US President Barack Obama warned Syria of “enormous consequences” if it resorts to chemical weapons, as regime forces launched a wave of air and ground attacks and a Japanese reporter was killed in Aleppo.
Regime fighter jets and shells struck towns in northern Syria and areas in Damascus yesterday, killing nine people including women and children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
Japanese reporter Mika Yamamoto, 45, died after coming under fire from up to 15 apparently pro-government troops as she covered the anti-regime movement in the key northern hub of Aleppo on Monday, a colleague said.
Photo: AFP / Nippon Television Network
Her death brings to four the number of foreign journalists who have lost their lives in last year.
Obama put Syrian President Basher al-Assad’s regime on notice on Monday that although he had not ordered military intervention “at this point,” the US was “monitoring the situation very carefully,” and had drawn up contingency plans.
“There would be enormous consequences if we start seeing movement on the chemical weapons front or the use of chemical weapons ... That would change my calculations significantly,” he told reporters at the White House.
Obama — who has repeatedly called for al-Assad to stand down as the conflict intensified — said the US would regard any recourse by Damascus to its deadly arsenal as crossing a “red line.”
Syria’s admission last month that it has chemical weapons and could use them in case of any “external aggression” added a dangerous new dimension to a conflict that began as a peaceful uprising but has descended into a bitter armed revolt.
Syrian forces yesterday shelled districts in the battered city of Aleppo, killing nine civilians, among them women and children, and pounded the nearby towns of Marea and Tall Rifaat, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The Local Coordination Committees (LCC) — a network of opposition activists on the ground — said warplanes were also striking Marea, causing casualties when one building collapsed.
“Residents are trying to pull out the martyrs and the wounded from the rubble,” the LCC said.
Aleppo, the main northern city which lies near the Turkish border, has borne the brunt of the conflict since fighting erupted there a month ago, with the regime warning it would be the scene of the “mother of all battles.”
Yesterday’s violence followed a bloody day in which 167 people were killed across Syria, the Observatory said, with no letup in the bloodshed as Muslims celebrated the Eid al-Fitr holiday which marks the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
The LCC also reported heavy artillery shelling from tanks at a checkpoint in Jdaidet Artuz, southwest of the capital and said warplanes were firing from mounted machineguns on the suburbs of al-Hajar al-Aswad and Babila.
Meanwhile, Yamamoto’s long-time collaborator Kazutaka Sato told Japanese broadcasters he and the veteran war reporter had been with anti-regime forces when they were shot at by what appeared to be a group of about 15 government troops. The TBS network cited Sato as saying she had been shot in the neck.
Abu Raashid, commander of Liwa Asifat al-Shamal (Northern Storm Brigade), one of the myriad that make up the rebel Free Syrian Army, said his group took Yamamoto’s body across the border into Turkey.
“If the international community doesn’t move to help the Syrian people, they have to react to the spilling of their citizens’ blood on Syrian territory,” he said.
Yamamoto worked for the Japan Press news agency and had also covered the war in Afghanistan and the Iraq conflict, according to the company Web site.
The Observatory said three other journalists — a Lebanese woman, an Arab male working for a US media outlet and a Turkish national — were missing.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of