Furious combat raged around strategic airports in northern Syria yesterday, the day after the UN gave a staggering toll of 60,000 dead in the country’s 21-month civil war.
Insurgents besieged troops on the perimeter of the international airport in Aleppo, the hard fought-over main city of Syria’s north, and a military airbase in Idlib Province, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Aleppo’s critical civilian transportation hub has been closed since Tuesday after repeated attacks by rebels, according to an airport official, who said it would reopen as soon as the army regained control of the surrounding areas.
Photo: Reuters
Rebels holding much of the area surrounding Aleppo were targeted by government shelling overnight in the city’s Sakhur District and in the towns of Marea and Aazaz farther north near the Turkish border.
Meanwhile, hundreds of fighters with two hardcore Islamist rebel groups, al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham, fought soldiers around the Taftanaz airbase in Idlib, the British-based Observatory said, adding that air strikes were blasting rebel positions.
The rebels had remotely detonated a bomb at one of the airport’s gates the day before, but were pushed back by the army, according to both the Observatory and a military source inside the base.
The military source said that clashes outside the base had gone on non-stop for more than 48 hours, and there had been a large number of rebel casualties.
Three rebels were killed in combat with troops around the Deir Ezzor military airport, as fighting also broke out in the nearby provincial capital in the east of the country.
Near Damascus, warplanes carried out air strikes and ground troops launched rockets on the southwest towns of Daraya and Moadamiyet al-Sham in fresh attempts to wrest back control. In the town of Mleha, just east of Damascus, bodies were being recovered from a service station hit by a regime air strike on Wednesday.
The toll from that attack was not yet known, but the Observatory said at least 12 bodies were recovered, several of them rebels. The Local Coordination Committees, a grassroots network of activists, estimated that at least 50 people were killed.
The Observatory said 219 people died on Wednesday nationwide: 115 civilians, 57 rebels and 47 soldiers.
The overall death toll of the 21-month Syrian conflict has unsettled observers.
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Wednesday called it “truly shocking,” as she revealed a vetted UN tally nearly a third higher than that previously compiled by the Observatory.
“The number of casualties is much higher than we expected, and is truly shocking,” she said in a statement.
“Given there has been no let-up in the conflict since the end of November, we can assume that more than 60,000 people have been killed by the beginning of 2013,” Pillay said.
The average number of deaths recorded in recent months was five times that registered in the middle of 2011, reflecting intensifying viciousness and the regime’s use of air strikes.
Pillay said in her statement that “this massive loss of life could have been avoided” if the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad had not chosen the “ruthless suppression” of what initially were peaceful protests.
Meanwhile, a freelance US reporter who contributed videos to Agence France-Presse (AFP) in recent months was kidnapped in Syria six weeks ago and has been missing since, his family revealed on Wednesday.
James Foley, 39, an experienced war reporter who has covered other conflicts, was seized by armed men in Idlib on Nov. 22, witnesses say.
No group has claimed responsibility for the abduction.
Foley’s family, which had earlier asked media groups not to report the abduction in the hope that a low profile would assist in efforts to free him, broke their silence on Wednesday to reveal his plight.
“We want Jim to come safely home, or at least we need to speak with him to know he’s okay,” said his father, John Foley.
RETHINK? The defense ministry and Navy Command Headquarters could take over the indigenous submarine project and change its production timeline, a source said Admiral Huang Shu-kuang’s (黃曙光) resignation as head of the Indigenous Submarine Program and as a member of the National Security Council could affect the production of submarines, a source said yesterday. Huang in a statement last night said he had decided to resign due to national security concerns while expressing the hope that it would put a stop to political wrangling that only undermines the advancement of the nation’s defense capabilities. Taiwan People’s Party Legislator Vivian Huang (黃珊珊) yesterday said that the admiral, her older brother, felt it was time for him to step down and that he had completed what he
ROLLER-COASTER RIDE: More than five earthquakes ranging from magnitude 4.4 to 5.5 on the Richter scale shook eastern Taiwan in rapid succession yesterday afternoon Back-to-back weather fronts are forecast to hit Taiwan this week, resulting in rain across the nation in the coming days, the Central Weather Administration said yesterday, as it also warned residents in mountainous regions to be wary of landslides and rockfalls. As the first front approached, sporadic rainfall began in central and northern parts of Taiwan yesterday, the agency said, adding that rain is forecast to intensify in those regions today, while brief showers would also affect other parts of the nation. A second weather system is forecast to arrive on Thursday, bringing additional rain to the whole nation until Sunday, it
CONDITIONAL: The PRC imposes secret requirements that the funding it provides cannot be spent in states with diplomatic relations with Taiwan, Emma Reilly said China has been bribing UN officials to obtain “special benefits” and to block funding from countries that have diplomatic ties with Taiwan, a former UN employee told the British House of Commons on Tuesday. At a House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee hearing into “international relations within the multilateral system,” former Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) employee Emma Reilly said in a written statement that “Beijing paid bribes to the two successive Presidents of the [UN] General Assembly” during the two-year negotiation of the Sustainable Development Goals. Another way China exercises influence within the UN Secretariat is
CHINA REACTS: The patrol and reconnaissance plane ‘transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,’ the 7th Fleet said, while Taipei said it saw nothing unusual The US 7th Fleet yesterday said that a US Navy P-8A Poseidon flew through the Taiwan Strait, a day after US and Chinese defense heads held their first talks since November 2022 in an effort to reduce regional tensions. The patrol and reconnaissance plane “transited the Taiwan Strait in international airspace,” the 7th Fleet said in a news release. “By operating within the Taiwan Strait in accordance with international law, the United States upholds the navigational rights and freedoms of all nations.” In a separate statement, the Ministry of National Defense said that it monitored nearby waters and airspace as the aircraft