Syrian rebels release 4 UN Filipino peacekeepers

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syrian rebels on Sunday released four Filipino U.N. peacekeepers they abducted last week in a dramatic incident that prompted warnings from the Philippines that the nation might pull out its contingent from the Golan Heights.

Meanwhile, a Syrian official said President Bashar Assad's troops have the right to enter the Israeli-occupied Golan whenever they wish — a veiled threat toward Israel to stay out of Syria's conflict.

Also Sunday, Damascus rejected Turkey's allegations that Syria was behind two car bombings that killed 46 people in Turkey and wounded dozens more the day before.

The four Filipinos, seized Tuesday, were apparently unharmed, but they will undergo a medical checkup and stress debriefing, said Brig. Gen. Domingo Tutaan.

A statement by the rebel group holding the peacekeepers — the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade — said the four were handed over to a U.N. delegation in the border area on Sunday, but provided no other details.

The peacekeepers are part of a U.N. contingent that patrols a buffer zone between Syria and the Golan Heights, a plateau Israel captured from Syria in 1967.

It was the second abduction of Filipino peacekeepers since March, when 21 were held for three days by rebels fighting Assad.

The Philippine foreign secretary has said he would recommend withdrawing Filipinos from the peacekeeping contingent in Syria, but the final decision is up to the country's president.

Nearly 1,000 U.N. peacekeepers patrol the Golan. Other major contributors are India and Austria. Croatia recently withdrew its contingent.

The buffer zone has been largely quiet for four decades, but tensions have risen there since the outbreak of the revolt in Syria more than two years ago.

In Damascus, Information Minister Omran al-Zoubi told a news conference on Sunday that Syria has the right to enter the Golan Heights.

"The Golan is Syrian Arab territory and will remain so, even if the Israeli army is stationed there. We have the right to go in and out of it whenever we want and however we please," he said.

His comments came in response to last week's Israeli airstrikes on Syria, which Israeli officials say targeted advanced Iranian missiles intended for Lebanon's Hezbollah.

The strikes marked a sharp escalation of Israel's involvement in the Syrian civil war and raised fears that a conflict that has repeatedly spilled over Syria's borders could turn into a regional war.

Syria has threatened to retaliate but the official response was relatively mild.

"Israel should understand that the Syrian skies are not a picnic for anyone," al-Zoubi warned.

"We are a people who do not forget to retaliate against those who commit aggression against us, and we do not forget our martyrs or those who killed them," he said.

Israeli officials had no comment.

Assad's regime might be reluctant to open a new front against Israel with his army already stretched thin in the deadlocked fight with the rebels.

But he has a history of operating through proxies, such as the Lebanese militant Hezbollah or radical Syrian-based Palestinian factions that can potentially launch attacks on Israel from the Golan.

The Syrian uprising escalated into a civil war that has claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced millions of Syrians. The two sides have been largely deadlocked on the battlefield.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group that closely monitors the fighting in Syria, said in a statement Sunday that more than 80,000 people — nearly half of them civilians — have been killed in Syria's conflict since March 2011.

The Syrian government does not release official figures for casualties in the civil war. In February, the U.N. estimated that around 70,000 have died.

In the latest violence in the capital, Damascus, six mortar shells struck a neighborhood, causing damage and casualties, a Syrian official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief reporters.

The mortars hit the predominantly Alawite district of Mazzeh 86 during the morning rush hour, he said. Sunday is the first day of the work week in Syria.

Alawites are followers of an offshoot of Shiite Islam, and have dominated government for four decades under Assad family rule. Rebels and regime forces have been fighting in parts of Damascus, and rebels have fired mortars at neighborhoods seen as pro-Assad.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group, confirmed that mortars struck Mazzeh 86, but said it had no reports of casualties.

The Observatory also reported that regime forces have secured the international highway linking Damascus with the southern city of Daraa, where the uprising against Assad's regime began.

The report confirms claims made by state media on Saturday and marks a significant reversal of gains made by rebels in the strategic region near the border with Jordan only few weeks earlier.

Zoubi's comments were the first official Syrian comment since Saturday's blasts in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli, near Syria.

The bombings left 46 people dead and marked the biggest incident of violence across the border since the start of Syria's civil war, raising fears that Turkey — once one of Syria's top allies in the region — might be pulled deeper into the conflict.

The Syrian minister alleged that Turkey is responsible "for all that happened in Syria and what happened in Turkey yesterday," accusing Istanbul of facilitating the entry of "terrorists" to Syria.

The Syrian regime routinely describes rebels fighting to topple Assad as terrorists.

