Deadly violence raged across Syria on Thursday with a twin bombing in Damascus two days before a crucial international meeting that looked threatened late in the day by Russian objections.
Turkey reinforced its volatile border with Syria with missile batteries, as world powers prepared for talks in Geneva on ways to end the raging conflict and to discuss a plan by UN-Arab League peace envoy Kofi Annan for an interim government.
However, Annan was battling to save the meeting following Russian objections to his proposed transition plan, diplomats said at the UN.
Photo: AFP
Violence on Thursday killed at least 91 people, including 59 civilians, after one of the bloodiest days of the 15-month revolt left at least 149 dead on Wednesday, a watchdog said.
Thursday’s heaviest toll was in the northern Damascus suburb of Douma, where 30 people were killed, among them five members of one family, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The day’s fatalities also included 23 soldiers and nine rebels, the group said, adding that regime forces backed by helicopters pounded several areas of the eastern city of Deir Ezzor.
On the diplomatic front, Annan called for talks between senior officials from Russia, the US, France, Britain and China for yesterday in a bid to rescue the meeting of foreign ministers the next day, diplomats said.
A meeting between US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Saint Petersburg yesterday could also decide the fate of future international action on Syria.
Clinton and the foreign ministers of Britain and France, William Hague and Laurent Fabius, have told Annan there will be no point holding the Geneva meeting unless an accord on a transition plan can be guaranteed, diplomats said.
The Geneva conference with Clinton, Lavrov, Hague, Fabius, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi (楊潔篪) and the foreign ministers of Qatar, Turkey and Kuwait had been intended as a public show of support for Annan’s transition plan.
Annan announced the meeting on Tuesday, having said he would only call the ministers to Geneva if he were sure they would unite around a plan to end the worsening conflict that Syrian activists say has left more than 15,000 dead.
Russia, the last major ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, has objected to a proposal that could limit membership of a transitional unity government in Syria, diplomats said.
Annan’s plan said the interim government could include al-Assad officials and the opposition, “but would exclude from government those whose continued presence and participation would undermine the credibility of the transition and jeopardize stability and reconciliation.”
Diplomats have said this means that al-Assad could be ruled out of the government, but did not automatically exclude his participation. Opposition figures could also be kept out under the same formula, they said.
The meeting in Geneva, agreed only after wrangling between Moscow and Washington over the agenda and the guest list, was to be attended by some regional governments, but not Middle East heavyweights Iran and Saudi Arabia.
Russia says Iran should be part of the solution to Syria’s conflict.
“Iran is an influential player in this situation and to leave it out of the Geneva meeting, I believe, is a mistake,” Lavrov said on Thursday.
Al-Assad’s fate “must be decided within the framework of a Syrian dialogue by the Syrian people themselves,” without foreign interference, he said.
Meanwhile, Turkey sent missile batteries, tanks and troops to the border as a “security corridor” after Syria shot down a Turkish warplane on Friday last week, media reports said.
State-run TRT television showed dozens of military vehicles reportedly heading for the border, in a convoy that included air defense systems.
About 30 military vehicles accompanied by a truck towing missile batteries left a base in Hatay Province for the frontier, about 50km away, Milliyet newspaper reported.
The Turkish Phantom F-4 jet was downed by Syria over the eastern Mediterranean in what Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called a “heinous attack” over international waters.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
BOMBARDMENT: Moscow sent more than 440 drones and 32 missiles, Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, in ‘one of the most terrifying strikes’ on the capital in recent months A nighttime Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed at least 15 people and injured 116 while they slept in their homes, local officials said yesterday, with the main barrage centering on the capital, Kyiv. Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko said 14 people were killed and 99 were injured as explosions echoed across the city for hours during the night. The bombardment demolished a nine-story residential building, destroying dozens of apartments. Emergency workers were at the scene to rescue people from under the rubble. Russia flung more than 440 drones and 32 missiles at Ukraine, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy
Indonesia’s Mount Lewotobi Laki-Laki yesterday erupted again with giant ash and smoke plumes after forcing evacuations of villages and flight cancelations, including to and from the resort island of Bali. Several eruptions sent ash up to 5km into the sky on Tuesday evening to yesterday afternoon. An eruption on Tuesday afternoon sent thick, gray clouds 10km into the sky that expanded into a mushroom-shaped ash cloud visible as much as 150km kilometers away. The eruption alert was raised on Tuesday to the highest level and the danger zone where people are recommended to leave was expanded to 8km from the crater. Officers also
RSS