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Mortar kills 20 at Damascus university as Turkey denies expelling refugees

Mortar kills 20 at Damascus university as Turkey denies expelling refugees

Syrian rebels bring war to capital as UNHCR investigates claims that Turkey forced refugees back across border after protest

Martin Chulov in Beirut

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 March 2013 19.34 GMT

A Syrian refugee carries her children near the Turkish border. Ankara denied expelling scores of Syrian refugees after a protest. Photograph: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty

A mortar strike on Damascus university killed about 20 students on Thursday, exposing the fragility of the capital’s most sensitive zone to attack.

Syrian officials blamed rebel groups for the strike, which wounded dozens more students. The opposition denied responsibility. All the victims had been in an outdoors cafeteria near the heart of the campus. It was the second consecutive day that mortars had hit the city. An attack on Wednesday struck near a hotel, causing damage but no casualties.

The presidential palace has in recent weeks also been hit by rockets and mortars fired by rebel groups, who have consolidated inroads they made earlier this year on the city’s southern and western outskirts.

The groups are a mix of Islamist-leaning and more secular brigades. The jihadist group Jabhat al-Nusra is also active, particularly in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp nearer the heart of the city, which it entered in January.

Throughout the first three months of the year, loyalist forces and rebel groups have fought a series of savage battles on the urban fringes, often involving rockets and mortars and air strikes from the regime side. Rebels have been trying to cut off access to Damascus airport and to use the area as staging ground for an assault on the capital, which is protected by two of the Syrian military’s most capable divisions and a large special forces unit.

Loyalist forces also command the high ground around Damascus and use mountains and ridges to shell rebel-held areas.

Central Damascus, despite resounding to the sound of regular incoming and outgoing fire, has not been a main battlezone. Despite prolific military checkpoints, life in the city has appeared more normal than in many other Syrian towns and cities, allowing officials to project an air of “business as usual”.

However, a succession of apparent suicide bombings, including an attack last week inside a mosque that killed a leading Muslim imam, are eroding trust in officials to keep the war far from the most important state institutions.

Large numbers of Damascus residents, including much of the middle class and refugees, have fled the city for Lebanon or Jordan, both of which are now groaning under the influx. Lebanon alone is believed to be hosting 350,000 children of school age. Many thousands more have not been registered by authorities.

Aid dollars have started to reach the sprawling tent cities that are housing the refugees, who number more than one million with those who have fled to Turkey included. The onset of spring, after a sharp but mercilessly short winter, has eased housing fears, but the camps remain in desperate need and often squalid.

Brawls broke out at a camp near the Jordanian border on Thursday and Turkish riot police used water cannons in a camp in Akçakale after refugees protested over the death of a child from a tent fire, in which three other people were also wounded.

The UNHCR, the UN refugee body, said it was investigating claims, denied by Turkey, that up to 60 Syrians from the camp’s 25,000 residents, had been forced to return to Syria after the disturbance.

via Mortar kills 20 at Damascus university as Turkey denies expelling refugees | World news | guardian.co.uk.

March 29, 2013
Turkey and Israel Feel the Effect as Syria’s Civil War Fuels Tensions at Borders

By SEBNEM ARSU and RICK GLADSTONE

ISTANBUL — Border tensions caused by Syria’s civil war worsened on Thursday, as Turkey threatened to prosecute or deport 130 refugees implicated in a violent protest, and Israel reported rising numbers of injured Syrians seeking medical help on the Israeli side of their disputed boundary.

The tensions, which underscored how the Syrian conflict is threatening the region’s stability, came as international diplomacy aimed at ending the conflict faced new complications. Russia, a major supporter of the Syrian government, suggested that the special Syria envoy of the Arab League and United Nations had lost credibility because the Arab League had sided with the insurgency.

Turkey, like Iraq, Jordan and Lebanon, has accepted tens of thousands of Syrian refugees since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began two years ago. The Turks threatened for the first time to deport a group of refugees after a riot at one of Turkey’s 17 refugee camps on Wednesday, a threat that alarmed the United Nations refugee agency, which said such a move would violate international law.

Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Geneva, said in an interview that a forced return would breach legal protections that prohibit host countries from forcing refugees out.

Turkey changed its stance on Thursday, saying that the refugees would not be deported but had agreed to leave voluntarily after having been told that they would face prosecution if they stayed.

The Foreign Ministry, in a statement, said the group of refugees “wanted to use the right to voluntary return, and left for Syria.”

A local government official in Turkey confirmed this Thursday afternoon, saying, “A deportation is out of question, and we cannot deport them when we do not have the right to do so according to the terms of temporary protected status.”

The 130 Syrians had been identified as residents of the Suleiman Shah camp, in the township of Akcakale in Sanliurfa Province, who had been involved in a riot on Wednesday that damaged the camp’s facilities, including a medical center.

The circumstances behind the riot are in dispute, but it may have started after a fire in a tent that killed a 7-year-old girl and injured her two sisters.

Television images showed dozens of people hurling stones inside and outside the camp, cars with broken windows and damaged laptops inside a press vehicle.

Camp security officers, unable to contain the violence, called in the military police, and images on television showed armored military vehicles moving into the camp. The military police tear-gassed and hosed down the protesters.

The Turkish government said that the protest broke out when a crowd gathered outside the camp demanding entry. With 35,000 refugees, the camp is full, another local government official said, denying that the protest was linked to the fire, which he attributed to faulty electrical wiring.

“It was clearly an act of provocation, which started at the gate, outside the camp, far from where the fire broke out,” the official said.

Unlike Syria’s other neighbors, Israel — which remains in a technical state of war with Syria — has not accepted any Syrian refugees. But it has become increasingly concerned as fighting between Syrian insurgents and loyalists has crept close to the decade-old cease-fire line in the Golan Heights. An Israeli military official said Thursday that it had bolstered medical teams on the frontier because of wounded Syrians seeking aid.

The latest such episode occurred on Wednesday, when several Syrians arrived at the demarcation fence. Israeli Army medical crews attended to most of them on location and returned them to Syria, but two who had suffered severe head wounds were taken to a hospital in Nahariya, in northern Israel.

One of them died soon after, and the military transferred his body back to Syria early Thursday with help from United Nations peacekeepers in the area, according to Haggai Einav, a spokesman for the Western Galilee Hospital in Nahariya. The second remained in serious but stable condition on Thursday after having three operations, Mr. Einav added.

At the United Nations, Vitaly I. Churkin, the Russian ambassador, enlarged on remarks Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov had made in Moscow, saying that the Arab League was playing a “destructive” role in international attempts to peacefully resolve the Syrian conflict because it had granted Syria’s vacant seat to the main opposition coalition, which seeks to topple Mr. Assad by force.

Mr. Lavrov told reporters in Moscow that the Arab League’s action had raised serious questions about the role of Lakhdar Brahimi, the special Syria envoy who represents both the Arab League and United Nations. Mr. Churkin said Mr. Brahimi should distance himself from the Arab League.

A spokesman for Mr. Brahimi said he had no immediate comment. Mr. Brahimi was appointed the joint envoy last August.

“The Arab League has basically taken itself out of the joint effort,” Mr. Churkin said at a news conference, criticizing opposition supporters as concentrating on a military solution while merely “paying lip service” to a political one.

“Now, instead of dialogue, we have a group of people whose legitimacy has been established from outside the country,” Mr. Churkin said. “Their legitimacy does not have any ground in Syria, no elections.”

Mr. Churkin dismissed the opposition group, the National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces, as “an international traveling thing” and described its work as “chaotic,” with a constant parade of new leaders.

He said Russia still maintained hope for a political settlement, although critics maintain that it has done little to actually push Mr. Assad in that direction.

Mr. Churkin also said the Syrian opposition’s aspiration to take Syria’s seat at the United Nations would probably fail.

“We’ll oppose it very strongly,” he said. “The U.N. is an intergovernmental organization. You simply do not seat opposition groups who have not gone through the process of legitimization.”

