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HOPES FOR A halt to violence in Syria over a Muslim holiday lay in tatters Saturday as fighting raged, war planes targeted Aleppo and some 146 people were reported killed on the first day of Eid al-Adha.
The ceasefire conditionally agreed by President Bashar Assad’s regime and the main rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) on Thursday had raised the prospect of the first real halt to the fighting after 19 months of conflict.
But the first day Friday of Eid – one of the most sacred holidays in Islam – saw the ceasefire shattered by fresh fighting, deadly car bombings and a new regime vow to hunt down “armed terrorists”, its term for rebel fighters.
A rebel commander in the embattled northern city of Aleppo said there was no doubt the ceasefire initiative, proposed by UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, had fallen apart.
“This is a failure for Brahimi. This initiative was dead before it started,” Abdel Jabbar al-Okaidi, the head of the FSA military council in Aleppo, told AFP by telephone.
He insisted the FSA had not broken the ceasefire and was only carrying out defensive actions.
“I was on several fronts yesterday and the army did not stop shelling,” Okaidi said. “Our mission is to defend the people, it is not us who are attacking.”
A Syrian rebel soldier watches an enemy position amid mortar explosions and gunfire in the Karmal Jabl neighborhood in Aleppo, Syria. Image: 26 October 2012 – Narciso Contreras/AP/Press Association Images
The Eid holiday had started with a lull in the fighting – and state television footage of Assad smiling and chatting with worshippers at a Damascus mosque – but quickly degenerated.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a key monitor of the conflict, said 146 people were killed in bombings and fighting on Friday, including 53 civilians, 50 rebels and 43 members Assad’s forces.
The most dramatic attack on Friday saw a car bomb in Damascus explode in a residential area housing police officers and their families, killing at least eight people and wounding more than 30, according to state media.
But clashes also continued at most flashpoints of the Syrian conflict and army commanders announced late on Friday that Assad’s forces were still engaged in “fighting against armed terrorist groups”.
A Syrian displaced child holds the picture of his father, killed by Syrian army forces, during a demonstration in a refugee camp near Atma, Idlib province, Syria, Friday, Oct. 26, 2012. A powerful car bomb exploded in Damascus and scattered fighting broke out in several areas across Syria Friday, quickly dashing any hopes that a shaky holiday cease-fire would hold for four days.(AP Photo/ Manu Brabo)
Early Saturday, fresh violence killed eight people, the Observatory said, amid clashes and shelling in Damascus province, Aleppo, Daraa in the south and the eastern city of Deir Ezzor.
The Observatory said regime warplanes had also resumed flying over Aleppo on Saturday after a brief lull on Friday.
The Britain-based Observatory relies on a countrywide network of activists and medics in civilian and military hospitals. It says its tolls take into account civilian, military, and rebel casualties.
According to the Observatory, more than 35,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which began as an anti-regime uprising but is now a civil war pitting mainly Sunni rebels against Assad’s regime dominated by his minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.
Assad’s forces and the FSA had both agreed to a call by Brahimi to lay down their arms for the four-day Eid, but both also reserved the right to respond to attacks.
Brahimi had hoped the truce might lead to a more permanent ceasefire during which he could push for a political solution and bring aid to stricken areas.
Okaidi, the FSA commander in Aleppo, said the ceasefire had been doomed from the start and that the international community needed to stop putting faith in the regime.
“The Syrian people have become guinea pigs, every time there is an envoy who tries an initiative, while we know the regime will not respect it.”
Clothes belonging to a displaced Syrian family dry on the top of a tent in a refugee camp near Atma, Idlib province. (AP Photo/ Manu Brabo)
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This report seems to indicate that victims of trafficking have an automatic entitlement to asylum ?…would these women, mainly, not want to return to their home countries?
@winston smith: to be fair, they could be from cultures where their families would disown them for the shame of being trafficked. At the same time, would you want to return to a country where you had been captured and sold from once already knowing that it isn’t safe and could easily happen again?
@Jeffrey McMahon: So what about hundreds of millions of other women in these cultures where they can be captured and sold ?? Shouldn’t we offer all of them free asylum here? Or you like to help only the ones who got already delivered ???
a@winston smith: It is big business in some countries, to take a fellow citizen and exploit them to a deprave level and we are supposed to open our doors to everyone who practices any and all crimes against vulnerable non Irish people. If they don’t know what traps they are how do they know who to turn to when they get targeted. The ICI have never said a good word about Ireland or its services, just a stream of what we are not doing or what we are doing wrong. Never a mention about what Irish people have to go without in their own country as regard to services. This crowd are actively recruiting more migrants to bring here which is not why they are well funded by our government.
IF YOU have been processed ,and refused asylum , go home .
It’s pretty sad really. There are real victims of trafficking in Ireland who probably just want to go home but instead get mixed up in the legal bureaucracy that’s involved in direct provision. If the ICI stopped supporting economic migrants with false stories of persecution then maybe they could spend more time getting these victims home instead of lumping them in with a bunch of chancers.
Yes,I thought Ireland had at best an indifferent approach to Asylum seekers ,this report is an indictment of a policy of wilful neglect .
o policy to dehumanise ,a refusal by the State to harbour those victims of violence in a safe place ,strip them of dignity so they voluntarily leave,Not surprising ,seeing what we have as a Society, perpetrated on our own people ,and our continuing policy of inaction in not building affordable Social Housing but handing it over to a bunch of vulture developers,
Ireland should do its duty to these people,
@Brian O Reilly: ,as has already be en pointed out why dont they want to return to there own families ,its another way to try and stay in this country. have u been to dublin recently?
@ian kennedy: are you saying they are deliberately getting themselves taken or that they are lying? It’s hard to tell.
@Dave O Keeffe: lying
@Brian O Reilly: Brian while there are undoubtedly cases of trafficking it is also possible for people to claim they were trafficked as a way of seeking an advantage in the asylum process. I note that the spokesperson says that these cases are the “tip of the iceberg”. Is this so or is this simply wild hyperbole? Where is the proof?
Direct provision is not the culprit here. DP has nothing to do with the legal asylum process. It is a way of providing accommodation and related supports such as medical cards for asylum seekers who have no accommodation or means. The alternative is homelessness. Finally, processing most asylum claims takes time.
If additional supports are to be provided to alleged trafficking victims then the HSE should provide them. Not the Dept of Justice.
The vast majority of problems arose between the late 1990′s and circa 2005 when massive numbers of trafficked people were arriving here. People in the dept. were making a fortune out of them, as were the legal profession. No one wanted to know. No one gave a damn, in fact.
The IOC lol
have your say