Al-Zoubi also launched one of the harshest personal attacks on Turkey's prime minister, demanding that Recep Tayyip Erdogan "step down as a killer and as a butcher."

In Egypt, a senior aide to President Mohammed Morsi said in remarks published Sunday that Egypt is seeking a negotiated solution for the Syrian crisis that would ensure the country's territorial integrity and prevent foreign intervention.

Essam el-Haddad, a presidential assistant on foreign affairs, said Egypt is developing its regional initiative and that representatives of the Damascus regime who have "no blood on their hands" must be approved by the opposition before they can negotiate.

___

Associated Press writer Sarah El Deeb contributed to this report from Cairo.

View the original article here

Syrian rebels seize 4 UN peacekeepers on Golan

BEIRUT (AP) — Rebels fighting to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad detained four U.N. peacekeepers on Tuesday in area that separates Syria and Israel, raising tension between the two countries just days after the Jewish state launched back-to-back airstrikes near Damascus.

The abduction was the second such incident in the area in two months. The incident exposed the vulnerability of the U.N. peacekeeping mission during the Syrian civil war, now in its third year. It also sent a worrisome signal to Syria's neighbors — including Israel — about the ensuing lawlessness along their shared frontiers.

Rebels with the Yarmouk Martyrs Brigades are holding the peacekeepers, a spokesman for the group told The Associated Press in a phone interview. The Yarmouk Brigades were behind the abduction in March of 21 Filipino U.N. peacekeepers released unharmed after four days of tough negotiations. The spokesman talked with the AP on condition of anonymity because he was outside of Syria serving as a mediator on peaceful matters concerning the group.

In New York, Kieran Dwyer, spokesman for the U.N. peacekeeping department, confirmed the abduction and said the four peacekeepers, all from the Philippines, were taken on Tuesday by an unidentified armed group near the town of Jamla in southern Syria.

"Efforts are underway to secure their release now," Dwyer said.

In a statement posted on the Yarmouk Brigades' Facebook page, the group said the peacekeepers were not hostages, but were being held for their own safety. The statement did not specify where the peacekeepers were being held, nor did it specify conditions for their release.

The rebel unit said it suspects the U.N. peacekeepers are shielding Assad's troops, who the rebels said killed civilians during an army sweep of Wadi Raqat in the south.

The U.N. monitoring mission was set up in 1974, seven years after Israel captured the Golan Heights and a year after it managed to push back Syrian troops trying to recapture its territory in another regional war. For nearly four decades, the U.N. monitors have helped enforce a stable truce between Israel and Syria.

But in recent months, Syrian mortar shells overshooting their target have repeatedly hit the Israeli-controlled Golan.

Israel's recent airstrikes inside Syria raised the possibility of a wider regional conflict as a result of the civil war in which more than 70,000 Syrians have been killed. Israeli officials have said the airstrikes were meant to prevent advanced Iranian weapons from reaching Lebanon's Hezbollah militia, an ally of Syria and foe of Israel.

Syria has hinted at possible retribution against Israel for the raid, although official government statements have been relatively mild. On Tuesday, however, a Syria-based Palestinian militant group said it got a go-ahead from the Assad regime to set up missiles to attack Israel in the wake of the airstrikes.

"Syria has given the green light to set up missile batteries to directly attack Israeli targets," Anwar Raja, the spokesman for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, told the AP.

He said authorities also told his group that it could carry out attacks independently without consulting Syrian authorities.

"Practically, the Syrian stand has always been supportive of the Palestinian resistance and Syria provides the Palestinian resistance with all capabilities including all kinds of weapons," Raja said.

When the revolt against Assad's rule began in March 2011, the Palestinian community in Syria largely stayed on the sidelines. But as the uprising shifted into a civil war, many Palestinians backed the rebels, while some groups have been fighting on the government side.

Those include the Popular Front, a small Damascus-based Palestinian militant faction that the U.S has designated a terrorist organization.

While the group earned notoriety for its past attacks on Israel, it has been eclipsed in the past 20 years by the other Islamic militant groups, such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The Assad regime's decision to allow a minor Syria-based Palestinian group to prepare for attacks is largely seen as a face-saving gesture unlikely to escalate Syria's confrontation with Israel.

Iran, a close ally of Damascus, has condemned the Israeli attacks and warned of possible retaliation, which it said should come from Israel's Arab neighbors, not Tehran.

Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi was in Damascus on Tuesday, meeting with Assad and other Syrian officials, according to Syrian state TV. There were no details on issues discussed during the talks.

Earlier Tuesday, Salehi told reporters in Amman, Jordan, that Arab nations "must stand by their brethren in Damascus."