Sebnem Arsu reported from Istanbul, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Nick Cumming-Bruce contributed reporting from Geneva, Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem, and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations.

A version of this article appeared in print on March 29, 2013, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Turkey and Israel Feel the Effect as Syria’s Civil War Fuels Tensions at Borders.

March 29, 2013
Istanbul Symphony Orchestra plays to draw attention to Syria

ISTANBUL – Anatolia News Agency

Istanbul’s CRR hosted on March 25 a concert to benefit Syria. The Istanbul Symphony Orchestra played under the baton of Bosnian Emir Nuhanovic

Syrian violinist Ali Moraly made an appearance as a soloist. AA photo

The Istanbul Symphony Orchestra performed March 25 under the baton of famous Bosnian orchestra conductor Emir Nuhanovic. The concert at Istanbul’s Cemal Reşit Rey Concert Hall (CRR) was organized to draw attention to the human tragedy in Syria and hosted Syrian violinist Ali Moraly as a soloist.

Culture and Tourism Minister Ömer Çelik, who made a speech before the concert, said that while optimism was in the air all around the world in the 1990s, the people of Sarajevo faced a wild massacre. He said he had been a student at the time.

“We students were organized to find out what we could do for Sarajevo. Although Turkey mobilized its all options, we did not have today’s opportunities and all of us felt the pain and sorrow of our helplessness for Sarajevo. In the middle of the tragedy, the late Alija Izetbegovic called for the master conductor Nuhanovic and asked him to make their voice be heard all around the world. The modern world, which had nothing to say for Sarajevo, began to speak again.”

Tragedy before the whole world

Çelik said Syria was currently experiencing a tragedy before the whole world and the concert was held to draw attention to this drama. “There are 70,000 martyrs and 250,000 missing. There are millions of refugees outside the country, and there are millions of people who had to leave their place in Syria. Now, in order to make a call for all human beings, art will make its voice heard for Syria under the leadership of a great master. What should be asked here is how those who remain silent against the events in Syria could do it. We will give the most meaningful answer to this tonight in this venue,” he said.

The minister said the question of what art is would find the most meaningful answer that night as well.

“Rather than watching the tragedy in Bosnia in the 1990s, Turkey did its best. It is trying to do the same for Syria today. But there is a difference today, and everybody feels what this difference is. Today we are all around the world not only with our people but also with all organs of the state. We do not stand by those who slaughter and oppress. We are not following a policy of lack of conscience.”

Çelik said it was not an ordinary night but rather the 70,000 martyrs and hundreds of thousands of missing were together with them.

“We will be the tongue of millions of refugees tonight. This is art. The losses of Bosnia will meet the losses of Syria, and Istanbul will bring brotherhood to Aleppo, Damascus and Sarajevo once again.”

‘Mothers bury their own children in Syria’

At the opening of the concert, Nuhanovic addressed the audience, saying Europe and most of the world did nothing for the incidents in Sarajevo and only Turkey had made efforts against this tragedy at the United Nations.

He said that to draw attention to the events, they gave a concert with conductor Zubin Mehta in 1994 under hard circumstances upon the order of Izetbegovic. “The tear of a child is worth the wealth of the world. Mothers bury their own children now in Syria.”

Following the speeches Tomaso Albinoni’s Adagio in G-Minor, Maurice Jarre’s “The Message” and Beethoven’s 5th Symphony were performed at the concert.

March/27/2013

via MUSIC – Istanbul Symphony Orchestra plays to draw attention to Syria.

March 27, 2013
CIA Helping Turkey and Qatar Shop for Arms for Syrian Jihadists

Bizarrely Secretary of State John Kerry just dropped in on Iraq to ask their Shiite-dominated government to stop allowing through weapons shipments for Syria’s government while Obama Inc. is overseeing the smuggling of huge amounts of weapons to Sunni Jihadists in Syria.

With help from the C.I.A., Arab governments and Turkey have sharply increased their military aid to Syria’s opposition fighters in recent months, expanding a secret airlift of arms and equipment for the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, according to air traffic data, interviews with officials in several countries and the accounts of rebel commanders.

