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Tag: Syrian

  • World leaders react as Syrian rebels topple Assad

    World leaders react as Syrian rebels topple Assad

    • Insurgents enter Damascus with no sign of army

    Leaders and countries in the global community yesterday reacted cautiously as Syrian rebels declared they had ousted President Bashar al-Assad after seizing control of Damascus.

    The rebels’ lightning victory had forced Assad to flee and ending his family’s decades of autocratic rule after more than 13 years of civil war.

    The al-Assad family, also known as the Assad dynasty, is a Syrian political family that ruled Syria from when Hafez al-Assad became the president of Syria in 1971 under the Ba’ath Party to the ousting of al-Assad on December 8, 2024.

    After Hafez al-Assad’s death in June 2000, he was succeeded by his son Bashar al-Assad.

    Reacting about the fast changing scenario in Syria, U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said that Russia’s abandonment of al-Assad led to his downfall, adding that Moscow never should have protected him in the first place and then lost interest because of a war in Ukraine that never should have started.

    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hailed the ousting of Assad as an “historic day” that followed the blows delivered by Israel against Assad’s supporters Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon that had created a chain reaction throughout the region.

    Also, Iran, which had strongly backed Assad’s deposed government, said Syrians should decide their country’s future “without destructive, coercive, foreign intervention.”

    The statement from the Foreign Ministry yesterday was the country’s first official reaction to the overthrow of Assad’s government by rebel forces.

    The United Nations Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, called Saturday for urgent talks in Geneva to ensure an “orderly political transition.”

    The Gulf nation of Qatar, a key regional mediator, hosted an emergency meeting of foreign ministers and top officials from eight countries with interests in Syria late Saturday. The participants included Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia and Turkey.

    “President Joe Biden and his team are closely monitoring the extraordinary events in Syria and staying in constant touch with regional partners,” White House National Security Council spokesperson Sean Savett wrote on social media.

    The French Foreign Affairs ministry said France “welcomes” the fall of Assad’s government “after more than 13 years of violent repression against its own people.”

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    The ministry said in a statement: “The Syrian people have suffered too much. Bashar Assad has bled dry the country, emptied of a large part of its people who, if not forced into exile, have been massacred, tortured and bombarded with chemical weapons by the regime and its allies.”

    German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock expressed understanding for the relief Syrian people felt after the fall of Assad’s government but warned that “the country must not now fall into the hands of other radicals.”

    “Several hundred thousand Syrians have been killed in the civil war, millions have fled,” Baerbock said in a statement emailed by her office yesterday. “Assad has murdered, tortured and used poison gas against his own people. He must finally be held accountable for this.”

    The war in Syria began in 2011 when a pro-democracy uprising calling for the end of Assad’s long reign escalated quickly into a brutal civil war. Since then, the conflict has killed more than 500,000 people and displaced some 12 million from their homes.

    The rebels declared they had ousted al-Assad after seizing control of Damascus yesterday, forcing him to flee and ending his family’s decades of autocratic rule after more than 13 years of civil war.

    In a seismic moment for the Middle East, the Islamist rebels also dealt a major blow to the influence of Russia and Iran in Syria in the heart of the region – allies who had propped up Assad during critical periods in the war but were distracted by other crises recently.

    Mystery surrounded the whereabouts of Bashar al-Assad, who was no longer in Damascus when rebels captured the Syrian capital yesterday.

    Two senior army officers said Assad had boarded a plane early yesterday in Damascus for an unknown destination.

    Russia confirmed that Assad had left Syria but did not say where he was, including whether Moscow had given him refuge.

    Assad has not spoken in public since the sudden rebel advance a week ago, when insurgents seized northern Aleppo in a surprise attack before marching into a succession of cities as frontlines crumbled.

  • Police rescue abducted Syrian teenager in Kano

    Kano State Police Command has confirmed the rescue of the abducted Syrian teenager, Muhammad Ahmed after his father, Ahmed Abu Areeda was shot dead in Kano on Tuesday

    Late Areeda, a Syrian businessman,  was shot by the gunmen for reportedly resisting the abduction of his son at the Red Cross office on Hospital road when he went to pick his car along with two of his sons at about 8pm. 


    The Command’s Public Relations Officer, SP Magaji Musa Majia, who confirmed the rescue of Muhammad to newsmen friday night, said the boy was rescued unhurt and without payment of ransom.


