PHOTO: Russian President Vladimir Putin with US counterpart Barack Obama on Monday
LATEST
- Regime Barrel Bombs Damage Another Hospital, Kill 7 and Wound 47
- German Cabinet Approves Deployment of Up to 1,200 Troops
- Jabhat al-Nusra Exchanges 16 Lebanese Servicemen for Islamist Detainees
- Amid Fighting in Northern Aleppo, Rebels and Kurds Trade Claims of Killing of Civilians
- US Criticizes Russia’s Arming of Warplanes With Air-to-Air Missiles
- Besieged Residents of Deir ez-Zor “Living on Bread and Water”
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President Vladimir Putin has maintained Russia’s propaganda line over the downing of its warplane by Turkey, saying Ankara acted to protect oil trade with the Islamic State.
Speaking at a climate change summit in Paris on Monday, Putin grabbed the headlines:
We have every reason to think that the decision to shoot down our plane was dictated by the desire to protect the oil supply lines to Turkish territory.
We have received additional information which unfortunately confirms that this oil, produced in areas controlled by [the Islamic State] and other terrorist organisations, is transported on an industrial scale to Turkey.
The Russian President began making the allegations last Thursday, two days after the downing of the Russian Su-24 by two Turkish F-16 jets near the Turkish-Syrian border.
Putin had already said he would not accept Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s call for a meeting in Paris to ease tensions.
See also Syria Feature: Russia’s Latest Destruction — Bakery & Drinking Water in Idlib
Syria Daily, Nov 30: Russia Kills 44 in Market Bombing
Erdoğan responded with a firm denial of Putin’s claims and said he would resign if they were proved: “I will not remain in this post. But I am asking Mr. Putin, would you remain?”
The Turkish President asserted that a Russian-Syrian citizen has been buying oil from the Islamic State and then selling it to the Assad regime: “First they [Russia] should give an account of this.”
Last week, the US imposed sanctions on George Haswani, a businessman who has reportedly arranged purchases of the Islamic State’s oil by the Assad regime.
Haswani has spent time in Russia, where he established the corporation HESCO for Oil and Gas with licenses from a Russian gas and oil company. The corporation also allegedly delivered spare parts to Russian military vehicles and oil wells.
Erdoğan said that Turkey would act “patiently, not emotionally” before taking any measures in response to Russia’s declaration that it is imposing sanctions on Ankara.
Earlier in the day, Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu again refused to apologise for “protecting [our] borders”.
Davutoğlu said at a press conference with NATO head Jens Stoltenberg, “No country can ask us to apologize because [we were] doing our job. Our action was a defensive action.”
The Prime Minister repeated on Wednesday:
We should sit at the table and discuss what to do instead of making baseless accusations.
Russian authorities should know it was not Turkish jets that violated Russian air space../.When there is a war taking place on our doorstep and refugees are pouring into Turkey, it would not be responsible behavior to ignore air space incursions.
“It is not possible to conceal air space violations through baseless accusations targeting Turkey like (allegations of) oil purchases from [IS].”
Meanwhile, Putin’s meeting with US President Barack Obama was inconclusive. The Kremlin and White House both said that Obama had “expressed regret” over the downing of the Russian warplane.
However, while Russian spokesman Dmitri Peskov said, “Putin and Obama spoke in favor of moving toward the start of a political settlement [in Syria],” a White House official highlighted Obama’s insistence that President Assad must step down and Russia must focus its military efforts against the Islamic State.
Regime Barrel Bombs Damage Another Hospital, Kill 7 and Wound 47
Another Syrian hospital has been partially destroyed by a regime airstrike, according to the international medical organization Médecins Sans Frontières.
MSF said a “double-tap” attack killed seven people and wounded 47 in al-Zafarana, northeast of Homs city.
A barrel bomb dropped by a helicopter killed two people, one of them a young girl, and injured 16.
A second barrel bomb landed next to the hospital, damaging the kidney dialysis unit. Then, 40 minutes later, as the wounded from the first bombing were being treated, two more barrel bombs by the front entrance, killing one bystander and wounding 31 patients and medical staff. A paramedia working for the Syrian Civil Defense ambulance service sustained critically serious head injuries.
At least four more people died in transit to other hospitals.
Physicians for Human Rights says there were 313 attacks on medical facilities, with 679 medical personnel killed, between March 2011 and August 2015 in Syria. The Assad regime was responsible for more than 90% of the strikes, PHR said.
Since it began bombing on September 30 in support of the regime, Russia has damaged 12 hospitals, according to MSF.
See also Syria Feature: Russia — The Hospitals We Attacked Don’t Exist
German Cabinet Approves Deployment of Up to 1,200 Troops
Lars Hauch writes for EA:
The German Cabinet has approved the deployment of up to 1,200 support troops in the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Since Thursday, the Defense Ministry had worked of details of the deployment, Germany’s most extensive international intervention. The proposal will now be considered by the Bundestag.
