Tag Archives: Damascus

Assad tasks minister with forming new government: Syria state media

Syrian's President Bashar al-Assad

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad tasked Electricity Minister Emad Khamis with forming a new government on Wednesday, state news agency SANA reported, without giving an immediate reason for the formation of a new cabinet.

SANA gave no details on why Khamis would replace Wael al-Halaki as prime minister, or whether Halaki would be included in the new administration or had left government. Halaki himself replaced a prime minister who defected to the opposition.

The Damascus-based government controls most of the war-torn country’s major population centers in the west, with the notable exceptions of Idlib, which is held by insurgents, and Aleppo, where it controls half of the city.

Kurdish forces are in control of vast areas along the Turkish border, and Islamic State holds Raqqa and Deir al-Zor provinces in the east.

Parliamentary elections were held in government-controlled areas in April, which the opposition said were meaningless.

Syria’s conflict, which began as a peaceful uprising against Assad, is now in its sixth year and has drawn in military involvement from regional and world powers and allowed for the growth of Islamic State.

Damascus formed a new government more than a year into the war in 2012, but its prime minister at the time, Riad Hijab, fled Syria soon afterwards. Hijab is now a prominent member of the main Syrian opposition that attended failed peace talks this year.

Assad ally Russia said last week there were U.S. proposals to incorporate parts of the opposition into the current Syrian government. Washington denied any such proposals and insists Assad must leave power.

The war has killed more than 250,000 people and displaced more than 11 million, half Syria’s pre-war population.

It has damaged the economy, causing the Syrian pound to lose more than 90 percent of its value.

(Reporting by John Davison and Lisa Barrington; Editing by Alison Williams)

Damascus Refugees run deadly gauntlet to fetch aid, food

A general view shows a deserted street at the beginning of the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp

y John Davison

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Palestinians living in Yarmouk refugee camp on the southern outskirts of Damascus depend on food aid to survive the Syrian civil war. But collecting it can be lethal.

With Islamic State and al Qaeda affiliate Nusra Front fighting each other for control of the camp, the United Nations has been unable to deliver food for more than a year and has to distribute it in neighboring areas instead.

On the journey to the collection point, tarpaulins hung between buildings offer the only protection in some areas keeping residents out of the sights of snipers, who often fail to distinguish between fighters and non-combatants.

Once the camp residents have run this gauntlet, they still have to get through an Islamic State checkpoint. This controls the way out to the nearby town of Yalda, where the U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA and other groups hand out aid when they can.

One 22-year-old resident who called himself Mahmoud – although he said this was an alias due to the risk of reprisals by the militants – described via internet messages how he makes the trip three times a week.

“I leave my house, and about a kilometer away there’s the checkpoint,” he told Reuters. “Most streets in the camp are in the sights of snipers, from both sides – I have to watch out for them. Some streets I run down, some I can just walk.”

While tens of thousands have fled the camp since the war began, hundreds of residents still brave the same journey.

The camp has existed for decades, one of many set up in the region after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war for Palestinians who fled or were expelled from their homes. Today they largely accommodate descendents of the original refugees, although some Syrians displaced by the war have inhabited Yarmouk.

Yarmouk has been bombarded, besieged and isolated from the outside world since early in the multi-sided conflict, which is now in its sixth year. Government forces, rebels and jihadists have all fought for control of the camp that lies just a few kilometers (miles) from the heart of Damascus.

NO MAN’S LAND

Islamic State entered the densely built up Yarmouk in April last year, helped by Nusra Front fighters in a rare instance of cooperation between the jihadist rivals, capturing most of it.

Since then they have turned their guns on each other, and fighting in recent weeks has destroyed countless more homes as Islamic State tries to take areas held by Nusra Front.

“Things got worse recently. This is a fight taking place only inside the camp, not spreading out to another area – it’s concentrated,” said Mahmoud. Fighters were targeting houses and burning them, even with occupants still inside, to hamper advances by the other side, he added.

Across a strip of no man’s land from Islamic State territory, rebels fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army control Yalda.

“The route to Yalda is more or less dangerous depending on how heavy the clashes are. Lately, people living in the fighting hotspots have to move around behind tarpaulin curtains and banks of earth,” said Yousef, who like all the Yarmouk residents interviewed by Reuters also asked to use an alias.

“Last Thursday, someone got shot by a sniper,” said Yousef.

Mohammed, 30, who before the latest violence sold food from a street stall, said: “If someone leaves their house to get a bit of water, they might not come back. Getting bread, getting food, could cost someone their life.”

FRAGILE AID SUPPLY

Islamic State controls at least two-thirds of Yarmouk and has been trying to prise the rest from Nusra Front since April, monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, adding that several civilians have been killed in recent weeks.

Many do not venture out. “Most people just sit at home … we’re stuck here and stuck in the camp,” said Abu Anas, a former manual laborer.

“There’s very little water, and little fuel. We chiefly rely on aid from UNRWA. It’s not much but it’s our best hope – every 20 days we get a parcel which is just about enough for a family.” These include around 4 kg (9 pounds) of lentils, 5 kg of sugar, 1 kg of pasta and tins of tomatoes, he said.

Fighting can close the checkpoint for days at a time. But if they can get through, Mahmoud, Yousef and their fellow residents also buy any extra provisions they can afford at market stalls in Yalda, before returning.

Even getting aid the few kilometers from Damascus to Yalda, through government and then rebel-held territory, requires painstaking talks with local authorities, community leaders and commanders of the warring sides.

“When we first had access to Yalda, just to get there the U.N. had to negotiate 17 separate agreements,” UNRWA spokesman Chris Gunness said. For at least a month beginning in April, UNRWA could not even reach Yalda, and warned that residents faced starvation until supplies resumed.