    Majiya said that the boy has been taken to an undisclosed hospital for medical checkup.

  • Air strikes kill 69 in Syrian – Observatory

    Air strikes kill 69 in Syrian – Observatory

    The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Tuesday said air strikes likely to have been carried out by Russian warplanes killed 69 people near the Euphrates River in the eastern Syrian province of Deir al-Zor.

    The Russian defence ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on Tuesday’s report by the Britain-based monitoring group.

    The Observatory, which identified the victims as civilians, said the air strikes hit civilian encampments on the western bank of the Euphrates and vessels crossing the river to the eastern side.

    Separately, Syrian state television said that Islamic State militants have been using the river to flee the city of Deir al-Zor.

    It said that with heavy artillery and machineguns, that the Syrian army struck rafts have been carrying militants and crossing the Euphrates to the eastern side.

    Islamic State’s “only escape route out of the city is through rafts on the river, and, God willing, we will target them in the water before they get away,” a field commander in Deir al-Zor said.

  • Syrian rebels evacuates Damascus suburb

    Hundreds of Syrian rebel fighters began a process of leaving the besieged Damascus suburb of Barzeh on Monday as part of an evacuation deal agreed with the government, state television and a war monitor reported.

    State-run Ekhbariya television cited its reporter there as saying the evacuation of fighters from Barzeh for the rebel-held Idlib province in northwest Syria had begun to be implemented but without giving further details.

    The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, reported that buses had arrived in Barzeh at dawn and a group of hundreds of fighters and their family members had started to board them.

    The Observatory said more people would leave Barzeh over the coming days as part of the same deal.

    Barzeh is in northeast Damascus near the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta oasis district of towns and farms and has been the site of intense fighting between insurgents and the Syrian army in recent months.

    On Sunday, the army advanced under intense bombardment in the Qaboun district, which adjoins Barzeh in the same besieged enclave, the Observatory said.

    A military media unit run by the armed Lebanese Shi’ite group Hezbollah, an ally of the Syrian government, reported on Monday that several Red Crescent ambulances had also arrived at the rebel-besieged towns of al-Foua and Kefraya near Idlib.

    Those two towns were part of a mutual evacuation deal that also included two towns besieged by government forces and involved exchanging thousands of people between the warring sides last month.

    Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has promoted the use of such evacuations, along with what his government calls “reconciliation” deals for rebel-held areas that surrender to the government, as a way of reducing bloodshed.

    However, the United Nations has criticised both the use of siege tactics which precede such deals and the evacuations themselves as amounting to forcible displacement.

    Many of those who have left other besieged areas of Syria have also relocated to Idlib, a mostly rural province abutting the Turkish border which is a major rebel stronghold.

  • Syrian opposition welcomes U.S. strike on army airbase

    Syrian opposition welcomes U.S. strike on army airbase

    The Syrian opposition on Friday welcomed U.S. strikes against a Syrian government airbase and called for more after two American warships fired dozens of missiles at the airfield in a sharp escalation of the U.S. military role in Syria.

    The Syrian opposition has long been critical of U.S. policy towards the Syrian conflict, saying former President Barack Obama’s administration had failed to give enough support to rebels fighting the better-armed Syrian army and its allies.

    “We hope for the continuation of the strikes in order to prevent the regime from using its planes to launch any new air raids or going back to using internationally banned weapons,” said Ahmad Ramadan, head of the media office of the Syrian National Coalition political opposition group.

    Hasan Ali, commander of the Free Idlib Army rebel group, which fights under the Free Syrian Army (FSA) umbrella, told Reuters the strikes came at a “very important phase” and showed Syrians that “there is still humanity in this world”.

    While Ali said he did not expect more strikes, “we can say that the time has become very appropriate for Bashar al-Assad and the criminals with him to go to the dustbins of history”.

    Nasr al-Hariri, chief negotiator of the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), said on Twitter that the strikes “in case they continue, would kick off a correct start in combating terrorism”.

    The Saudi-based HNC, the main opposition body which includes political and armed groups, has participated in U.N.-sponsored peace talks in Geneva.

    U.S. President Donald Trump said he had ordered missile strikes against the airfield from which a deadly chemical attack was launched, declaring he acted in America’s “national security interest” against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

    The strikes drew sharp criticism from Russia, Assad’s ally.

    U.S. officials said the military fired dozens of cruise missiles against the base in response to the suspected gas attack in a rebel-held area this week, which Washington has blamed on Assad’s forces.