The airlift, which began on a small scale in early 2012 and continued intermittently through last fall, expanded into a steady and much heavier flow late last year, the data shows. It has grown to include more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military-style cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara, and, to a lesser degree, at other Turkish and Jordanian airports.

From offices at secret locations, American intelligence officers have helped the Arab governments shop for weapons, including a large procurement from Croatia…

Secretary of State John Kerry pressed Iraq on Sunday to do more to halt Iranian arms shipments through its airspace; he did so even as the most recent military cargo flight from Qatar for the rebels landed at Esenboga early Sunday night.

And it’s no wonder that the Iraqi government laughed in Kerry’s face. Why should Iraq respect an arms embargo when Obama Inc helps Qatar violate it, just as it did in Libya?

Most of the cargo flights have occurred since November, after the presidential election in the United States

This is Obama’s new lame duck status showing us who he really is.

via CIA Helping Turkey and Qatar Shop for Arms for Syrian Jihadists.

March 26, 2013
Israel Says Syria Reason for Restoring Turkey Ties

Concerns that Syria’s stockpile of chemical weapons could reach militant groups bordering Israel and Turkey was the motivating factor in restoring relations with Ankara after a three year rift, Israel’s prime minister said.

Benjamin Netanyahu wrote on his Facebook page Saturday that Israel and Turkey, which border Syria, need to communicate with each other over the Syrian crisis.

“The fact that the crisis in Syria intensifies from moment to moment was the main consideration in my view,” Netanyahu wrote.

Netanyahu phoned his Turkish counterpart Friday and apologized for a botched raid on a Gaza bound flotilla in 2010 that left eight Turks and one Turkish-American dead. Turkey demanded an apology as a condition for restoring ties. Netanyahu had until now refused to apologize, saying Israeli soldiers acted in self-defense after being attacked by activists.

Turkey and Israel were once strong allies but relations began decline after Erdogan, whose party has roots in Turkey’s Islamist movement, became prime minister in 2003. Erdogan has embarked on a campaign to make Turkey a regional powerhouse in an attempt to become the leading voice in the Muslim world, distanced from Israel.

Animosity increased after the flotilla incident and ambassadors were later withdrawn.

Spillover from fighting in Syria’s civil war reaches Israeli communities in the Golan Heights from time to time. Errant mortar shells and machine gun fire have caused damage, sparked fires and spread panic but lead to no injuries so far.

Israel has expressed concern that Syria’s chemical arsenal could fall into the hands of militants like Lebanon’s Hezbollah, an Assad ally, or an al-Qaida-linked group fighting with the rebels.

Netanyahu’s national security adviser, Yaakov Amidror, said the timing was right for reconciling with Turkey. “Between us and Turkey is a country that is falling apart and that has chemical weapons,” he said.

Last week, Syrian rebels and Assad’s government blamed each other for a chemical attack on a village. The U.S. said there was no evidence chemical weapons were used.

The use of such weapons would be a nightmare scenario in the two-year-old conflict that has killed an estimated 70,000 people.

President Barack Obama helped broker the Israeli apology to Turkey. Obama has declared the use, deployment or transfer of the weapons a “red line” for possible military intervention by the U.S. in the Syrian conflict.

via Israel Says Syria Reason for Restoring Turkey Ties – ABC News.

March 24, 2013
ISTANBUL: Rebels pick US citizen as Syrian prime minister

BY BEN HUBBARD

ASSOCIATED PRESS

Ghassan Hitto, the Syrian opposition’s newly elected interim prime minister, center right, and head of the Syrian National Coalition for Opposition and Revolutionary Forces Mouaz al-Khatib, center left, and other members seen during a meeting in Istanbul,
Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/03/19/3295208/rebels-pick-us-citizen-as-syrian.html#storylink=cpy

ISTANBUL — The man chosen to head the Syrian opposition’s new interim government is a Syrian-born American citizen who has spent decades in the United States working for technology companies and advocating for various Muslim causes.

