andrew Heavens)

 

Rebel area near Damascus hit by heavy shelling despite two-day truce

Rebel area near Damascus hit by heavy shelling despite two-day truce

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Dozens of mortar bombs landed on the last major rebel stronghold near the Syrian capital Damascus on Wednesday, a war monitor and a witness said on Wednesday, despite a 48 hour truce proposed by Russia to coincide with the start of peace talks in Geneva.

After a relatively calm morning, shelling picked up later in the day, accompanied by ground attempts to storm the besieged enclave, a witness in the Eastern Ghouta area told Reuters.

The Syrian army stepped up bombardment two weeks ago in an effort to recapture Eastern Ghouta, a rebel-held pocket of densely populated agricultural land on the outskirts of the capital under siege since 2012.

Scores of people have been killed in air strikes during the offensive, and residents say they are on the verge of starvation after the siege was tightened.

Russia had proposed a ceasefire on Monday in the besieged area for Nov. 28-29. U.N. Syria envoy Staffan De Mistura later said Russia had told him that the Syrian government had accepted the idea, but “we have to see if it happens”.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least one person was killed when dozens of mortars crashed into Eastern Ghouta on Wednesday.

Eastern Ghouta is one of several “de-escalation” zones across western Syria where Russia has brokered ceasefire deals between rebels and President Bashar al-Assad’s government. But fighting has continued there.

On Tuesday, shelling killed three people and injured 15, but was less intense than in previous days, the observatory said. It had reported intense bombardment that killed 41 people over two days from Sunday to Monday.

“A two-day truce is not nearly enough for civilians facing grave violations of international law – including bombardment and besiegement – but it is a window of opportunity to save the lives of the most desperately in need of treatment,” said Thomas Garofalo, International Rescue Committee’s Middle East Public Affairs Director, in a statement on Wednesday.

The Syrian delegation arrived in Geneva to participate in the eighth round of United Nation-sponsored peace talks. It delayed its departure for one day after the opposition repeated its demand that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down.

Nasr Hariri, head of the opposition delegation, told a Geneva news conference on Monday night that he is aiming for Assad’s removal as a result of negotiations.

The government delegation will be headed by Syria’s U.N. ambassador and chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja’afari, state-run news agency SANA said.

A breakthrough in the talks is seen as unlikely as Assad and his allies push for total military victory in Syria’s civil war, now in its seventh year, and his opponents stick by their demand he leaves power.

(Reporting by Sarah Dadouch and Dahlia Nehme; Editing by Angus McDowall, Jeremy Gaunt and Peter Graff)

Truce near Damascus mostly being observed before Syria talks begin

Truce near Damascus mostly being observed before Syria talks begin

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Russian-proposed ceasefire in the Eastern Ghouta area of Syria has been widely observed, a war monitor and a witness said on Wednesday, as a delegation from Damascus arrived in Geneva to join peace talks there.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the ceasefire in the besieged rebel-held enclave near Damascus is being “observed in general”.

The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura said on Tuesday that the Syrian government had accepted the Russian proposal to stop fighting in the area on Nov. 28-29.

The observatory, which monitors the war, reported that the ceasefire had seen insignificant breaches on Wednesday morning in the village of Ain Terma, where Syrian forces fired five shells.

On Tuesday, shelling killed three people and injured 15, but was less intense than in previous days, it added.

“We are in peace today,” a witness from the Eastern Ghouta village of Douma told Reuters on a messaging site.

The Syrian delegation arrived in Geneva to participate in the eighth round of United Nation-sponsored peace talks. It delayed its departure for one day after the opposition repeated its demand that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad step down.

Nasr Hariri, head of the opposition delegation, told a Geneva news conference on Monday night that he is aiming for Assad’s removal as a result of negotiations.

The government delegation will be headed by Syria’s U.N. ambassador and chief negotiator Bashar al-Ja’afari, state-run news agency SANA said.

A breakthrough in the talks is seen as unlikely as Assad and his allies push for total military victory in Syria’s civil war, now in its seventh year, and his opponents stick by their demand he leaves power.