    The Syrian government has strongly denied responsibility and says it does not use chemical weapons.

    “The airbase targeted by the U.S. strike was used to kill Syrians,” Ramadan said.

    The U.S. attack “sends a clear message to the regime and its backers” that they can no longer avoid repercussions, Ramadan said.

    The governor of Homs province said earlier that the airbase was used to support Syrian army operations against Islamic State.

    NAN reports that the U.N. Security Council was expected to hold closed-door consultations on Friday about the U.S. strike on Syria following a request by Bolivia, an elected member of the council, a senior Security Council diplomat said.

     

  • Panic over fate of abducted Lebanese, Syrian nationals

    The management of OKMAS Nigeria Limited has raised the alarm over the fate of two expatriates and a Nigerian staff abducted by gunmen last Wednesday from the company’s site in Patani Local Government Area of Delta State.

    Sari Naser Karin and Tarek Maroun Syrian and Lebanese respectively along with their Nigerian counterpart, simply identified as Sahara, were working on the Patani-Oduophori road project awarded by the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) when they were abducted by a seven-man gang.

    Confirming the report, the Public Relations Manager of OKMAS Nigeria Limited, Mr Owhondah Ebere, told The Nation: “The whereabouts of two expatriates and a Nigerian who were kidnapped by unidentified gunmen on Wednesday 20/5/15 at 10.30am, in Patani area, Delta state, is still unknown”.
    Police Public Relations Officer in Delta Command, DSP Celestina Kalu, confirmed the report in a telephone interview with our reporter. She said efforts were being made to rescue the construction workers.

    Meanwhile, work at the project site was grounded on Monday following a protest by aggrieved co-workers of the embattled construction workers.

    The workers are demanding increased security presence before returning to work following the Wednesday’s incident.

     

  • UN appeals as Syrian refugees flood Turkish border

    UN appeals as Syrian refugees flood Turkish border

    The UN refugee agency says Turkey urgently needs help to care for 130,000 Syrian refugees who have crossed the border in recent days. The UNHCR said this was the largest influx in such a short period since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011. The Syrian Kurds are fleeing an advance by Islamic State (IS) militants, who have seized swathes of Iraq and Syria in recent months.

    IS fighters are reported to be closing in on the Syrian town of Kobane. The capture of Kobane, also known as Ayn al-Arabon, would give the jihadists complete control of the area. Even before the latest influx, Turkey was struggling to cope with more than a million Syrian refugees who have crossed into its territory since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began more than three years ago. Carol Batchelor, the UNHCR’s envoy in Turkey, said such high numbers of refugees would place a strain on any host community.

    The sheer number of refugees would overwhelm any country. Added to that, they are Kurds from Syria, many of them deeply hostile to Turkey. For 30 years, Turkish forces fought Kurdish rebels in a civil war that killed 40,000 people. The fact that Turkey is accepting tens of thousands of Kurds is a sign of how allegiances are being forced to change with the onslaught of Islamic State. But deep-seated tension between Kurds and Turks has again come to the surface, leading to border clashes on Sunday. Turkey fears that Kurds will cross into Syria to join the Kurdish militia. The worry is that, renewed by fresh recruits, it could ally with the outlawed PKK and launch attacks on Turkish soil.

    All the regional complexities, added to the refugee influx, make for a precarious situation here. She called for “increased solidarity and international assistance” for those flooding across the border. “The situation is deepening. It’s becoming protracted. People are desperately in need,” she added. Ms Batchelor said food, blankets and winter clothing – particularly for children – were needed. Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Numan Kurtulmus said his country was preparing for “the worst case scenario” – an influx of hundreds of thousands more refugees. “I hope that we are not faced with a more populous refugee wave but if we are, we have taken precautions. If necessary, we have planned how to send these people to safer and further places,” he said.

  • The Syrian rebels or the Syrian Beasts?

    The Syrian rebels or the Syrian Beasts?

    In an article titled ‘’On A False Premise- U.S. Looks To G8 Summit For Consensus Over Libya’’, the American journalist Shawn Helton of the ’21st Century Wire’ wrote the following-

    ‘’Ben Rhodes, Deputy National Security Adviser to President Obama declared thursday that the Syrian Army had used sarin gas on it’s own people. These claims have been unsubstantiated. Just one month ago Carla Del Ponte, a member of the U.N. Independent Commission of Inquiry on Syria concluded that it was the rebel forces inside Syria that had in fact used chemical weapons. The U.N.’s findings were supported by medical staff and victims after a recent chemical attack. So why the sudden rush to judgement? Is the White House ‘’highly confident’’ of the chemical weapons narrative because it provides easier access into Syria and to it’s oil and gas reserves?’’

