• SNHR & DCHRS | Syria| Mr Annan’s Plan Violation Points*| Monday, 11 June 2012

    The Syrian Network for Human Rights and Damascus Centre for Human Rights Studies have documented more than 870 violation points of Mr Annan’s Plan on 11-06-2012, including live gunfire, artillery shelling, raids, and attacks on peaceful civilians. As a result, many people were killed, others were wounded and some were arrested.

    Al-Harak: gunfire by heavy weaponry
    www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3Ny3m8zpGU
    Jassem: crops burning by the by regime’s army amid power cut.
    www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyEx9G8ppOI www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWTo2dLglpk www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyEx9G8ppOI
    ====
    Damascus and Rural Damascus: 318 violation points of Mr Annan’s Plan.
    – Arrests: 55 at least
    – Victims: 15
    – Protests that were fired at: 1
    – Gunfire Cases: 76
    – Shelled Areas: 27
    – Times heavy military hardware were spotted: 14

  • SNHR & DCHRS | Syria| Mr Annan’s Plan Violation Points*| Monday, 11 June 2012

    The Syrian Network for Human Rights and Damascus Centre for Human Rights Studies have documented more than 870 violation points of Mr Annan’s Plan on 11-06-2012, including live gunfire, artillery shelling, raids, and attacks on peaceful civilians. As a result, many people were killed, others were wounded and some were arrested.

    Areas that witnessed violations of the Plan are:
    ====
    Daraa: 71 violation points of Mr Annan’s Plan.
    Arrests: 43 at least
    Victims: 2
    Protests that were fired at: 0
    Gunfire Cases: 7
    Shelled Areas: 1
    Times heavy military hardware were spotted: 11

  • The Wrath of the Shabiha: The Assad Regime’s Brutal Enforcers
    As the death toll mounts in Syria, attention falls on the shadowy paramilitary gangs now implicated in some of the country’s worst massacres

    The details of the recent massacres in the Syrian district of Houla and the farming hamlet of Mazraat al-Qubeir were bloodcurdling: children shot point-blank, throats slit, skulls crushed, entire families gunned down in their homes, the stench of charred human flesh, the paucity of survivors. The dead have been buried, but the question remains: Who could do this? Who could commit what U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon described as “unspeakable barbarity?” “Not even a monster,” insisted Syrian President Bashar Assad. But what about a shabih?

    The gangs known as the shabiha — the plural of shabih — along with uniformed elements of the security forces, were blamed by many observers and witnesses for both massacres. (Some regime sources, however, say that rebels had a hand in the killings.) In an increasingly bloody 15-month crisis, the shabiha have become increasingly prominent as irregular paramilitary troops, regime enforcers and the go-to guys when the going gets tough and bloody.

    Read more: http://world.time.com/2012/06/11/the-wrath-of-the-shabiha-the-assad-regimes-brutal-enforcers/#ixzz1xaJ7YWu7

  • Now Syria time line

    15:36 Activists said on Tuesday that Syrian forces shelled Latakia’s Al-Haffa and Al-Dafeel, Al-Jazeera reported.

    15:00 Britain on Tuesday said Syria must offer unrestricted access to aid agencies, saying the humanitarian situation in the country is expected to worsen with thousands more likely to flee the bloodshed.

    14:45 France on Tuesday joined the United States in raising concerns that new massacres were being prepared in Syria as regime forces pounded for the eighth straight day the town of Al-Heffa.

    14:42 Tuesday’s death toll in Syria has risen to 27 people, Al-Jazeera television quoted the Syrian Network For Human Rights as saying.

    13:54 Armed “terrorists” kidnapped on Tuesday a group of Syrians travelling in two taxis on the road to Qusayr in the central province of Homs, the state news agency SANA reported.

    13:41 Regime forces rained shells on rebel positions in northwestern Latakia province on Tuesday, pounding for the eighth straight day the town of Al-Heffa as they prepared to storm it, monitors said.

    12:41 UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan hoped a key meeting to address the crisis in Syria will take place soon, his spokesperson said on Tuesday.

    12:30 Iran on Tuesday welcomed a Russian proposal on holding an international conference on Syria aimed at saving a faltering peace plan for that country’s conflict.

    12:27 Christians in the Syrian town of Qusayr have come under increasing threat from rebel factions controlling the town, according to a Tuesday report in the Vatican Fides news agency.

    12:19 One person was killed and dozens injured in the shelling of Rastan in Homs, Al-Jazeera quoted activists as saying on Tuesday.