(Reporting by Dahlia Nehme; Editing by Angus McDowall/Jeremy Gaunt)

Syrian opposition rejects Russia-sponsored peace initiative

Mohammad Alloush (C), the head of the Syrian opposition delegation, attends Syria peace talks in Astana, Kazakhstan

BEIRUT/AMMAN/ANKARA (Reuters) – The Syrian opposition has rejected a new, Russian-sponsored initiative to reach a political settlement to the Syrian conflict, and Turkey protested against the invitation of the Syrian Kurdish side as Moscow’s peacemaking bid hit early complications on Wednesday.

Having intervened decisively in the Syrian war in 2015 in support of President Bashar al-Assad, Russia now hopes to build on the collapse of Islamic State to launch a new political process towards ending the six-year-long conflict.

Damascus has said it is ready to attend the Nov. 18 Sochi congress which is set to focus on a new constitution, saying the time is right thanks to Syrian army gains and the “terrorists’ obliteration”.

But officials in the anti-Assad opposition rejected the meeting and insisted any peace talks be held under U.N. sponsorship in Geneva, where peace talks have failed to make any progress towards ending the conflict since it erupted in 2011.

The congress amounted to a meeting “between the regime and the regime”, said Mohammad Alloush, a member of the opposition High Negotiations Committee and a senior official with the Jaish al-Islam rebel group.

The HNC was surprised it had been mentioned in a list of groups invited to the congress and would “issue a statement with other parties setting out the general position rejecting this conference”, Alloush told Reuters.

The Turkey-based Syrian National Coalition (SNC) political opposition group said the congress was an attempt to circumvent “the international desire for political transition” in Syria.

“The Coalition will not participate in any negotiations with the regime outside Geneva or without U.N. sponsorship,” SNC spokesman Ahmad Ramadan told Reuters.

A Russian negotiator said on Tuesday that Syrian groups who choose to boycott the congress risked being sidelined as the political process moves ahead.

Russia has invited 33 Syrian groups and political parties to what it calls a “Syrian Congress on National Dialogue”.

Russian President Vladimir Putin first mentioned the idea of the congress last month, saying that he believed Moscow and the Syrian government would soon finally defeat militants in Syria.

Helped by Russia’s air force and an array of Iran-backed Shi’ite militias, Assad has defeated many of the Syrian rebels who were fighting to topple him, leaving him militarily unassailable and the rebels confined to enclaves of the west.

Damascus and its allies have also recovered swathes of central and eastern Syria from Islamic State in recent months, while a separate campaign by U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has driven IS from other areas of the country.

The separate campaigns are now converging on Islamic State’s last strongholds in Deir al-Zor province at the Iraqi border.

Russia’s decision to invite the Kurdish groups which dominate the SDF to Sochi triggered Turkish irritation on Wednesday. Ankara, which views the dominant Syrian Kurdish groups as a national security threat, said it was unacceptable that the Kurdish YPG militia had been invited.

Turkish presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said Turkish and Russian officials had discussed the issue and that he had held meetings of his own to “solve the problem on the spot.”

Turkey views the YPG and its political affiliate, the PYD, as an extension of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been waging a three-decade insurgency in Turkey.

 

(Reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman, Lisa Barrington in Beirut, and Tulay Karadeniz in Ankara; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Larry King and Raissa Kasolowsky)

 

Convoy rolls into Damascus suburbs with aid for 40,000

Smoke rises at a damaged site in Ain Tarma, eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta, Syria, September 14, 2017.

GENEVA (Reuters) – A convoy from the United Nations and Syrian Arab Red Crescent entered towns in the besieged Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta on Monday, bringing aid to 40,000 people for the first time since June 2016, the United Nations said.

A tightening siege by government forces has pushed people to the verge of famine in the eastern suburbs, residents and aid workers said last week, bringing desperation to the only major rebel enclave near the Syrian capital.

The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said on Twitter they had entered the towns of Kafra Batna and Saqba.

The Syrian Arab Red Crescent said in a separate tweet that the inter-agency convoy had 49 trucks.

They carried food, nutrition and health items for 40,000 people in need, OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke said. “The last time we reached these two locations were in June 2016,” he said.

A health worker in Saqba who was present when the convoy started to offload said that nine trucks of foodstuffs, including milk and peanut butter, and four trucks of medicines had arrived so far.

Technical specialists were on board to assess needs in the towns in order to plan a further humanitarian response, he said.

“More aid to complement today’s delivery is planned in the coming days,” Laerke added.