    This is indeed the question of the century when it comes to the crisis in Syria.

    The G8 is meeting in Northern Ireland on 17th June 2013 in an attempt to agree on what to do concerning the Syrian civil war. The world is watching with deep concern as the conflict widens and different countries are beginning to take different sides. I urge the Russians, the Chinese, the Iranians and Hezbollah to stand firmly against the reckless adventurism of the Americans, the British, the French, the Saudis and the Turks in Syria. To arm the Syrian islamists and rebels, the majority of whom hate ethnic minorities, secularists, moderate muslims and christians and who kill those that do not share their narrow and primitive world view is utter madness. Bashir Al Assad will NEVER be removed by force and the secular state of Syria where ethnic minorities and those who share other faiths are protected will never fall. The British, the French, the Americans and their allies will not achieve their objectives in this conflict despite all their lies and disinformation about what Al Assad is supposed to have done and is supposed to be doing.

    I do not believe for one minute that Al Assad has used chemical weapons against his own people- rather I believe that it is the rebels, armed by the western powers, the Turks and the Saudis, that are doing so to those that are supporting Al Assad. For once the world must not be fooled with lies and they must stand up against the traditional bullies of the world, those that believe in regime change and those that destabilise and destroy the nations of others for economic and pecuniary gain.

    I do not blame Al Assad for the 90,000 people that have been killed in Syria since this conflict began but instead I blame the western powers, their allies and the Syrian rebels who are actually arming encouraging and funding Al Qaeda islamist fighters to lead the fight in the battle against Al Assad. How Barak Obama can stomach the stench of those that slit the throats of so-called ‘’unbelivers’’ and commit these atrocities and actually fund and support them I don’t know.

    Yesterday it was Iraq, Egypt and Libya. Today it is Syria. Tomorrow it will be Lebanon and Iran. After they have finished with the Middle East they will take the battle to the gates of Russia and China. And of course one day it will be the Sudan, Nigeria and Somalia. Their lust for power and determination to control the entire world is insatiable and it has no end. It is time for people to wake up and stop being taken in by their evil lies and disinformation which is being churned out on a daily basis by the international news networks which they control. It is time for the world to wake up and say “enough is enough”. It is time for the truth to prevail.

    Oh Lord Jesus return soon and save this world from the evil of those that seek to rule it and wipe out your counsel in the name of the devil. These people are the natural enemies of all believers whether they be christian, jewish or muslim. They do not believe in God. They believe in the power of the devil, the gods of the New Age, the usage of money, brute force, murder, disinformation, lies and deceit. They are the agents of the Illuminati who seek to establish a one world government and a new world order where no monotheic religion and no faith has any relevance and where the Living God is relegated to the background and is described as a powerless relic of history.

    It is the duty of every believer, whether christian, muslim or jewish, to resist their evil and their desire to control and dominate the world and its resources. May God open the eyes of the people of the world to their evil and to their sheer callousness and greed. Satan works through them and he seeks to enslave us all by empowering and enthroning them. They have all the power, all the armies, all the money, all the media houses, all the international television networks, all the satellite and space-based spying systems and all the sophisticated telecommunication networks. They control virtually everything on the earth. Yet we have God, who never sleeps and who has never lost a battle.

    In the end His counsel alone will stand, His will shall be done, His purpose shall be established and His name will be glorified. Even if they kill half the world’s population in their evil quest, at the end of the day the righteous shall be vindicated and the truth shall prevail because God is with us. I weep when I see the innocents that are slaughtered on a daily basis in Syria. I cry when I see children being beheaded and blown apart and when I see the bodies of women being mutilated. I groan when I see deranged and callous men doing the will of America and destroying their own beautiful country and heritage for no just cause. I shudder when I see so-called rebels hacking their compatriots to pieces and eating their hearts and organs with joy.

