Fractious Syrian opposition says it has formed a united coalition

BEIRUT -- The deeply divided Syrian opposition said Sunday that its myriad factions had reached an initial agreement to form a new coalition to oversee a push to oust the government of President Bashar Assad.

The new umbrella group, reportedly called the Syrian National Coalition, was unveiled Sunday in the Qatari capital of Doha, where the querulous opposition has been meeting for a week, trying to hash out its many differences.

The purpose of the new alliance is to serve as a kind of government in exile, helping to funnel international aid, organize rebel forces on the ground and build up foreign support for the rebel cause.

Further details are expected to be divulged later Sunday, dissident spokesmen told journalists in Doha.

Some reports suggested that not all opposition groups, including a Kurdish bloc, had signed off on the reported deal.

The United States and other opposition patrons have pressed dissidents to unify into a coherent entity that can work with the international community, with the ultimate aim of ousting Assad.

But the best-known opposition group, the Syrian National Council, has resisted the U.S.-backed unity offensive, fearing its influence would be diminished.

Critics have assailed the council as out of touch with events on the ground in Syria, torn apart by infighting, prone to lavish spending in five-star hotels and dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, the Islamist group that seeks a major role in a post-Assad Syria.

According to reports from Doha, the Syrian National Council will be subsumed into the new coalition. The breakdown of seats for various factions was not immediately made public.

Opponents of the Assad family’s more than 40-year autocratic rule include a diverse mix that reflects Syria’s varied population. The opposition includes Islamists, secularists, Sunni Muslim Arabs, Kurds, Christians and even Alawites, the Muslim minority sect that includes Assad and many of his top commanders.

Inside Syria, Assad still maintains considerable support, despite an almost 20-month rebellion that has left thousands dead and broad swaths of territory beyond his government's control. Many Syrians fear Assad's fall could unleash the kind of chaos and sectarian bloodletting that convulsed neighboring Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion ousted the Iraqi strongman in 2003. Assad labels his enemies foreign-backed "terrorists."

Opposition activists are hopeful that a new, more unified coalition will result in foreign allies  delivering caches of heavy weapons to Syria's disparate rebel forces. The opposition has also called for the kind of Western air power that a Western-backed coalition provided last year to Libyan rebels fighting to oust Moammar Kadafi.

The United States says it has not provided lethal aid to the Syrian opposition. Some fear that such weaponry could fall into the hands of militants and Al Qaeda sympathizers, who are among the fragmented rebel forces on the ground in Syria.

Washington has given no indication that it will arm the rebels. But reports have suggested that several Arab states, including Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Libya, have provided arms to the Syrian opposition and helped bankroll the rebellion, paying the salaries of rebel fighters and channeling funds to anti-Assad exile factions.

One aim of the exile-based Syrian opposition coalition is to impose a central command structure on the dozens of anti-Assad militias now fighting inside Syria. However, many rebel units reject leadership from outside Syria and respond only to their unit commanders inside the country.

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Photo: Veteran Syrian opposition figure and human rights activist Haytham al-Maleh attends the General Assembly of the Syria National Council meeting in Doha, Qatar. Credit: Karim Jaafar / AFP/Getty Images

Israeli army fires warning shots into Syria

JERUSALEM -- Israel fired warning shots into Syria on Sunday after an apparently errant mortar shell struck an Israeli military post in the Golan Heights, the latest example of regional spillover from Syria’s civil unrest.

The Syrian mortar caused no damage or injuries, but Israeli military officials have grown increasingly alarmed over how fighting between the Syrian army and Syrian rebel groups has inched closer to the Golan Heights border.

Until Sunday, Israel had restrained itself from responding to the handful of instances in which mortar shells and gunfire struck Israeli settlements or military positions in the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria in 1967.

Sunday’s retaliation by Israeli soldiers marked the first such military engagement between Israel and Syria since the 1973 Yom Kippur War. Israel Radio reported that Syrian forces returned fire, though Israeli military officials would not comment on that report.

Last week Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said he warned Syrian President Bashar Assad to move the fighting away from the border region. Israel also complained to the United Nations about three Syrian tanks that last month drifted into what it says is a demilitarized zone along the Syrian border.

Though tensions along the normally quiet frontier are rising, Israel is reluctant to get involved in Syria’s unrest, analysts say. Some fear military intervention by Israel -– Syria’s longtime enemy -- could backfire by rallying support around Assad.

