Fighting erupted in a Damascus suburb and around an army base in northern Syria yesterday, opposition sources said, as truce marking a Muslim holiday crumbled almost before it had begun.
Three people were killed by tank fire and snipers in Harasta, a town near Damascus, activists said.
The Syrian military had said it would hold fire yesterday morning following an appeal by international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi for a pause in fighting which has killed 32,000 people and which threatens to draw regional powers into the conflict.
However, violations by both sides swiftly marred the truce.
Rebels in a northern town near the Turkish border said a sniper had killed one of their fighters early yesterday and a journalist there heard the sound of four tank rounds.
“We don’t believe the ceasefire will work,” rebel commander Basel Eissa said. “There’s no Eid [‘festival’] for us rebels on the front line. The only Eid we can celebrate will be liberation.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels were trying to storm the Wadi al-Daif army base, which is less than 1km from the Damascus-Aleppo highway, and that troops had fired artillery at a nearby village.
Citing opposition activists, the British-based group also said the army had fired six rockets at the besieged Khalidiya district of Homs, wounding two people and damaging houses.
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces had announced conditional acceptance of a cease fire on Thursday night.
“On the occasion of the blessed Eid al-Adha, the general command of the army and armed forces announces a halt to military operations on the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic, from Friday morning ... until Monday,” the army said.
However, it warned it would respond to any rebel attacks, or moves to exploit the truce to reinforce or resupply insurgents.
A commander from the rebel Free Syrian Army had said his fighters would also honor the ceasefire, but demanded that al-Assad meet opposition demands for the release of thousands of detainees.
Some Islamist fighters, including the Nusra Front, dismissed the truce before it even came into effect, but after a night of clashes in Aleppo, Damascus and the west of the country, activists had reported an initial lull in hostilities.
One exception was the southern town of Inkhil, where three people were wounded as they tried to protest after special prayers in a mosque to mark the start of the Eid, according to Rami Abdulrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory.
Several other demonstrations in the southern province of Daraa, cradle of the protests which erupted against al-Assad in March last year, were also broken up, Abdulrahman said.
Al-Assad himself, who has vowed to defeat what he says are Islamist fighters backed by Syria’s enemies abroad, was shown on state television attending Eid prayers at a Damascus mosque.
Damascus residents said on Thursday night troops stationed on a mountain overlooking Damascus targeted Hajar al-Aswad, a poor district inhabited by refugees from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
“Consecutive artillery volleys from Qasioun shook my home,” said an engineer who lives in al-Muhajereen district on a foothill of the mountain, giving his name only as Omar.
The fighting pits mainly Sunni Muslim rebels against al-Assad, from the minority Alawite sect which is distantly related to Shiite Islam. Brahimi has warned that the conflict could suck in Sunni and Shiite powers across the Middle East.
Qassem Saadeddine, head of the military council in Homs province and spokesman for the FSA joint command, said on Thursday his fighters were committed to the truce, but demanded the release of detainees by yesterday morning.
Abu Moaz, spokesman for Ansar al-Islam, which includes several brigades fighting in and around Damascus, said the Islamist group doubted al-Assad’s forces would observe the truce, though it might suspend operations if they did.
“We do not care about this truce. We are cautious. If the tanks are still there and the checkpoints are still there then what is the truce?” he asked.
Brahimi’s predecessor, former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan, declared a ceasefire in Syria on April 12, but it soon became a dead letter, along with the rest of his peace plan.
Violence has intensified since then, with daily death tolls compiled by opposition monitoring groups often exceeding 200.
UN aid agencies have geared up to take advantage of any window of opportunity provided by a ceasefire to go to areas hard to access due to fighting, a UN official in Geneva said.
The UN refugee agency UNHCR said it had prepared emergency kits for distribution for up to 13,000 families — an estimated 65,000 people — in Homs and the northeastern city of Hassaka.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not