Syria: Breaking News

[Khaled]

The assault in Damascus on the Republican Guard base, which is adjacent to the palace, began on Monday night and was only intended as a probing attack, according to a lieutenant of the Free Syrian Army whose unit launched the attack, and who was interviewed by Skype telephone afterward.

“It was not a big confrontation, it was just to test the Guards’ capacity, for future attacks,” said the lieutenant, who for security reasons asked to be identified only by his rank. “Our fighters were really surprised by the huge forces that immediately came and encircled the area.”

As he put it, the incident proved that “one bullet in Damascus has more impact than a tank barrage in Idlib or Homs, because the regime doesn’t hear the bombings but for sure they hear the bullet in Damascus.”

Only 20 lightly armed fighters were involved in the attack, he said. “It was just a test for when the battle does move to Damascus.”

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FREE SYRIAN ARMY ATTACKS ELITE DAMASCUS GUARDS

[jah]

may Allah be with them and grant them victory ameen

[Khaled]

There was a massacre yesterday in Qal'it al-Hisn where dozens were murdered, including 6 people from the one family.

This is a video of the bodies of Dr Emad and 5 members of his family slaughtered in cold blood by the Shabiha. In he second video, my cousin speaks to Al-Jazeera and says how their necks were slit with a knife. SubhaanAllaah th village has been bombarded for weeks but yesterday was the worst hit yet. My cousin also lost some friends from the FSA there



لا حول ولا قوة الى بالله

[Khaled]

My cousin speaks to Al-Jazeera

[Abu Dujana]

May Allah raise them with the Anbiyaa and give them Al Firdaous, Amiin.

If hidaayah is not meant for them, may Allah destroy the dhalimuun in this world and the Hereafter, Amiin.

[fatima_43]

they are ruthless, astaghfirallah al-adheem

[Khaled]

My cousin Fadi had his right hand cut off yesterday and axed him in the back.. Inna lillaahi wa inna ilayhi raaji'oon. May Allaah give him a full speedy recovery or accept him as a shaheed. SubhaanAllaah I can't believe how positive he is staying

[jafar al-salafi]

may ALLAH destroy this opressive, nusairi, alawi, ba'thist, satanic reigime of (ghair) bashaar as soon as possible!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ALLAHUMMAA AAAMIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[At-Ta'if]

85 Syrian soldiers, including general, defect to Turkey

A Syrian general from an artillery division and seven officers were among dozens of soldiers, mostly serving in Homs province, who defected and fled to Turkey on Monday afternoon.

85 Syrian military officers, including one general, one colonel, one lt. colonel, 4 majors, 7 captains, 1 lieutenant defected and fled to Turkey with their families on Monday night.

In total, 293 Syrians crossed the border into Turkey from Syria through Reyhanlı and Yayladağı districts in the southern Turkish province of Hatay.

Most of the Syrians fleeing into Turkey are women and children, who were sent to Şanlıurfa province while the military officers and their families were taken to the Apaydın camp in Hatay.

Turkey is currently home to more than 34,000 Syrians who have fled 16-month violation in their country.

[Khaled]

Al-Jazeera correspondent Nisreen el-Shamayleh has reported that 2,300 Syrian refugees have crossed into Jordan In the last 24 hours alone.

Reporting from Jordan, she said:

This is a very sharp increase from the average of 200-400 who arrive every night and the highest in over a year.

Sources in the Jordanian city of*Ramtha expect another 2,000 people to arrive tonight. These are taken to the transit facility of Al Bashabsheh.

The UN refugee agency, UNHCR, expects a response from the authorities regarding opening another holding facility for Syrian refugees because there it is impossible for Al*Bashabsheh to accommodate these numbers.

[Newbee]

Syria will never be the same again.

It will be better, a promise from Allaah!

Think in the future sense.

[falah]

WikiLeaks releases 2.4 million Syria emails

WikiLeaks has begun publishing more than 2 million emails from Syrian political figures that it says will shed light on the regime's crackdown on dissent and embarrass Syria's opponents.

The emails date back to 2006 but also cover the past 16 months, in which thousands have been killed in a bloody crackdown by Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's forces.

