ALSO IN SUNDAY FORECAST
Employees of Opposition Syrian National Coalition Go on Strike
Regime Objects to Involvement of Some Opposition Groups in “Peace” Conference
SUNDAY FEATURES
Spotlight: Regime “Offer” to Besieged Moadamiya — Raise Our Flag and You Might Get Some Food
Spotlight: At Least 6 Killed as Fighting Escalates in Tripoli in Northern Lebanon
Refugees Spotlight: Fleeing into Danger & Europe’s Red Tape
Almost 60 people have been killed since Saturday by Syrian airstrikes on the town of al-Bab, 40 kilometers north of Aleppo.
Yesterday 27 people were slain, and sources in the town said attacks by helicopters on a market districts killed at least 30 people on Sunday.
Activists said that many people were severely wounded in the raids.
The activists claim that the warplanes dropped “explosive barrels”, a common tactic in the Syrian military’s attacks in Aleppo Province.
The aftermath of the bombs:
Footage of unidentified bodies covered by blankets:
The LCC claim 125 people were killed across Syria on Saturday, including 61 in Aleppo Province, 32 in Damascus and its suburbs, and 12 in Idlib Province.
The Violations Documentation Center document 80,037 deaths since the start of the conflict in March 2011. Of the dead, 59,197 were civilians.
Employees of Opposition Syrian National Coalition Go on Strike
At least 25 employees of the opposition Syrian National Coalition have gone on strike, claiming “corruption and disruption of effective workflow” within the Coalition’s aid branch.
The employees say that the head of the Assistance Coordination Unit, Suheir Atassi, has refused to meet them to discuss their concerns.
They declare that, if the matter cannot be resolved, it “will be opened to the public…in the interests of the Syrian people”.
Regime Objects to Involvement of Some Opposition Groups in “Peace” Conference
The Assad regime has objected to the involvement of some opposition groups in the “peace” conference proposed for Geneva in January.
Deputy Foreign Minister Feisal Mikdad told Al-Mayadeen TV on Saturday that the regime has reservations on the participation of “terrorist groups involved in shedding Syrian blood”.
State news agency SANA did not identity any specific groups named by Mikdad, merely saying that he asserted “that the Syrian Government will go to Geneva 2 without preconditions, restrictions, or foreign interference”.
However, it cited his “hope that there will be an actual Syrian opposition which understands the nature of the current stage and the challenges facing Syria and which treats Syria as their country instead of behaving like followers of Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, the US, Britain, or any other country”.
Mikdad declared that “compared to Arab and regional countries including Turkey, Syria would rank first in terms of reform, democracy, and human rights”.
The Deputy Minister accused “experts and military personnel from the Israeli Mossad, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the US, and some European countries” of running “operations rooms in Jordan” to work with the insurgency. He claimed “a lot of evidence that Israel is supporting terrorists in Syria, including the treatment of injured in Israeli hospitals”, while “Saudi Arabia is the largest supporter” of the insurgents.