Iran is deeply concerned with the fate of the Assad regime, which has allowed Syrian territory to serve as a conduit for Iranian weapons and other support to reach their proxy, Hezbollah. Tehran has supplied cash and weapons to help the Syrian government in its efforts to crush the anti-Assad revolt.

Salehi warned of the possible repercussions if the government in Damascus was to fall.

"The fallout from a vacuum in Syria will have adverse effects on its neighbors and the whole region," he said. "There will be serious repercussions from a vacuum. It will be grave and nobody can predict the results."

___

AP writers Bassem Mroue in Beirut, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations, Jamal Halaby in Amman, Jordan, and Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, contributed to this report.

View the original article here

Syrian women giving birth in exile of refugee camp

ZAATARI, Jordan (AP) — In a tent hospital bed, a Syrian woman who was four months pregnant when she fled her country's civil war cradles one of the newest residents of this dust-swept refugee camp: Her newborn son, just delivered by cesarean.

Around a dozen babies are born every day in Zaatari camp, which is home to 120,000 Syrians and counting — and there's only one, overworked Moroccan doctor performing C-sections.

Still, the clinic where he operates and several other field hospitals here performing regular births are a moment of quality care for women dealing with pregnancy on top of the trauma suffered in their homeland and the hardship of exile in a rough camp.

"Thank God, we have clean facilities and safe instruments in such a refugee camp," the woman, Umm Raad, said this week in the maternity ward of the Moroccan field hospital, holding her hour-old baby, Abdullah. Like other women in the camp she asked to be identified by her nickname for fear of repercussions against her family still in Syria.

Over 10 months, Zaatari near the border with Syria has catapulted from a barren patch of desert to effectively become Jordan's fifth largest city, and it's still rapidly growing. They are only a portion of the more than half million Syrian refugees in Jordan, the rest of whom live in towns and cities around the country, with 1,500-3,000 more crossing in from Syria every day.

The United Nations and other international agencies are racing to try to provide them with medical services — including for pregnant women or women with newborn children.

"There are 10 to 13 births taking place every day in the Zaatari camp alone," said Muna Idris, the assistant representative to Jordan for the U.N. Population Fund, known by the acronym UNFPA. "We're expecting that number to increase as the number of refugees in the camp increases."

By the end of the year, she estimated, there will be 1.2 million refugees in Jordan — "of that number there will be 30,000 who are pregnant."

More than a quarter of the population at Zaatari are women of childbearing age, a significant portion of whom fled here with their children, but not their husbands, who remained behind to deal with businesses, protect homes or even fight in the rebellion against President Bashar Assad's regime.

In the camp, housed in tents or trailers, they find themselves dealing with the bitter cold in the winter and burning dust storms in the spring and summer — as well as the daily struggle of living with few resources except international rations. Many of the women talk of the burdens of collecting water from the camp's communal facilities and walking long distances for clinic visits, then waiting long hours in the sun for their turn — usually with young children in tow.

Um Mohamed, a 29-year-old woman now in the ninth month of her pregnancy, arrived in the camp with her four children last month from Daraa, the southern Syrian town just across the border from Zaatari and a raging battle zone.

"I find it difficult having to do so many things by myself," she said. "My husband is still inside Syria and my children are very young."

She says she's lucky to be staying with a relative in a camp trailer. "But often we find ourselves without water. And we certainly have no money," she lamented.

Hanging over her is the worry of giving birth in indefinite exile.

"This child of mine and the others born here are not born in their own country, their own home. What will their futures be?"

There are several tent hospitals at the camp run by a number of countries, including Jordan, France and the United Arab Emirates, providing a variety of health services to the refugees. Serious medical conditions are treated in nearby Jordanian hospitals.

All the clinics carry out regular births. A comprehensive number of births since Zaatari was set up in July was not available. Just two of the clinics — the Moroccan hospital set up in August and another run by the French agency Gynécologie Sans Frontières — have delivered nearly 600 babies, according to UNFPA's humanitarian affairs specialist, Shible Sahbani.

More than 280 children were born in the camp during just six weeks this year, according to the six weekly camp reports by the U.N. refugee agency that are available on its website.

The Moroccan hospital, run by the North African country's military, is the only facility in the camp that performs C-sections. It has delivered 196 babies — 153 of them C-sections, sometimes up to five a day, the staff said. The facility has 47 specialists but only one gynecologist, who performs all the cesareans, and only one anesthesiologist.