“If Israel got involved, it would be good for Bashar since he could say he’s protecting the Arab nation,’’ said Moshe Moaz, a Syria expert at Hebrew University. “But I think both sides are going to be very careful not to be dragged into something that will escalate. If Bashar really upsets Israel, Israel could do something very serious to teach him a lesson.”

In 2007 Israel destroyed a Syrian nuclear facility that it feared could be used to develop nuclear weapons. But overt military clashes between the two countries have been rare in recent decades.

The Israeli action underscores how the Syrian conflict is spilling over its borders and, in at least two cases, prompting retaliatory fire from neighbors.

Turkey, which shares a more than 500-mile frontier with Syria, has repeatedly fired retaliatory artillery salvos into Syria in response to Syrian shells landing in Turkish territory.

The Turkish strikes began in October after an apparently errant mortar shell from Syria struck a home in a Turkish border town, killing five people: two women and three children.

Since then, Turkey has had a policy of firing back into Syria when shells from the Syrian side land on Turkish territory. Turkish commanders say they try to target the battery that fired into the Turkish side. There has been no definitive word on Syrian casualties from the Turkish retaliatory fire.

Turkey, though, unlike Israel, has been a major supporter of the Syrian opposition and has been a staging point and logistics center for rebels seeking to overthrow the Syrian government.

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U.N.: 11,000 refugees pour out of Syria in 24 hours

Eleven thousand refugees have poured out of Syria in just 24 hours, a staggering number as violence surges near the border, the United Nations refugee agency said Friday.

The Friday deluge is more than triple the usual numbers of 2,000 to 3,000 people escaping daily, agency spokeswoman Sybella Wilkes said. Nine thousand Syrians fled to Turkey alone, most of them reaching the border overnight. The numbers were nearly enough to fill a typical refugee camp.

The rest of the day's refugees went to Jordan and Lebanon.

Vast, sudden waves of refugees usually mean the violence raging in Syria has veered especially close to one of its borders, Wilkes said. Scores of refugees showed up wounded over the last 24 hours; two have died.

“The numbers are increasing by the hour,” Wilkes said. “The Turkish government says it can take weeks or even months to build a camp. But it can take only hours to fill them.”

Syria's Assad denies civil war, blames the West

BEIRUT -- Syrian President Bashar Assad denied his country is in the midst of a civil war and accused Western nations of demonizing him in an interview with RT, a Russian satellite and cable channel.

"We do not have a civil war. It is about terrorism and the support coming from abroad to terrorists to destabilize Syria,” the Syrian president told the Russian station, reprising his oft-repeated charge. “You have divisions, but division does not mean civil war. It is completely different. ... The problem is not between me and my people.”

The Syrian opposition also does not label the conflict a civil war, calling it instead a grass-roots uprising aimed at ousting a murderous dictator.

In the 25-minute interview, which aired Friday and was conducted in the renovated Presidential Palace in Damascus, Assad said forces in the West had worked to turn him into an international villain like former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

"The West creates enemies; in the past it was the communism, then it became Islam, and then it became Saddam Hussein,” Assad said. “Now, they want to create a new enemy represented by Bashar.”

Red Cross 'can't cope' as Syria crisis worsens, chief says

The Red Cross lamented Thursday that the deepening crisis in Syria has prevented it from helping many of those in need, even as it steps up its efforts.

"We can’t cope with the worsening of the situation," Peter Maurer, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, said at a briefing in Geneva.

Although the aid group has fed more than a million people in partnership with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, trucked in water, and delivered medicine, crutches and other hospital supplies, Maurer said "blank spots" in aid remained. The United Nations has estimated that more than 2.5 million people need aid; more than 350,000 people have spilled out of the country and registered as refugees.

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The Red Cross chief met with Syrian President Bashar Assad earlier this fall and told reporters that the flow of aid had improved somewhat since but that the group is still unable to reach all prisons and other detention facilities, the Associated Press reported. It succeeded in reaching battered districts in the city of Homs in late October, but violence has continued to block it from other areas.

Aid workers and volunteers have been among those slain in a conflict that is estimated to have killed tens of thousands of people. A Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteer was caught in fighting and killed last month in Harasta; two volunteers were injured in two incidents the next day in the same area.

Bashar Assad: To live and die in Syria

BEIRUT -- Syrian President Bashar Assad says he has no intention of leaving Syria, despite demands from Washington and elsewhere that he relinquish power.

“I am Syrian. I’m made in Syria,” Assad said in an interview with the Russia RT television channel. “I have to live in Syria and die in Syria.”

Brief excerpts of the interview appeared Thursday on RT’s  website. The full session will be aired starting Friday, the station said.

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The Syrian president, speaking in English, repeated his oft-stated position that he has no plans to step down, despite demands for his resignation from armed rebels and their backers in the West and elsewhere.

Moscow, which has been a staunch ally of Assad, has called for negotiations that would include representatives of his government.

Rebels apparently target Alawite stronghold in Damascus again

BEIRUT -- Mortar shells apparently fired by anti-government rebels fell Wednesday in a Damascus district that is home to many members of President Bashar Assad’s Alawite sect, the second deadly attack in the area this week, raising the prospect of inflamed sectarian hostilities in the tense Syrian capital.

The mortar rounds struck as rebels appear to have stepped up a campaign of violence in the capital. Car bombs and other attacks have become almost daily occurrences, despite heavy security and many government checkpoints.

The official Syrian state news service said Wednesday’s mortar salvos targeted the Mazzeh Jabal 86 neighborhood, killing three people and leaving six others hospitalized, including three in critical condition.

State media blamed the attack on “terrorists,” its standard term for mostly Sunni Muslim rebels seeking to overthrow Assad’s government.

Mazzeh Jabal 86 is home to many officers in the Syrian military and security services, which are dominated by members of Assad’s minority Alawite sect, considered an offshoot of the Shiite branch of Islam. Syria’s Alawite minority is largely supportive of Assad in the face of the Sunni-led uprising against his family's more than 40 years of autocratic rule.

Reuters news service quoted a rebel Islamist group saying Wednesday’s mortar volleys targeted but missed the presidential palace, which sits on a  hill overlooking the capital.

The mortar attack came two days after a car bomb exploded in a crowded square in the Mazzeh Jabal 86 district, killing 11 people and injuring dozens, state media said

Along with bombings, targeted killings of government figures and supporters also appear to be on the upswing in the capital.

On Wednesday, the state news agency reported that “an armed terrorist group” assassinated a judge, Abad Nadweh, using a bomb that was attached to his car and detonated remotely.

The judge’s killing came a day after the brother of the speaker of the pro-Assad parliament was shot to death in his car in Damascus as he headed to work, according to official accounts.

Last weekend, rebels in Damascus abducted and executed a well-known Palestinian Syrian television actor, Mohamed Rafeh. Rebels accused Rafeh of being a government informant and enforcer. Friends and family say the actor was killed in retribution for his outspoken support of Assad.

Earlier this week, heavy fighting was reported in Damascus between pro and anti-Assad Palestinian factions.

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Photo: A handout picture released by Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reportedly shows damage caused by a mortar attack Wednesday in a residential district of Damascus. Credit: European Pressphoto Agency / SANA.

Wave of bombings, killings goes on in Syria

BEIRUT -- A series of blasts claimed more civilian lives Tuesday  in the vicinity of the Syrian capital as scores were reported killed across the country in bombings, shelling, air raids and clashes between government forces and rebels seeking to overthrow President Bashar Assad.

On the streets of Damascus, meanwhile, assassins shot and killed the brother of Jihad Laham, the speaker of the Syrian parliament. Mohammed Osama Laham was shot by “terrorists” -- the government term for armed rebels -- as he drove in his car to work, according to the official Syrian news agency.

Opposition leaders say the Syrian parliament has long been a rubber stamp for Assad, whose family has ruled the country for more than 40 years. The parliament was revamped earlier this year as part of Assad’s proclaimed “reform” agenda, denounced as a sham by the opposition.

Both sides in the almost 20-month-old conflict have been accused of engaging in targeted assassinations.

The capital and its environs have endured a wave  of deadly bomb attacks in recent weeks. It is not clear if the bombings are part of a coordinated rebel strategy or targeted attacks by various groups.

On Tuesday, the official state media reported, 11 people were killed and scores injured as three bombs  exploded in the Wuroud district in the western Damascus suburb of Qudsaya. The government news agency said “terrorists” detonated a car bomb and two other explosive devices.

Photos displayed on state media showed children and other bloodied civilians, identified as bombing survivors,  at what appeared to be a hospital.  In one image, a woman with blood splattered on her face and clothes and apparently awaiting treatment cradles in her arms a sleeping girl whose yellow sweater is also stained with blood.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based pro-opposition group, estimated that at least 119 people were killed Tuesday across the country. At least 40 died in government bombardment of northwest Idlib province, which is mostly controlled by rebels.

The government has been using jet fighters firing rockets and bombs to attack opposition strongholds throughout the country, including the suburbs of Damascus.

Opposition activists have been reporting about 150 people killed daily inside Syria. The uprising that began in March 2011 has cost more than 30,000 lives, according to opposition groups. The government does not publish cumulative casualty figures.

In New York, Jeffrey Feltman, the United Nations' under-secretary-general for political affairs, warned Tuesday that the situation inside Syria “is turning grimmer every day.”

“The risk is growing that this crisis could explode outward into an already volatile region,” he said.

Some violence from Syria has already spilled into neighboring Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan; Israel has accused Syria of moving tanks into a demilitarized zone in the contested Golan Heights, captured by Israel from Syria in the 1967 Six Day War.

The United Nations has been unable to negotiate a truce to the Syrian fighting.  A special envoy, Lakhdar Brahimi, a veteran Algerian diplomat, is trying to craft a proposal to help end the bloodshed, though a weekend truce he helped broker last month fell apart quickly amid violations by both sides.

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Photo: A picture supplied by the  Syrian Arab News Agency shows damage it says was caused by car bombs in the western Damascus region on Tuesday. Credit:  European Pressphoto Agency / SANA

 

Funeral held for Syrian actor apparently killed by rebels

 

 

 

BEIRUT-- A well-known Syrian television actor who was an outspoken supporter of President Bashar Assad was buried Monday in a military-style funeral after being kidnapped and killed, apparently by antigovernment rebels.

Opposition militants said Mohamed Rafeh, 30, was condemned to death because he served as a shabiha, or pro-government gunman and informant. A rebel group that confirmed the slaying posted a statement online alleging that Rafeh reported to the Syrian air force's intelligence branch.

But friends and family say Rafeh was killed because of his unabashed backing of Assad and his public denunciations of the rebels. Outrage over the killing wasn’t limited to Assad supporters.

"I call it idiocy, murder and criminality,” said another Syrian actor, an anti-Assad activist who knew Rafeh and asked not to be named for security reasons. “It has nothing to do with the revolution. It is called  revenge.  And  if we will start the cycle of revenge, we will never end.… It harms the image of this uprising and the people who took to the streets to demand freedom and dignity."

Rafeh’s killing came as a social media campaign called for the punishment of Syrian artists who support Assad, the Associated Press reported.

A Facebook page, “The Black List of Syrian Artists,” carried a picture of Rafeh standing next to a wall with “Assad only” spray-painted on it, AP reported.

In a taped video interview posted by a pro-government website, Rafeh assailed the rebels as “terrorists” and said authorities had every right to hunt them down.

In a photo posted on the website, Rafeh is pictured at what appers to be a pro-government rally  wrapped in a Syrian flag and with the national banner painted on his cheek.

He was kidnapped Friday in the Damascus neighborhood of Barzeh and executed Sunday, according to the official Syrian news service.

On Monday, Syrian military  officers carried his flag-draped coffin from the Tishreen military hospital in Damascus as a military band played solemnly.

Rafeh was of Palestinian origin and the son of actor Ahmad Rafeh, who called Monday for all who have taken up weapons to throw them away, the state news agency reported.

The younger Rafeh was a familiar face on Syrian television programs. He became widely known for his role as Ibrahim, the son of a textile merchant in a popular series, "Bab al-Hara," set in the post-World War I period of French mandate rule in  Syria.

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Photo: A vehicle carries the coffin of Syrian actor Mohamed Rafeh in Damascus. Credit: Youssef Badawi / European Pressphoto Agency

 

Car bombs, aerial attacks pummel Syria

BEIRUT — A car bomb exploded Monday in a district of Damascus that is home to many security personnel and members of President Bashar Assad’s Alawite sect, killing 11 people and wounding dozens of others, the official state news media reported.

The attack was part of a wave of violence reported Monday across Syria, including a massive car bombing apparently targeting a military post in the central province of Hama and aerial bombardment of rebel-held towns in northwestern Syria. Scores were reported killed.

Monday’s car bombing in Damascus’ Mazzeh Jabal 86 district, which has a large concentration of Alawites, is the latest in a series of explosions in the Syrian capital that could inflame sectarian tensions. Mostly Sunni Muslim rebels have been fighting to oust Assad, whose Alawite sect is an offshoot of the Shiite branch of Islam.

Other Damascus-area bombings in recent weeks have hit near a revered Shiite shrine, Sayyida Zainab, and in the Bab Touma district, a historic Christian neighborhood in Damascus’ Old City.