PHOTO: UN envoy Staffan de Mistura “Rebel attacks could amount to war crimes”
LATEST
- Assad: “I’m Just the Bad Guy to Justify Regime Change”
- Rebels Claim Successful Hit-and-Run Attacks in East Ghouta
- Pictures: Displaced Persons Affected by Floods in Aleppo Province
TUESDAY FEATURE
Opinion: How the Left Betrayed the Syrian Uprising
UPDATE 1600 GMT: Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu has said that “peace talks” will be delayed indefinitely.
Shoigu blamed a Western failure to stop attacks by rebels: “As a result, the prospects for the start of a negotiation process and the return to peaceful life in Syria are postponed for an indefinite period.”
Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said that the temporary pause in Russian and regime airstrikes on Aleppo remained, but could not be extended if the rebels in the city continued attacks.
ORIGINAL ENTRY: Both UN envoy Staffan de Mistura and Amnesty International have supported the line of Russia and the Assad regime criticizing the rebel offensive in western Aleppo, Syria’s largest city.
De Mistura said that he was “appalled and shocked” by rebel use of rockets during their offensive, which began Saturday in an effort to break the two-month Russian-regime siege of opposition areas: “Those who argue that this is meant to relieve the siege of eastern Aleppo should be reminded that nothing justifies the use of disproportionate and indiscriminate weapons, including heavy ones, on civilian areas and it could amount to war crimes.”
The envoy made no reported comment about the Russian-regime siege of the opposition districts, with about 275,000 civilians, or about bombing and attacks by pro-Assad forces this autumn which have killed hundreds of civilians.
In a brief statement, Amnesty International called on rebels to avoid “indiscriminate attacks on civilian areas”.
“The goal of breaking the siege on eastern Aleppo does not give armed opposition groups a license to flout the rules of international humanitarian law by bombarding civilian neighborhoods in government-held areas without distinction,” said Samah Hadid, the Deputy Director of Campaigns at Amnesty’s Beirut regional office.
Amnesty did not offer any evidence documenting rebel attacks. Instead, it cited the unconfirmed claims of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights that up to 48 people, including 17 children, have been killed in civilian areas of regime-held districts.
The organization also quoted the Assad regime’s claims of a rebel “toxic gas” attack on the Hamdaniya and Dahiyat al-Assad areas.
Amnesty did not mention local sources who said that it was the Syrian military’s helicopters who dropped chlorine canisters in barrel bombs, with the wind carrying the gases in to Hamdaniya. Nor did it explain why rebels would use gas on Dahiyat al-Assad, when they occupied most of the district on Saturday.
Both Moscow and the Assad regime have been pursuing a high-profile campaign to turn political pressure, which has building against the Russian-regime attacks on eastern Aleppo for more than a month, against the rebels.
Russia has been denounced for complicity in the regime’s “war crimes” and for “barbarism” over the bombing that resumed on September 19 with the destruction of a UN aid convoy and continued with the intense airstrikes on opposition areas, leaving more than 600 civilians dead.
However, since Russia declared a “humanitarian pause” on October 18, the Russian-regime strikes have only briefly resumed.
The Russian-regime effort paid out with headline success in mainstream media on Monday. Reuters led with the assertion of the Syrian military that 84 people, mostly women and children, had been killed in regime districts of Aleppo since Saturday. The agency also recycled the assertions of the SOHR, which offers no verification for its death toll.
Opposition: De Mistura “Double Standards” Over “War Crimes”
The opposition Syrian National Coalition accused De Mistura of double standards in his remarks about possible “war crimes”.
The Coalition’s Secretary-General, Abdul Ilah Fahd said the envoy had been silent over the Russian-regime attacks in east Aleppo for almost three months, including the use of banned weapons such as white phosphorus, cluster munitions, and bunker-buster bombs.
Fahd added that De Mistura has also ignored the regime’s mass forced displacement of civilians, following capitulations to the “surrender or starve” sieges of the Syrian military and its foreign allies:
Some UN officials continue to show bias in favor of the Assad regime and its Russian allies allowing their crimes in Syria to go unpunished. They also criticize the Free Syrian Army and rebel fighters to cover up crimes by the Assad regime and its allies.
Blackout on News of Fighting
There was little news of the rebel offensive on Monday, as the rebel factions imposed a media blackout on their operations.
However, activists did point to continued shelling of the 3000 Housing complex, one of their targets in western Aleppo.
Rebels hold almost all of the neighboring 1070 Housing complex. They also continue to occupy most of the Dahiyat al-Assad suburb, which they captured on Saturday.
The offensive is trying to break through the Russian-regime siege which was re-imposed in late August with victories in the Ramouseh area, just to the south of the current frontlines.
Video from a pro-Assad Russian outlet of the rebel shelling of the 3000 Housing complex:
A clip from Russia’s Sputnik International of close-up fighting in west Aleppo:
PT Impressive @SputnikInt video shows how up close the fighting is between #SAA #Hezbollah #Iraq militias and #JFS #JaF #FSA in W. #Aleppo pic.twitter.com/7GWnDIvQjr
— Riam Dalati (@Dalatrm) November 1, 2016
Assad: “I’m Just the Bad Guy to Justify Regime Change”
President Assad has told foreign journalists that he is just the “bad guy” who is being used to justify regime change by the West.
Assad spoke on Monday night to reporters who are covering a conference organized by the British Syrian Society, led by Assad’s father-in-law Fawaz Akhras.
“I’m just a headline — the bad president, the bad guy, who is killing the good guys,” Mr. Assad said in his palace. “You know this narrative. The real reason is toppling the government. This government doesn’t fit the criteria of the United States.”
Assad again rejected any responsibility for civilian deaths in Syria’s 5 1/2-year conflict. Instead, he asserted that while “thousands of Syrians killed by the terrorists….no one is talking about war crimes” by rebels.
Asked about Russian-regime attacks on hospitals, Assad replied:
Let’s suppose that these allegations are correct and this president has killed his own people and the U.S. is helping the Syrian people. After five years and a half, who supported me? How can I be a President and my people don’t support me?
Giggling, he insisted, “This is not realistic story.”
Assad maintained that the Syrian people support him, “They learned the value of the state. That’s what brought them towards us, not because they changed their mind politically.”
Rebels Claim Successful Hit-and-Run Attacks in East Ghouta
The rebel faction Jaish al-Islam is claiming successful hit-and-run attacks on pro-Assad forces in the East Ghouta area near Damascus.
Back and forth fighting on Tell Kurdi , the only front in east Ghota that's still witnessing fighting for months nowhttps://t.co/fdwRdkDklp
— Army Of Islam (@Islamarmy_eng3) November 1, 2016
Jaish al-Islam said that it killed 10 troops in an ambush near the Damascus-to-Homs highway.
The Syrian Army and allies have been advancing in East Ghouta since the spring. Last weekend they said they had defeated rebels in the hilltop village of Tal Kurdi.
However, a local source says, “The trench warfare of the last months has changed to hit-and-run operations where areas evacuated hours earlier become the location of attacks.”
Pictures: Displaced Persons Affected by Floods in Aleppo Province
Camps for displaced people in Aleppo Province are being flooded amid heavy rains in the past week in northern Syria:
