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Tuesday, June 12, 2012 7:27:24 PM
Clinton Fears Syria Is Getting Attack Helicopters From Russia
Associated Press
Rebel fighters near Aleppo on Tuesday.
Agence France-Presse - Getty Images
An image released by the Syrian opposition's Shaam News Network showed smoke rising from a building in Homs last week.
By RICK GLADSTONE, J. DAVID GOODMAN and MARK LANDLER
June 12, 2012
The Syria conflict fell deeper into crisis Tuesday as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton publicly accused Russia of supplying attack helicopters to the Syrian government.
Her accusation came as international cease-fire monitors in Syria aborted a fact-finding trip after they came under assault by an angry mob and gunfire, and the top United Nations peacekeeping official said Syria was already in a state of civil war.
Those developments — coupled with a newly released United Nations report that accused the Syrian military of using Syrians as young as 8 as human shields for troops — overshadowed fresh diplomatic efforts by Kofi Annan, the special envoy to Syria, to advance a peace plan that has basically been ignored since it was put into effect two months ago.
Secretary Clinton’s remarks, at a Washington forum, appeared likely to irritate Russia, the most important foreign backer of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, and seemed at odds with recent American efforts to forge a unified approach toward a resolution of the 16-month-old conflict that would push Mr. Assad out.
Russia has repeatedly denied sending any armaments to Mr. Assad that could be used to crush the uprising against him. But Mrs. Clinton said the United States was “concerned about the latest information we have that there are attack helicopters on their way from Russia to Syria.” The shipments, she warned, “would escalate the conflict quite dramatically.”
In Syria, a team of cease-fire monitors deployed under the auspices of the United Nations were thwarted from entering Al Heffa, a besieged rebel-held enclave in the northwest part of the country, when hostile crowds struck their vehicles with stones and metal rods, a spokeswoman for the monitors said. As the monitors retreated, their vehicles came under attack by gunfire from an unspecified source, said the spokeswoman, Sausan Ghosheh.
Al Heffa, near Syria’s main port, Latakia, was among several flash points where new fighting was reported Tuesday.
At the United Nations, the under secretary general for peacekeeping operations, Hervé Ladsous, whose office is responsible for the monitor mission in Syria, said the Syrian conflict had become a civil war, an assertion that goes beyond what other senior diplomats at the United Nations have said in characterizing the conflict.
“Yes, I think one can say that,” Mr. Ladsous said in an interview with Reuters, which was later confirmed by Mr. Ladsous’s office. “And clearly what is happening is that the government of Syria lost some large chunks of territories and several cities to the opposition and wants to retake control of these areas. So now we have confirmed reports not only of the use of tanks and artillery, but also attack helicopters.”
The monitors uploaded a video from their observations on Monday of Homs, a center of resistance to President Assad that has defied months of military shelling and shooting, and the towns of Talbiseh and Al Rastan north of Homs, which have also been subjected to military attack. The video shows wafts of drifting smoke from buildings and homes hit by shelling, emptied roads, a wrecked bridge draped with a Syrian opposition flag, fresh blood on some home corridors and residents picking through the rubble, with one man shouting in English: “We are people! Not animals!”
Officials from the United Nations and Western countries including the United States have expressed fears of a massacre in Al Heffa. At least four other episodes of mass killings have taken place in Syria in the past few weeks, refocusing world attention on the increasingly brutal and sectarian tensions in the conflict, now in its 16th month.
Houran Al Hafawi, a member of the Local Coordination Committee of Al Heffa, an activist group, said in a telephone interview that he had been forced to flee to a neighboring village because his house had been bombed, but he remained in contact with his brothers and other civilians there. “The shelling has been continuous,” he said. “The Syrian Army is throwing missiles and rockets from helicopter and rocket launchers from the eastern and western entrances.”
He said Al Heffa activists had pleaded with the United Nations monitoring mission to check on Al Heffa, where at least 40 people have been killed over the past several days and more than 100 wounded, of which 40 were taken into Turkey. The claims were not possible to corroborate.
Asked about fears of a massacre in Al Heffa, he said: “If the Syrian Army gets in, yes; I do expect a massacre. It’s normal; it’s happening everywhere.”
Mr. Assad’s government has denied any involvement in mass killings and has blamed them on armed terrorist groups, its terminology for the Free Syrian Army rebel force and other elements in the political opposition.
But his government came under new criticism in an annual appraisal by the United Nations about children in armed conflicts, which included a grim section on Syria. It said Syrian forces and plainclothes militiamen known as shabiha had used children as shields to insulate soldiers from rebel assaults. The report also accused those forces of torturing and molesting boys as young as 9 and said children had been maimed and killed in attacks on civilian areas.