"It gets so hectic at the field hospital on certain days," one doctor at the clinic said. "All the other field hospitals inside the camp refer and send all their patients requiring C-sections to us. This makes many of us at the Moroccan hospital have to work sometimes 18 hours a day."

"Even though the doctors here face great pressures and a heavy work load, we feel at the end of the day that we are really serving humanity," he said. The doctor spoke on condition of anonymity in line with military rules.

The Moroccan hospital consists of about 15 khaki beige colored tents. In one of them, with a large Velcro flap door, is the operating room where the C-sections are carried out, stocked with an oxygen machine, monitors for mother and baby, the hospital bed, a drip, lights and medical instruments to perform the surgery lying on a table. The newborn is initially put in a nearby incubator, while the mother is taken to a tent that serves as the maternity ward.

The facility is likely better than those in parts of Syria hit hardest by more than two years of warfare. "People are increasingly coming down to Jordan because of the deterioration in access to services in Syria, whether health services, water, food or shelter," said Idris.

Um Murad, who delivered her baby girl Judy a week ago at Zaatari, said the hardest part was not having her family around to help in the birth and with the newborn. Judy developed a fever, then jaundice and after a frantic search finally a place was found for her at a hospital in the nearby Jordanian town of Mafraq.

"Back home in Syria, it would be normal for my mother and close relatives to be at my side during the delivery of my baby," Um Murad said. "There were no relatives here to help me."

Visiting the new mother, one of her neighbors, Um Ahmed, said the birth in a refugee camp seals the baby's fate. "You're born inside a refugee camp and you are registered as a refugee. That says it all. It's never the same as being born in freedom in your own country," she said.

________

Associated Press reporter Omar Akour contributed to this report.

View the original article here

Activists: Israeli strike kills 42 Syrian soldiers

BEIRUT (AP) — Israel's weekend airstrike on a military complex near the Syrian capital of Damascus killed at least 42 Syrian soldiers, a group of anti-regime activists said Monday, citing information from military hospitals.

The Syrian government has not released a death toll, but Syrian state media have reported casualties in Sunday's predawn airstrike, Israel's third into Syria so far this year.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said about 150 soldiers are normally stationed in the area that was targeted, but that it was not clear how many were there at the time of the strike.

Israel's government has not formally confirmed involvement in strikes on Syria. However, Israeli officials said the strikes were meant to prevent advanced Iranian weapons from reaching Lebanon's Hezbollah militia, an ally of Syria and foe of Israel.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss covert military operations.

Israel on Monday signaled a return to "business as usual," with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arriving in China for a scheduled visit,

Syria and its patron Iran have hinted at possible retribution over the strikes, though the rhetoric in official statements has been relatively muted.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi warned Monday that Israel was "playing with fire," but gave no other suggestions of possible consequences, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

Syria's government called the attacks a "flagrant violation of international law" that has made the Middle East "more dangerous." It also claimed the Israeli strikes proved Israel's links to rebel groups trying to overthrow Assad's regime.

Israeli officials have indicated they will keep trying to block what they see as an effort by Iran to send sophisticated weapons to Lebanon's Hezbollah militia ahead of a possible collapse of Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime.

Israel has repeatedly threatened to intervene in the Syrian civil war to stop the transfer of what it calls "game-changing" weapons to Hezbollah, a Syrian-backed group that battled Israel to a stalemate during a month-long war in 2006.

Since carrying out a lone airstrike in January that reportedly destroyed a shipment of anti-aircraft missiles headed to Hezbollah, Israel had largely stayed on the sidelines. That changed this weekend with the pair of airstrikes, including an attack near a sprawling military complex close to Damascus early Sunday that set off a series of powerful explosions.

A senior Israeli official said both airstrikes targeted shipments of Fateh-110 missiles bound for Hezbollah. The Iranian-made guided missiles can fly deep into Israel and deliver powerful half-ton bombs with pinpoint accuracy. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing a covert military operation.

View the original article here

Syrian rebels shoot down regime helicopter in east

BEIRUT (AP) — Activists say Syrian rebels have shot down a military helicopter in the country's east, killing eight government troops on board.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights on Monday posted a video online showing several armed men standing in front of the wreckage. One of the fighters in the footage says it's a helicopter that the rebels shot down late Sunday in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour, along Syria's border with Iraq.

As the man speaks, the camera shifts to a pickup truck piled with bodies. The fighter is then heard saying that all of President Bashar Assad's troops who were aboard the helicopter were killed in the downing.

The Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, says eight troops were killed.

View the original article here

Syrian air defenses pose formidable challenge

BEIRUT (AP) — International military action against Syria's government over its alleged use of chemical weapons would run up against one of the Middle East's most formidable air defenses, a system bolstered in recent years by top-of-the-line Russian hardware.