Members of the opposition Syrian National Coalition elected Ghassan Hitto in a vote early Tuesday to head an administration they hope will provide an alternative to President Bashar Assad’s regime and help coordinate the fight against his forces.

“The new government will work from the starting point of complete national sovereignty and the unity of the Syrian land and people, which can only by achieved through continued determination to topple Bashar Assad, his regime and all its pillars,” he said in a speech in Istanbul.

Much remains unknown about the body that Hitto will lead, including how many ministers it will have and if it will receive enough support to project its authority inside Syria, where it is supposed to set up operations.

The head of the coalition, Mouaz al-Khatib, threw his support behind the new body, and the head of the coalition’s military leadership, Gen. Salim Idris, did the same Monday before the results were announced.

But the new government could find it difficult to become the top rebel authority in Syria. A patchwork of rebel brigades and local councils has sprung up in areas seized from government forces, many of them struggling to provide services and running their own security, prisons and courts.

Hundreds of loosely affiliated rebels groups are involved in the civil war against government forces, and they are unlikely to submit to an outside authority unless it can provide them with aid such as arms and ammunition.

Due to his many years in the United States, Hitto is little known inside Syria and even among some members of the mostly exile coalition.

Coalition member Salah al-Hamwi, who is in charge of the coalition’s local councils in Hama province, said he had worked with Hitto to deliver aid and was impressed that he had left his life in the U.S. to use his skills for Syria.

“He has the mind of an accountant, not an emotional mind, so he is very good at analyzing what needs to be done,” he said.

Others in the coalition complained of his selection.

Veteran opposition figure Kamal al-Labwani said he suspected Hitto had been put in place by larger political powers, like Qatar, which has heavily financed the opposition, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

He also said he as a coalition member never got to meet or question Hitto before his election.

“I wanted to ask him what the women in Daraya wear and what’s the population of Homs?” he said, suggesting that Hitto was out of touch with Syria.

“I wanted to ask him how many years he’s lived in Syria,” he said. “He left when he was young.”

Hitto won 35 of the 48 votes cast by the coalition’s 63 active members.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland welcomed Hitto’s election, saying the U.S. was aware of his aid work.

“This is an individual who, out of concern for the Syrian people, left a very successful life in Texas to go and work on humanitarian relief for the people of his home country,” she said.

She added: “We’re very hopeful that his election will foster unity and cohesion among the opposition.”

Hitto’s many years abroad and fluent English could facilitate his efforts to win international support for his government. He called on the international community on Tuesday to grant his government Syria’s seats at the Arab League and the United Nations.

Hitto was born in Syria’s capital of Damascus in 1963 and moved to the United States as a young man, where he earned double bachelors’ degrees from Purdue University and an MBA from Indiana Wesleyan University, according to the coalition.

He worked for IT companies and advocated for a number of Muslim causes. After 9/11, he helped found the Muslim Legal Fund of America, which provides legal support to Arabs, Muslims and Asians. He also helped run an Islamic private school in Garland, Texas. Its website describes it as a place “where knowledge, faith, academics and character meet!”

Hitto is a member of Syria’s Kurdish ethnic minority, though he is not considered a representative of the community, which has not joined the coalition.

He is married to a teacher and has four children.

In a speech to a rally in Fort Worth, Texas, in 2012, he spoke of his son, Obaida, who was applying to law school when “he made up his mind … to help the people of Syria.” His son has since been in the embattled city of Deir al-Zour, shooting videos to post online.

The elder Hitto left Texas late last year to move to Turkey, where he helped run the coalition’s aid program to Syria.

In the video of the Fort Worth rally, posted online in September, Hitto criticized Assad’s regime for deploying its army to suppress political protests while not sending it to take back the Golan Heights, which Israel captured from Syria in 1967 and later annexed.

“They were faced with live bullets, with tanks, with soldiers, an army that did not bother to fire a single bullet to claim or to attempt to reclaim its own occupied land for 42 years,” he said.

Associated Press writer Bradley Klapper contributed reporting from Washington.

via ISTANBUL: Rebels pick US citizen as Syrian prime minister – World Wires – MiamiHerald.com.

March 20, 2013