At least 1,200 children in eastern Ghouta suffer from malnutrition, with 1,500 others at risk, a spokeswoman for the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF said last week.

Bettina Luescher, spokeswoman of the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP), said the convoy carried nutrition supplies for 16,000 children.

Food, fuel and medicine once travelled across frontlines into the suburbs through a network of underground tunnels. But early this year, an army offensive nearby cut smuggling routes that provided a lifeline for around 300,000 people in the enclave east of the capital.

 

(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Additional reporting by Ellen Francis in Beirut; Editing by Alison Williams and Peter Graff)

 

From Damascus, Iran vows to confront Israel

From Damascus, Iran vows to confront Israel

By Ellen Francis and Babak Dehghanpisheh

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Iran’s military chief warned Israel against breaching Syrian airspace and territory on a visit to Damascus on Wednesday, raising tensions with Israel as it voices deep concern over Tehran’s influence in Syria.

General Mohammad Baqeri pledged to increase cooperation with Syria’s military to fight Israel and insurgents, Iranian and Syrian state media said.

Iranian forces and Iran-backed Shi’ite militias, including Hezbollah, have provided critical military support to Damascus, helping it regain swathes of Syria from rebels and militants.

“It’s not acceptable for the Zionist regime to violate the land and airspace of Syria anytime it wants,” Baqeri said at a news conference with his Syrian counterpart.

“We are in Damascus to assert and cooperate to confront our common enemies, the Zionists and terrorists,” he said, a reference to Israel and Sunni Muslim jihadists including Islamic State.

“We drew up the broad lines for this cooperation,” Syrian state media cited the Iranian military chief of staff as saying.

Iran’s expanding clout during Syria’s more than six-year war has raised alarm in Israel, which has said it would act against any threat from its regional arch-enemy Tehran.

Israel’s air force says it has struck arms convoys of the Syrian military and Hezbollah nearly 100 times during the war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Iran was strengthening its foothold in Syria and that Israel would “do whatever it takes” to protect its security.

Tensions have risen this year between Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Israel, which have avoided a major conflict since 2006.

This week, the Israeli military said it attacked a Syrian anti-aircraft battery that had fired at its planes over Lebanon. But the Syrian army said it hit an Israeli warplane after it breached its airspace at the Syria-Lebanon border. [nL8N1MR2EX

“Our job is to prevent war, and you do that through deterrence. What we saw in Syria (on Monday) fell within this framework,” the Israeli defense minister told Israel Radio on Wednesday before the Iranian military chief’s comments.

“We will do whatever is necessary for (our) security,” Avigdor Lieberman added. “We will not change our operating procedures because of shooting or a threat of this type or another.”

(Additional reporting by Jeffrey Heller in Jerusalem; Editing by Tom Perry and Richard Balmforth)

Suicide bombers attack Damascus police center: Syrian state media

A damaged site is seen in front of police headquarters in central Damascus, Syria October 11, 2017. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Three men blew themselves up near the police headquarters in central Damascus on Wednesday, killing two people and injuring six others, state media said, citing the interior ministry.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, the second this month.

Two suicide bombers tried to storm the police center and clashed with guards before detonating explosive devices outside on Khalid bin al-Walid street, the Damascus police chief said.

Police forces then chased down the third attacker, who blew himself up nearby at the entrance to a clothes market.

“Our investigations are ongoing to find out where they came from and how,” police chief Mohammad Kheir Ismail told state TV from outside the headquarters. “The issue has been controlled.”

An Islamic State statement said three suicide bombers had attacked the police center with machine guns and explosive belts.

Islamic State also claimed responsibility earlier this month for a similar suicide bomb attack on a police station in another part of Damascus, in which 17 people were reported dead.

Damascus has enjoyed relative security as Syria’s six-year civil war has raged on nearby and across the country. But several such attacks have hit the capital in recent years, including a car bomb that killed 20 people in July.

Islamic State and Tahrir al-Sham – led by militants formerly linked to al Qaeda – have each claimed separate suicide blasts that killed scores of people in Damascus previously.

“The desperate suicide attempts come as a response to the victories of the Syrian Arab Army, and the Interior Ministry is fully ready to thwart any terrorist act,” state television quoted Interior Minister Mohammad al-Shaar as saying.