    12:01 Syria’s main opposition coalition has called for “peaceful protests” across the world on Wednesday against Russia, a key ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

    11:36 Syrian security forces shelled the towns of Byanoun and Hayan in the Aleppo district, Al-Jazeera quoted activists as saying on Tuesday.

    11:34 Syrian forces pounded a neighborhood of the eastern city of Deir az-Zour with mortar fire on Tuesday, killing 10 civilians including a young girl, a monitoring group said.

    10:12 Syrian forces on Tuesday imposed a blockade on Latakia’s Al-Haffa, Al-Arabiya television quoted the General Commission of the Syrian Revolution as saying.

    10:11 Syrian forces on Tuesday prevented international observers from accessing the Latakia town of Al-Heffa, Al-Arabiya television quoted the General Commission of the Syrian Revolution as saying.

    10:08 Syrian forces on Tuesday killed 13 people; most of them in Deir az-Zour, Al-Jazeera television quoted the Local Coordination Committees as saying.

    8:16 Syrian troops have tortured children, executed them and used children as young as eight as “human shields” during military raids against rebels, according to a UN report released Tuesday.

    8:10 UN leader Ban Ki-moon on Monday demanded UN access to the surrounded Syrian city of Al-Heffa amid what he called a “dangerous intensification” of the conflict in the country.

    8:08 US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Monday there was “no silver bullet” to fix what he called a tragic, complex situation in Syria, but renewed calls for the regime to relinquish power.

    8:05 UN envoy Kofi Annan will have to decide if his peace plan was working in Syria when the UN mission’s 90-day mandate expires next month but it cannot remain open-ended, a top Arab official said Monday.

    8:00 MORNING LEADER: United Nations leader Ban Ki-moon on Monday demanded UN access to the Syrian city of Al-Heffa, as regime helicopters fired on rebel stronghold towns, leaving more than 100 people dead. Ban added that “intensive military operations” by government forces against Homs and firing from helicopters on other towns had caused heavy civilian casualties.

  • Syrian troops have tortured children, executed them and used children as young as eight as “human shields” during military raids against rebels, according to a UN report released Tuesday.

    The United Nations branded the Syrian government as one of the worst offenders on its annual “list of shame” of conflict countries where children are killed, tortured and forced to fight.

    Human rights groups estimate that about 1,200 children have died during the 15-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, whose brutal crackdown on Arab Spring-inspired protests has been widely condemned.

    “Rarely, have I seen such brutality against children as in Syria, where girls and boys are detained, tortured, executed, and used as human shields,” Radhika Coomaraswamy, UN special representative for children in armed conflict, told AFP ahead of the report’s release.

    Government forces rounded up dozens of boys aged eight to 13 before an attack on the village of Ayn al-Arouz in Edleb province on March 9, the report said.

    The children were “used by soldiers and militia members as human shields, placing them in front of the windows of buses carrying military personnel into the raid on the village,” it said.

    Quoting witnesses, the UN report said Syrian military and intelligence forces, as well as pro-government Shabiha militiamen, surrounded the village for an attack that lasted more than four days.

    Among the 11 dead on the first day were three boys aged 15 to 17. Another 34 people, including two boys aged 14 and 16 and a nine-year-old girl, were detained.

    “Eventually, the village was reportedly left burned and four out of the 34 detainees were shot and burned, including the two boys aged 14 and 16 years,” the Children in Armed Conflict report said.

    UN chief Ban Ki-moon said the report had uncovered one of many “grave violations” against children.

    The Syrian government, and its allied militias, was one of four new parties added to the UN’s list of shame—along with organizations and political parties in Sudan and Yemen.

    The list includes 52 parties in 11 countries, ranging from the Afghan national police and the anti-US Haqqani network to the Lord’s Resistance Army in central Africa, Sudanese armed forces and various Darfur rebel groups.

    The report said children in Syria as young as nine had been victims of killing and maiming, arbitrary arrest, detention, torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence and use as human shields.

    Schools have been regularly raided and used as military bases and detention centers, the report added.

    The report was completed before the Houla massacre on May 25, when 49 of the 108 victims were said to be children, some as young as two and three, who were shot in the head or had their skulls smashed with blunt instruments.

    “Most child victims of torture described being beaten, blindfolded, subjected to stress positions, whipped with heavy electrical cables, scarred by cigarette burns and, in one recorded case, subjected to electrical shock to the genitals,” said the UN report.