“In almost all recorded cases, children were among the victims of military operations by government forces, including the Syrian armed forces, the intelligence forces and the shabiha militia, in their ongoing conflict with the opposition, including the Free Syrian Army,” the report said. It was based on interviews with witnesses, victims and former members of the Syrian Army, conducted between March 2011, when antigovernment protests began, and the first months of 2012.
The report gave details of one especially brutal episode in March in the village of Ayn Larouz in northern Idlib Province. Witnesses described an attack by Syrian Army forces on the village that killed 11, including three teenage boys. During a subsequent raid on the village, the report said, several dozen boys and girls between the ages of 8 and 13 were taken from their homes and made to stand at the windows of buses carrying Syrian soldiers.
After entering the village, Syrian forces detained and interrogated 34 people before executing four of them — two men and two teenagers, aged 14 and 16 — and burning their bodies, the report said.
At the time, activists reported that the village, where the government suspected defecting soldiers of hiding, had been surrounded by tanks before government troops stormed in.
The report from the United Nations’ special representative for children and armed conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, also cited reports of young children associated with the Free Syrian Army, made up of army defectors and armed rebels, carrying guns and wearing camouflage uniforms. The rebels have said they do not recruit fighters younger than 17.
“The world is keeping a detailed account of the violence committed against civilians in Syria, and I am confident that these crimes will not go unpunished,” Ms. Coomaraswamy said in a statement.
In Geneva on Tuesday, a spokesman for Mr. Annan, Ahmad Fawzi, told reporters that “diplomacy is intensifying” behind the planned meeting of an international contact group proposed by Mr. Annan that would “put irrevocable pressure” on Mr. Assad and his adversaries to end the violence.
“The problem is not the plan, the problem is implementation of the plan,” said Mr. Fawzi, adding that Mr. Annan and his team were “working the phones to try and get governments with influence to exercise their influence.”
“We hope this contact group meeting will take place soon,” Mr. Fawzi said. “The objective of convening this group is to give teeth to the plan; it’s not to create a new plan.”
Mr. Fawzi did not specify a proposed date, location or list of participants in the contact group, although Mr. Annan has suggested that it will include countries that can exert some influence on Mr. Assad, notably Russia, China and Iran. The United States opposes the inclusion of Iran, which it accuses of helping the Assad government repress his opponents.
Rick Gladstone and J. David Goodman reported from New York, and Mark Landler from Washington. Nick Cumming-Bruce contributed reporting from Geneva and Dalal Mawad from Beirut, Lebanon.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/13/world/middleeast/violence-in-syria-continues-as-protesters-killed.html?hp
Associated Press
Rebel fighters near Aleppo on Tuesday.
Agence France-Presse - Getty Images
An image released by the Syrian opposition's Shaam News Network showed smoke rising from a building in Homs last week.
By RICK GLADSTONE, J. DAVID GOODMAN and MARK LANDLER
June 12, 2012
The Syria conflict fell deeper into crisis Tuesday as Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton publicly accused Russia of supplying attack helicopters to the Syrian government.
Her accusation came as international cease-fire monitors in Syria aborted a fact-finding trip after they came under assault by an angry mob and gunfire, and the top United Nations peacekeeping official said Syria was already in a state of civil war.
Those developments — coupled with a newly released United Nations report that accused the Syrian military of using Syrians as young as 8 as human shields for troops — overshadowed fresh diplomatic efforts by Kofi Annan, the special envoy to Syria, to advance a peace plan that has basically been ignored since it was put into effect two months ago.
Secretary Clinton’s remarks, at a Washington forum, appeared likely to irritate Russia, the most important foreign backer of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, and seemed at odds with recent American efforts to forge a unified approach toward a resolution of the 16-month-old conflict that would push Mr. Assad out.
Russia has repeatedly denied sending any armaments to Mr. Assad that could be used to crush the uprising against him. But Mrs. Clinton said the United States was “concerned about the latest information we have that there are attack helicopters on their way from Russia to Syria.” The shipments, she warned, “would escalate the conflict quite dramatically.”
In Syria, a team of cease-fire monitors deployed under the auspices of the United Nations were thwarted from entering Al Heffa, a besieged rebel-held enclave in the northwest part of the country, when hostile crowds struck their vehicles with stones and metal rods, a spokeswoman for the monitors said. As the monitors retreated, their vehicles came under attack by gunfire from an unspecified source, said the spokeswoman, Sausan Ghosheh.
Al Heffa, near Syria’s main port, Latakia, was among several flash points where new fighting was reported Tuesday.
At the United Nations, the under secretary general for peacekeeping operations, Hervé Ladsous, whose office is responsible for the monitor mission in Syria, said the Syrian conflict had become a civil war, an assertion that goes beyond what other senior diplomats at the United Nations have said in characterizing the conflict.
“Yes, I think one can say that,” Mr. Ladsous said in an interview with Reuters, which was later confirmed by Mr. Ladsous’s office. “And clearly what is happening is that the government of Syria lost some large chunks of territories and several cities to the opposition and wants to retake control of these areas. So now we have confirmed reports not only of the use of tanks and artillery, but also attack helicopters.”
The monitors uploaded a video from their observations on Monday of Homs, a center of resistance to President Assad that has defied months of military shelling and shooting, and the towns of Talbiseh and Al Rastan north of Homs, which have also been subjected to military attack. The video shows wafts of drifting smoke from buildings and homes hit by shelling, emptied roads, a wrecked bridge draped with a Syrian opposition flag, fresh blood on some home corridors and residents picking through the rubble, with one man shouting in English: “We are people! Not animals!”
Officials from the United Nations and Western countries including the United States have expressed fears of a massacre in Al Heffa. At least four other episodes of mass killings have taken place in Syria in the past few weeks, refocusing world attention on the increasingly brutal and sectarian tensions in the conflict, now in its 16th month.
Houran Al Hafawi, a member of the Local Coordination Committee of Al Heffa, an activist group, said in a telephone interview that he had been forced to flee to a neighboring village because his house had been bombed, but he remained in contact with his brothers and other civilians there. “The shelling has been continuous,” he said. “The Syrian Army is throwing missiles and rockets from helicopter and rocket launchers from the eastern and western entrances.”
He said Al Heffa activists had pleaded with the United Nations monitoring mission to check on Al Heffa, where at least 40 people have been killed over the past several days and more than 100 wounded, of which 40 were taken into Turkey. The claims were not possible to corroborate.
Asked about fears of a massacre in Al Heffa, he said: “If the Syrian Army gets in, yes; I do expect a massacre. It’s normal; it’s happening everywhere.”
Mr. Assad’s government has denied any involvement in mass killings and has blamed them on armed terrorist groups, its terminology for the Free Syrian Army rebel force and other elements in the political opposition.
But his government came under new criticism in an annual appraisal by the United Nations about children in armed conflicts, which included a grim section on Syria. It said Syrian forces and plainclothes militiamen known as shabiha had used children as shields to insulate soldiers from rebel assaults. The report also accused those forces of torturing and molesting boys as young as 9 and said children had been maimed and killed in attacks on civilian areas.
“In almost all recorded cases, children were among the victims of military operations by government forces, including the Syrian armed forces, the intelligence forces and the shabiha militia, in their ongoing conflict with the opposition, including the Free Syrian Army,” the report said. It was based on interviews with witnesses, victims and former members of the Syrian Army, conducted between March 2011, when antigovernment protests began, and the first months of 2012.
The report gave details of one especially brutal episode in March in the village of Ayn Larouz in northern Idlib Province. Witnesses described an attack by Syrian Army forces on the village that killed 11, including three teenage boys. During a subsequent raid on the village, the report said, several dozen boys and girls between the ages of 8 and 13 were taken from their homes and made to stand at the windows of buses carrying Syrian soldiers.
After entering the village, Syrian forces detained and interrogated 34 people before executing four of them — two men and two teenagers, aged 14 and 16 — and burning their bodies, the report said.
At the time, activists reported that the village, where the government suspected defecting soldiers of hiding, had been surrounded by tanks before government troops stormed in.
The report from the United Nations’ special representative for children and armed conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, also cited reports of young children associated with the Free Syrian Army, made up of army defectors and armed rebels, carrying guns and wearing camouflage uniforms. The rebels have said they do not recruit fighters younger than 17.
“The world is keeping a detailed account of the violence committed against civilians in Syria, and I am confident that these crimes will not go unpunished,” Ms. Coomaraswamy said in a statement.
In Geneva on Tuesday, a spokesman for Mr. Annan, Ahmad Fawzi, told reporters that “diplomacy is intensifying” behind the planned meeting of an international contact group proposed by Mr. Annan that would “put irrevocable pressure” on Mr. Assad and his adversaries to end the violence.
“The problem is not the plan, the problem is implementation of the plan,” said Mr. Fawzi, adding that Mr. Annan and his team were “working the phones to try and get governments with influence to exercise their influence.”
“We hope this contact group meeting will take place soon,” Mr. Fawzi said. “The objective of convening this group is to give teeth to the plan; it’s not to create a new plan.”
Mr. Fawzi did not specify a proposed date, location or list of participants in the contact group, although Mr. Annan has suggested that it will include countries that can exert some influence on Mr. Assad, notably Russia, China and Iran. The United States opposes the inclusion of Iran, which it accuses of helping the Assad government repress his opponents.
Rick Gladstone and J. David Goodman reported from New York, and Mark Landler from Washington. Nick Cumming-Bruce contributed reporting from Geneva and Dalal Mawad from Beirut, Lebanon.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/13/world/middleeast/violence-in-syria-continues-as-protesters-killed.html?hp
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