With the help of Russian jets and Iran-backed militias, the Damascus government has pushed back rebels in western Syria, shoring up its rule over the main urban centers. In recent months, it has also marched eastwards against Islamic State.

Syrian troops and allied forces have recaptured several suburbs of Damascus from rebel factions over the past year. The army and its allies have been fighting insurgents in the Jobar and Ain Tarma districts on the capital’s eastern outskirts.

(Reporting by Ellen Francis; additional reporting by Ali Abdelatti in Cairo; Editing by Gareth Jones)

Fighting, air strikes in ceasefire area east of Damascus: war monitor

FILE PHOTO: People are seen amid debris at a damaged site in Arbin, a town in Damascus countryside, Syria. REUTERS/Bassam Khabieh

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Fighting broke out east of Damascus between rebel and government forces on Wednesday for the first time since both sides declared a ceasefire at the weekend, a war monitor said, with air strikes also hitting the besieged, rebel-controlled enclave. civilian

Air strikes on three towns in East Ghouta killed a child and wounded 11 other civilians, taking the toll of wounded and dead to about 55 civilians in the last 48 hours, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The toll is expected to rise.

On Tuesday, the Britain-based monitor reported the first casualties since the Russian-backed truce began on Saturday.

Russia dismissed reports of air strikes on Tuesday as a “an absolute lie” meant to discredit its work in the de-escalation zone.

Wednesday’s clashes happened around Ain Terma on the western edge of Eastern Ghouta.

Eastern Ghouta, the only major rebel-held area near the capital, has been blockaded by Syrian government forces since 2013. It has shrunk considerably in size over the past year as the Russia-backed Syrian army has taken control of other rebel-held areas around Damascus.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Sarah Dadouch; Editing by Louise Ireland)

Parents of kidnapped U.S. journalist Tice renew plea for release

Debra Tice, the mother of American journalist Austin Tice, holds his picture with her husband Marc Tice during a news conference in Beirut, Lebanon July 20, 2017. REUTERS/Jamal Saidi

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The parents of a U.S. journalist kidnapped in Syria nearly five years ago issued a new plea for his release on Thursday.

Austin Tice, a freelance reporter and former U.S. Marine from Houston, Texas, was kidnapped in August 2012 aged 31 while reporting in Damascus on the uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The identity of his captors is not known, and there has been no claim of responsibility for his abduction. The family believe he is alive and still being held captive.

“We are willing to engage with any government, any group, any individual who can help us in this effort to secure Austin’s safe release,” his father Marc Tice said at a news conference in Beirut.

“When any journalist is silenced, we’re all blindfolded.”

His mother Debra Tice added: “Five years is a very long time for any parent to be missing their child … we desperately want him to come home.”

Nothing has been heard publicly about Tice since a video posted online weeks after he disappeared showed him in the custody of armed men.

U.S. officials and Tice’s parents do not think he is held by Islamic State, which typically announces its Western captives in propaganda videos and executed two U.S. journalists in 2014.

The Assad government says it does not know his whereabouts.

(Reporting by John Davison, editing by Pritha Sarkar)

Syrian government denies U.S. accusation of crematorium at prison

A satellite view of part of the Sednaya prison complex near Damascus, Syria. Department of State/via REUTERS

BEIRUT (Reuters) – The Syrian government on Tuesday denied U.S. accusations that a crematorium had been built at one of its prisons that could be used to dispose of detainees’ remains.

A foreign ministry statement published by state news agency SANA said the U.S. administration had come out with “a new Hollywood story detached from reality” by alleging the crematorium had been built at Sednaya military prison near Damascus.

Stuart Jones, acting U.S. assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, said on Monday that U.S. officials believe the crematorium could be used to dispose of bodies at a prison where they believe Assad’s government authorized the hanging of thousands of inmates during Syria’s six-year-old civil war.

Amnesty International reported in February that an average of 20 to 50 people were hanged each week at the Sednaya military prison. Between 5,000 and 13,000 people were executed at Sednaya in the four years since a popular uprising descended into war, it said.

The government also denied that accusation.

Amnesty said the executions took place between 2011 and 2015, but were probably still being carried out and amounted to war crimes.

In a briefing on Monday, Jones showed aerial images of what he said was the crematorium at the Sednaya site.

(Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Janet Lawrence)