The plan provides for the deployment of 4-6 RECCE-Tornado jet fighters that will be used for reconnaissance. Germany is also sending a frigate to escort the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle in the eastern Mediterranean, and is providing Airbus tankers to refuel French strike aircraft.
Up to now, Berlin had restricted its involvement in the fight against the Islamic State to arming and training Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga.
Jabhat al-Nusra Exchanges 16 Lebanese Servicemen for Islamist Detainees
Jabhat al-Nusra has exchanged 16 Lebanese servicemen, abducted in August 2014, for 13 Islamist detainees held in Lebanon.
Among the freed prisoners was Saja al-Dulaimi, the ex-wife of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
The deal was mediated with the help of Qatar.
Video showed Nusra fighters celebrating as Lebanese Red Cross vehicles brought the prisoners to the outskirts of the Lebanese town Arsal.
More than 30 Lebanese security personnel were abducted in fighting with Jabhat al-Nusra and the Islamic State. Several were subsequently executed.
At least nine personnel are reportedly still held by ISIS.
The body of one of the executed soldiers, Mohammed Hamia, was handed over to Lebanese authorities earlier on Tuesday.
Amid Fighting in Northern Aleppo, Rebels and Kurds Trade Claims of Killing of Civilians
Rebels and Kurds have traded claims of killing of civilians amid an escalating fight in northern Aleppo Province.
Pro-rebel accounts have said that the Turkish Kurdish insurgency PKK and the dissident faction Jaish al-Thuwar carried out the killings in the village of Maryamin, which rebels captured last weekend. They have supported the assertions with video testimony from fighters and a resident who gave the names of 13 victims — five of them under 16 years of age — and said others have been abducted:
Pro-Kurdish outlets had claimed last week that the civilians were killed by the Islamist faction Jabhat al-Nusra.
Fighting surged earlier this month between rebels and Jaish al-Thuwar, led by the commander Jamal Maarouf, whose Syrian Revolutionary Front was pushed out of northern Syria in December 2014 amid claims that it was engaged in theft and war profiteering.
Rebels now say they are facing a three-front assault from the Assad regime, the Islamic State, and Jaish al-Thuwar and allied Kurdish militias:
US Criticizes Russia’s Arming of Warplanes With Air-to-Air Missiles
The US has criticized Russia’s declaration that it is arming Su-34 warplanes in Syria with air-to-air missiles.
Pentagon spokesperson Michelle Baldanza told Russian State outlet TASS:
Such systems will further complicate an already difficult situation in the skies over Syria and do nothing to further the fight against ISIL [the Islamic State] as they have no air force.
We expect that if Russia follows through, they will abide by our Memorandum of Understanding regarding flight safety and not direct this system against Coalition aircraft.
Russia recently added the Su-34 fighter-bombers to its warplanes carrying out attacks, mainly on opposition-controlled areas.
On Monday, the Defense Ministry announced the attachment of the missiles to the Su-34s, disseminating photographs and videos to support their declaration.
Besieged Residents of Deir ez-Zor “Living on Bread and Water”
Local activists have said that residents in regime-controlled areas of Deir ez-Zor city in eastern Syria are living mainly on bread and water because of an Islamic State siege.
The ISIS encirclement the two districts are causing rampant inflation and scarcities of basic foodstuffs.
“The average family meal in Deir ez-Zor consists of a cup of rice, boiled wheat and water,” local citizen journalist Ahmed al-Alou told Syria Direct.
Rami al-Hakim, the director of the Deir ez-Zor 24 news outlet, said, “A kilogram (2.2 lbs) of rice now costs SP3,000 ($15.80 at official rates), a kilo of sugar SP3,700 ($19.50) and tea is SP20,000 ($106.00) per kilo.”
Prices are so prohibitive that “tea is being sold by the gram”, al-Hakim added.
Medicine is in such short supply that unusual diseases have appeared such as leishmaniasis, a flesh-eating condition prevalent in malnourished populations, according to Mujahid a-Shami, the director of the Deir e-Zor is Being Slaughtered Silently campaign.
“Our campaign has documented the deaths of 18 children due to hunger and 12 adults from lack of access to medicine since the beginning of the siege,” said a-Shami. Other diseases afflicting citizens include stomach ulcers and hepatitis.
Deir ez-Zor has been divided since late spring 2014, when ISIS moved into all sections except the districts of al-Joura and al-Qusur.
In September 2014, the Siyasiya Bridge, the main route across the Euphrates River, was destroyed in fighting. The remaining way in or out of the city is through the Syrian army’s military airbase a few kilometers to the southeast.
It is not just food that is barred from entering the two districts.
“IS and the regime are trading in the lives of the families in the besieged neighborhoods,” said a-Shami.