    Vladimir Putin’s words to David Cameron during their joint press conference at 10 Downing Street after a meeting on 16th June are instructive. He said ‘’I think you will not deny that one does not really need to support the people who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their intestines, in front of the public and cameras. Is it them you want to supply with weapons?’’. These are wise words indeed and a legitimate question. We should all take a little time out to ponder on them. Another interesting contribution came from the respected American war hero General Wesley Clark who was the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO forces in Europe during the Kosovo war. He said that America had drawn up plans to invade Iraq, Syria, Libya, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan and Iran as far back as 2001 just a few days after the attack on the Twin Towers in New York on 9/11. It follows that what we are witnessing in Syria today is a script that was written many years ago and which is being effected with ruthless determination and clinical precision. No matter how long it takes and regardless of the cost in terms of loss of civilian lives and the shedding of innocent blood those that believe that it is their manifest duty and destiny to rule and dominate the entire world are determined to effect their sinister purpose and evil agenda and bring Syria down to her knees. This, surely, is not only a travesty of justice but it also a tragedy of monuemental proportions.

    Yet the American-made Shakespearean tragedies of the Middle East just keep on unfolding. Let us go back a little. According to George Galloway, the utterly irrepressable, exceptionally intelligent and deeply courageous British Member of Parliament for Bradford, no less than one million Iraqi people, mainly women and children, died as a direct consequence of the economic sanctions and the ‘’oil for food’’ programme that the west imposed on Iraq when Saddam Hussein was still in power. Yet it didn’t stop there. When Iraq was eventually invaded and Baghdad was carpet-bombed by George W. Bush’s and Tony Blair’s ‘’coalition of the willing’’ in 2003 no less than 150,000 Iraqi civilians, again mainly women and children, were slaughtered like flies within the space of just a few days. What a terrible price that had to be paid for the sheer mess that we have in Iraq today where the minority sunni muslims are waging an all out jihad against the majority shia. That is the kind of carnage, confusion and mayhem that America and her allies are spreading all over the Middle East and it appears that Syria is in the process of being consummed by it and of sparking off a major regional conflict which is drawing in many other countries. This beleagured nation has been turned into a blood-soaked arena and a blood-drenched theater for a proxy war which is bound to spread to the neighbouring Arab countries. What an utter shame.

    Yet like David Icke, Naom Chomsky, Alex Jones, Norman G. Finkelstein, George Galloway and millions of other deep thinkers and great minds from all over the world I stand with the Syrian people and the legitimate government of their sovereign and independant state at this difficult time. I believe that no matter what the agents of satan say or do God shall defend their noble cause and He shall vindicate them and deliver them from the evil that stalks the world and that seeks to take control of their land.

    Permit me to end this contribution with some interesting questions that were put by Yele Odofin Bello, who is a Nigerian Canadian and who has captured the mood of the moment rather well. He wrote, ‘’why would the west arm rebels in Syria against a recognised government whilst they did the exact opposite in Colombia and Sri Lanka? Who decides what is evil and what is not? And what yardstick do we use to make these determinations? Why should Iran stay on the sideline when the Saudis and other despotic Arab regimes support rebels in this conflict? I still maintain that objective journalism died in 2007. The BBC, CNN and other western media houses continue to claim that Al Assad has ‘killed over 92,000 of his own people’. Does it mean that all those casualties were rebels and civilians? Why is the western press so eager to marginalise the Syrian Army by referring to them as ‘regime forces’ or ‘Assad forces’?’’ The answers to these pertinent and insightful questions are self-evident.

    Thankfully there are a number of inflluential voices in the west and particularly in the United Kingdom that are also of the view that arming the Syrian rebels would be a fatal mistake. Boris Johnson, the flamboyant Mayor of London, is one of those voices. He said ‘’arming the Syrian rebels would be disasterous because Britain would be pressing weapons into the hands of maniacs’’. He also warned David Cameron, the British Prime Minister, that he ‘’should not use Syria as an arena for muscle-flexing’’ and that ‘’any weapons sent to the rebels could end up in the hands of Al Qaeda’’. This is wise counsel from a deeply concerned Tory party colleague and the Prime Minister would do well to accept it. Other British leaders that have voiced their opposition and expressed deep concerns about supplying arms to the rebels include Dr. John Sentamu (the Archbishop of York), Lord Dannat (the former head of the British Armed Forces), Julian Lewis (a leading backbench Tory MP) and Nick Clegg (the Deputy Prime Minister). Let us hope that these saner voices prevail in what is turning out to be a deeply disturbing narrative. God bless the people of the Syrian Arab Republic.