The whistleblowing website says the files will give an insight into how the Assad government operates, and also reveal Western countries and businesses which continue to support Syria.

WikiLeaks says the emails came from Syrian ministries including foreign affairs, finance and presidential affairs.

Australian WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says the material is embarrassing to Syria, as well as to Syria's opponents.

"It helps us not merely to criticise one group or another, but to understand their interests, actions and thoughts," he said in a statement.

"It is only through understanding this conflict that we can hope to resolve it."

Altogether, the site says it will publish 2,434,899 emails from 680 domains, which it is "statistically confident" are accurate and authentic.

It says there are 678,752 different email addresses involved, and 1,082,447 different recipients.

There are around 400,000 emails in Arabic but also 68,000 emails in Russian.

Europe correspondent Philip Williams told Lateline the first files raise questions about Italian defence giant Finmeccanica's involvement with Syria:

They're hinting that there is a good deal of hypocrisy both from the companies and Western governments...

...one example of an Italian company that appears to have been supplying radio equipment to the Syrian police as little as a couple of months ago.

...an enormous pot of emails, 2.4 million of them to be gone through.

Of course that will take weeks, perhaps months, and they're not all going to be released at once so we'll have to wait and see the substance of those.

...certainly the Syrian government and perhaps some Western governments and companies will be holding their breath about that.

Philip Williams

WikiLeaks will not comment on the rest of the material until stories derived from the files are published.

It is not the first time Syrian emails have been leaked.

In March, Britain's Guardian newspaper published emails which claimed Mr Assad's wife Asma was spending tens of thousands of pounds on jewellery and fancy furniture amid the bloodshed.

The Syria files are WikiLeaks' first major publication since it began disclosing internal emails from the US-based intelligence firm Stratfor in February.

WikiLeaks was forced to suspend many of its publishing operations last October after Visa, MasterCard and PayPal refused to continue processing donations to the whistleblowing website.

WikiLeaks' publication comes amid continued wrangling between world powers about how the bloody conflict in Syria should be tackled.

The revolt, which started with peaceful pro-democracy protests, has turned into a something approaching a civil war as the government's crackdown triggered an armed uprising.

Rights groups as many as 16,500 people have been killed in the 16-month uprising, while Mr Assad blames the deaths on "terrorist gangs"...

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-0...-files/4113284

[Khaled]

^ My uncle has told me a few nasty stories about what some of the rebels have done in some of the villages, even against the people who are protesting. But these "rebels" do not represent the FSA. They are just a bunch of people taking advantage of the rebellion against Bashar and the misfortune of those who have been targeted. They may be an opposition to Bashar, but they are also an opposition to the FSA.

[falah]

Syrian ambassador defects to join revolt



THE first Syrian ambassador to abandon the Assad regime since the uprising began 16 months ago said the government had turned the ruling Baath party into ''an instrument to kill people''.

The resignation of Syria's ambassador to Iraq, Nawaf al-Fares, came less than a week after the announcement that Brigadier-General Manaf Tlas, a childhood friend of Bashar al-Assad's and part of his inner circle, had fled. Unlike General Tlas, who has remained silent and has not openly announced his defection, Mr Fares said he was ''joining the revolution''.

''I resign from my mission as the ambassador of the Syrian Arab Republic to Iraq,'' he said in a statement to al-Jazeera television. ''I call upon the honourable members of the party to follow my lead. I also call on all the honourable and free Syrians, especially military personnel, to immediately join the revolution.''

Mohammed Bassam Imadi, a former Syrian ambassador to Sweden, defected a few months ago and is now a member of the Syrian National Council, the main opposition group. Last month, a Syrian air force colonel flew a fighter jet into neighbouring Jordan, where he was granted political asylum.
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Mr Fares had been a leading member of Syria's diplomatic corps and a commanding presence among the country's Sunni elite. He is from Abu Kamal in the east, which borders Iraq's Anbar province. The tribes in Anbar and those in Syria's vast eastern desert hail from the same families and are thought to have been increasingly active in the Sunni-led uprising in the east of the country.