“Inside Yarmouk, the fighting forces have been using indiscriminately large munitions,” Gunness said. “For a U.N.-assisted population in the 21st century to find itself in this situation in the capital city of a U.N. member state is completely unacceptable.”

EXODUS

Frequent power and water supply cuts mean people have to rely on generators and drinking water sold from the back of trucks which residents bring in by a different route. Water from wells – many of them hard to reach because of the fighting – is polluted and can be used only for washing, Yousef said.

Among the thousands who have joined the exodus from Yarmouk, some have sought refuge inside Syria with others heading to neighboring countries or Europe.

An aid worker for the Jafra Foundation, which monitors human rights in Palestinian camps in Syria, said several hundred people had left Yarmouk in recent weeks alone.

The camp’s pre-war Palestinian population of 160,000 has plunged to between 3,000 and 6,000 residents. At least the same number of displaced from the camp also live in Yalda, he said.

Mahmoud, who said his mother was killed in shelling by government forces three years ago, will stay.

“My home is here and my dad lives here. When I go to Yalda, I feel like a displaced person,” he said. “Yarmouk is my camp, I can’t leave it.”

(editing by David Stamp)

Red Cross delivers aid to besieged Damascus suburb after four years

A view shows deserted street targeted by snipers loyal to Syria's President Assad in the Damascus suburb of Harasta

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Aid from the Red Cross and Syrian Red Crescent entered the besieged Damascus suburb of Harasta for the first time in four years on Wednesday, a spokesman said.

A convoy of trucks jointly organised with the United Nations carried food, hygiene equipment and medicine destined for Harasta’s entire population of around 10,000 people, Pawel Krzysiek said in a statement.

Harasta is in the Eastern Ghouta region, east of Damascus, which is under rebel control. It is one of several areas around the Syrian capital which are sealed off by government forces.

(Reporting by John Davison; Editing by Catherine Evans)

Syrian Government Bombs Civilians in Douma

The Syrian government has killed over 100 civilians in a series of airstrikes on a marketplace and other buildings in the Damascus suburb of Douma.

Syrian warplanes attacked the suburb Sunday and Monday with Sunday’s initial attack on a market killing over 80 civilians including women and children.

“In some places there was not enough capabilities to transfer the victims. It was very painful to see dead human bodies just left on the sidewalk,” said Abdullah al-Shami, a media activist, told CNN. “Scores of injured were bleeding while waiting their turn to get treatment.”

“It was really difficult to identify the bodies of the martyrs. Some of them were burned to the bone, so we couldn’t add them to the documented list,” said a 28-year-old spokesman of the Syrian Civil Defense Force, who declined to give his real name to Reuters for security reasons.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that Syrian troops waited after the initial attack for rescue personnel to arrive on the scenes of the bombings and then struck the same areas with a second volley.

The United Nations issued a swift condemnation of the attacks, saying that the “attacks on civilians are unlawful, unacceptable and must stop”.

The White House also issued a strong condemnation of the actions of the Syrian government.

“This latest tragedy is just another reminder of the inhumane acts perpetrated daily by the Asad regime against the Syrian people,” National Security Council spokesman Ned Price said in a statement.  “The regime is responsible for killing thousands of innocent Syrian civilians and destroying entire towns and cities, historical sites, schools, mosques, markets, and hospitals.  These abhorrent actions underscore that the Asad regime has lost legitimacy and that the international community must do more to enable a genuine political transition.”

(Misspellings of the Syrian regime listed in the quote above were done purposefully, as that is how the White House spells the regime’s name.)

Blast Kills 8 In Damascus

A blast in the center of Damascus has left at least 8 people dead.

Police officials saw at least 50 were wounded in the explosion at Hijaz Square outside the offices of a railway company.

A second blast happened in the town of Suweida outside the headquarters of the Air Force’s intelligence headquarters, killing 8 including the head of the intelligence branch.

The government blamed the attack on “terrorists,” their code word for the rebels attempting to overthrow the government of President Bashir al-Assad.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights disputed the government’s account of the Damascus bombing saying that it could not be determined if the attack was from a bomb or a mortar shell. No group has claimed responsibility for the bombings.

Agreement Allows Civilians To Flee Damascus Suburb

The BBC is reporting that thousands of civilians trapped in the Damascus suburb of Musahamiya fled after rebel forces and government troops agreed to a temporary cease fire to let them leave.

However, reports say that the government went through the group of refugees and detained at least 500 men for questioning. This contradicts a statement from the Syrian Red Crescent that all men arrived at a government center for displaced citizens.

Sources in Muadhamiya told the BBC that many civilians are still hiding in the suburb out of fears of government troops.

The Syrian minister for social affairs says that anyone left behind in Muadhamiya is going to be considered a rebel fighter or terrorist.

The situation in the city had become so severe that Islamic leaders said it would be acceptable for citizens to eat cats, dogs and donkeys to survive when those animals are normally considered “unclean” for Muslims.

Israel strikes Syria, says targeting Hezbollah arms

Israeli jets devastated Syrian targets near Damascus on Sunday in a heavy overnight air raid that Western and Israeli officials called a new strike on Iranian missiles bound for Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

As Syria’s two-year-old civil war veered into the potentially atomic arena of Iran’s confrontation with Israel and the West over its nuclear program, people were woken in the Syrian capital by explosions that shook the ground like an earthquake and sent pillars of flame high into the night sky.

“Night turned into day,” one man told Reuters from his home at Hameh, near one of the targets, the Jamraya military base.

Source: Reuters – Israel strikes Syria, says targeting Hezbollah arms