    At least one witness told investigators he had seen a boy of approximately 15 succumb to repeated beatings.

    The New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said the UN Security Council should impose an arms embargo and other sanctions on the Assad government over its violations against children.

    HRW quoted the Syria Violations Documentation Center, a network of Syrian activists, as saying that at least 1,176 children have been killed since February 2011.

    It also said there were “credible allegations” that armed opposition groups, including the Free Syrian Army, are recruiting children as soldiers.

    –AFP/NOW Lebanon

  • Britain on Tuesday said Syria must offer unrestricted access to aid agencies, saying the humanitarian situation in the country is expected to worsen with thousands more likely to flee the bloodshed.

    Accusing the regime of President Bashar al-Assad of committing “serious human rights violations” against its own people, British Minister of International Development, Alan Duncan, urged Damascus to “give unrestricted access for humanitarian agencies to help those in need.”

    To read more: http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=408374#ixzz1xa9uj499

  • Midday Developments Report:
    ===
    Daraa:
    Saida: the town came under fierce shelling by the 38th brigade of the regime’s army; many houses were burned and damaged by the continual shelling.
    Al-Hal market: deployment of the security forces in the market, backed with two buses, and everyone there was arrested.
    Inkhil: a wide-scale displacement of the residents.
    Bosra al-Sham: deployment of the tanks in the outskirts of the town and heavy gunfire.
    ==
    Homs:
    Rastan: the regime’s army carried on shelling the city by warplanes and rocket launchers, many houses burned, some people were killed and locals are appealing for help.
    Homs: strong explosions shook the old neighbourhoods of Homs and Jouret al-Shyah amid intensive gunfire by the regime’s army.
    Al-Rastan: warplanes and rocket launchers renewed the shelling. Town people were killed; and many people were wounded.
    Al-Rastan:
    12/6/2012, an injured female witness in a makeshift hospital http://youtu.be/z5rmT1IfG3k


    12/6/2012, a new type of military rockets
    http://youtu.be/sAyZKH1EKyg

    12/6/2012, warplanes bombardment, and smoke covers the town http://youtu.be/4kerXxzQl2k

    12/6/2012, two victims, Wisam al-Taweel and Husam Qatee, empty medicine boxes
    http://youtu.be/JUZv1JT4y_Y

    Talbeesa: the regime’s warplanes heavily bombarded the town.
    Al-Quseer: heavy shelling on al-Jusya village by the regime’s army forces.
    ===
    Aleppo:
    Anadan: numerous houses were destroyed by the regime’s army shelling this morning and many victims are still under the rubble.
    Bayanoun, Hreitan: very violent shelling on the city by the regime’s army forces which are deployed at the checkpoints around the town, intensive shelling on Hreitan, and the shelling by tanks and heavy weapons was renewed on Bayanoun.
    ===
    Latakia:
    Al-Hiffeh: the city came under heavy gunfire and two rockets were fired by the rocket launcher stationed at al-Samya village, loyalist to the regime.
    Al-Hiffeh: heavy and violent shelling by rocket launchers on Dafeel village by the regime’s army forces.
    ===
    Deir Ezzor:
    Al-Jubeela: the regime’s army forces broke into al-Nour Hospital to abduct the bodies of al-Jubeela massacre and to arrest the injured.
    Al-Ishara: a military force of 15 tanks, 15 Zil vehicles carrying soldiers, some cars of the Military Security branch have broken into the town, and they are shooting randomly and heavily by heavy weapons.
    Idlib:
    Sahl al-Rouj (Ein Shueeb town): Rihab Hamdan, a 16-year old child, died of the wounds she received in the shelling on the town yesterday.
    12/6/2012, Daraa, Inkhil: violent shelling on the town http://youtu.be/qBF6ceQcJoc

    12/6/2012, Daraa, Inkhil: violent shelling on the town http://youtu.be/XIqg5W5lSAQ


    ====
    For more information and detailed reports kindly visit:
    http://dchrs.org/english/news.php?id=547&idC=16
    http://www.syrianhr.org

  • France on Tuesday joined the United States in raising concerns that new massacres were being prepared in Syria as regime forces pounded for the eighth straight day the town of Al-Heffa.

    “We share concerns about the preparation of new massacres,” French Foreign Ministry spokesperson Bernard Valero said, adding that French officials were heading to Moscow for talks on the crisis on Wednesday.

    To read more: http://www.nowlebanon.com/NewsArticleDetails.aspx?ID=408358#ixzz1xa6sOe5z