In a further blow to the regime, which has not seen large numbers of important officials leave its ranks, two generals from the country's intelligence services are believed to have been captured last week by opposition guerillas. Major General Faraj al-Maket and General Munair al-Ahmed Shlaybi, from the Palestinian Branch of military intelligence, were shown on an online video claiming they had been captured in late June.

The Palestinian Branch is one of Syria's two main intelligence organisations and has been central to the regime crackdown on dissent, which started last March and has now grown into a full-blown insurgency led by a predominantly Sunni opposition movement.

Mr Fares and General Tlas are leading and trusted members of the Sunni establishment who worked closely with Syria's Alawite-based leadership.

Iraq's Foreign Minister, Hoshyar Zebari, said earlier this week that foreign fighters had crossed from Anbar into Syria to join the ranks of an insurgency. The Free Syrian Army insists it alone remains at the vanguard of the fight against loyalist forces. But militant groups are claiming responsibility for a large number of attacks against regime forces.

Iraq has tried to distance itself from the conflict in Syria but remains important in the crisis. Both countries are allies of Iran, which is invested in the survival of the Assad regime. Iraq has come under pressure to provide oil to Damascus, where international sanctions have sent fuel prices soaring and made it difficult for the Syrian military to remain mobile.

Meanwhile, Kofi Annan, the special envoy whose peace plan for ending the increasingly violent conflict in Syria is paralysed and at risk of complete collapse, asked the UN Security Council to threaten the Syrian government and the rebels with consequences for failure to comply.BLOOMBERG, GUARDIAN

http://www.theage.com.au/world/syria...712-21ylq.html

[Khaled]

Over 40 people from Qal'ital-Hisn, mainly women and children are suffering from food poisoning after eating bread made by Alawi bakers in Talkalakh. The devils are even putting poison in the bread, subhaanAllaah

[Khaled]

This just in -

Reuters reports that according to opposition sources, more than 200 peole have been killed in Hama, and that "The Revolution Leadership Council of Hama told Reuters that most of the dead in the village of Tremseh were civilians."

The AFP has the toll at "more than 100", adding that tanks and helicopters were used in the attacks.

[Khaled]

US officials said that Syria has started to move part of its chemical weapons arsenal out of storage facilities, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

The country's undeclared stockpiles of sarin nerve agent, mustard gas and cyanide have long worried US officials and their allies in the region, the report said.

Western nations have looked for signs amid the rebellion against President Bashar al-Assad's government of any change in the location of those weapons, believed to be the world's largest stockpile.

American officials are divided on the meaning of the moves of the arsenal. Some fear Assad may want to use the weapons against rebels or civilians, while others said perhaps he is trying to safeguard them from his opponents, the Journal reported.

US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland, traveling with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Phnom Penh, said "We repeatedly made it clear that the Syrian government has a responsibility to safeguard its stockpiles of chemical weapons."

She added that "the international community will hold accountable any Syrian officials who fail to meet that obligation."

The Syrian government denied chemical stockpiles have been*moved, the Journal said.

Syria is one of eight states - along with Israel and nearby Egypt - that have not joined the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention, which means the world's chemical weapons watchdog has no jurisdiction to intervene there.

The Assad government has in the past denied having weapons of mass destruction.

[Reuters]

[Lizzy]

What is the world coming to. I spoke to my husband early this morning and he told me that missiles were launched in the village where his father is living which is in the mountains of North Lebanon. I am concerned and worried about my father in law and all the people that are suffering at the time. Insh'allah my father in law is fine. I wait to hear from my husband later this evening, Insh'Allah.

[Khaled]

A Russian ship that tried to deliver attack helicopters to Syria last month has again left its Arctic port carrying the same military cargo, the state's military export agency said on Friday.

"The Mi-25 helicopters subject for return to Syria after their repair are currently aboard the Alaed, which is sailing from the port in Murmansk to another port in Russia," Interfax quoted a Rosoboronexport statement as saying.

[AFP]

[Lizzy]

Brother Khaled, how is your cousin's recovery, Insh'Allah he is beginning to heal and I wish him a speedy recovery.