The U.S. said last week that intelligence indicates the Syrian regime has likely used the deadly nerve agent sarin on at least two occasions in the civil war. That assessment has increased pressure for a forceful response from President Barack Obama, who has said the use of chemical weapons would cross a "red line" and carry "enormous consequences."

Obama has tried to temper expectations of quick action against Syria, saying he needs "hard, effective evidence" before making a decision. But he has also said that if it is determined that the regime of President Bashar Assad has used such weapons, then "we would have to rethink the range of options that are available to us."

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel told a news conference Thursday the administration is rethinking its opposition to arming the rebels, saying it is one of the options being considered along with its allies in the more than 2-year-old conflict.

In 2011, the U.S. and its NATO allies imposed a no-fly zone in Libya after Moammar Gadhafi's brutal crackdown on its uprising. The allied air campaign, which received U.N. backing, played a major role in the rebels' victory in Libya's eight-month civil war.

While NATO quickly knocked out Libya's air defenses, experts warn that Syria's capabilities are far more sophisticated and its system is far more extensive than Gadhafi's was.

"In the case of Libya, the system had deteriorated completely already before the outbreak of the conflict due to the fact that Gadhafi had not invested so much in his air defense," said Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. "In the case of Syria, it's quite different."

Syria, experts say, possesses one of the most robust air defense networks in the region, with multiple surface-to-air missiles providing overlapping coverage of key areas in combination with thousands of anti-aircraft guns capable of engaging attacking aircraft at lower levels.

Six years ago, the system was showing signs of neglect.

In 2007, Syria's aging Soviet-supplied air defense system received a shock when Israeli jets bombed a suspected nuclear reactor site along the Euphrates River in northeastern Syria. The attack proved deeply embarrassing and provided a jolt to the Assad regime, which responded by making a concerted push to upgrade its air defenses, and turned to the country's traditional arms provider, Russia, for help.

Moscow, which has been the source of most of Syria's military hardware since Assad's father and predecessor, Hafez, courted the Kremlin decades ago, was more than happy to oblige.

It provided Syria with new systems, such as 36 Pantsyr mobile surface-to-air missile systems and at least eight Buk-M2E mobile SAMs. The Pantsyrs, considered particularly effective against attacking aircraft, feature a combination of 30mm cannons paired with a radar and anti-aircraft missiles all on the same vehicle.

At the same time, old SA-3s were upgraded to Pechora-2Ms — essentially a new and much more capable system.

There have also been persistent rumors that Syria acquired the advanced, Russian-built S-300 anti-aircraft missiles, considered to be the cutting edge in aircraft interception technology, although there are doubts about whether Damascus actually has them.

Moscow had refused to deliver the systems, but there have been unconfirmed reports that other nations may have sent Syria the missiles, which could make any aerial intervention very costly for the attackers.

"It's certainly the kind of system that if delivered would increase the risks for Israel, the USA or anyone else would they want to intervene militarily," Wezeman said.

Separately, Syria also has obtained from Russia the mobile Bastion-P land-based coastal defense systems, including Yakhont anti-ship missiles capable of sinking large warships, including aircraft carriers.

Russia has stood by Damascus since the uprising against Assad began in March 2011, shielding it from U.N. sanctions and continuing to supply the Syrian military with air defense components. Its support has not faded, even as the death toll in the conflict passed 70,000.

In February, Anatoly Isaikin, the head of the state arms trading agency Rosoboronexport, said that since there are no sanctions against shipping weapons to Syria, Russia was still fulfilling its contract obligations.

"These aren't offensive weapons," he said. "We are mostly shipping air defense systems and repair equipment for various branches of the military."

Like all of the Syrian military, the country's air defense system undoubtedly has suffered damage since the conflict became a civil war. Rebels have captured large swaths of northern Syria and have made a bridgehead in the south along the border with Jordan. Hydroelectric dams, cities and military bases have fallen into rebel hands.

But the extent of the fighting's toll on Syria's air defenses is, like many things in the country, hard to gauge.

"There is plenty of evidence that the rebels have been able to capture or destroy such air defense systems, and that included also new equipment," Wezeman said, citing videos posted on the Internet. "There must be major holes in there in the system."

Israel appeared to find one in January when it hit an apparent convoy purportedly carrying anti-aircraft missiles to the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

After that airstrike, Syrian Defense Minister Gen. Fahd Jassem al-Freij said rebels had made Syrian air defenses across the country a focus of their attacks, hitting some with mortar fire while trying to seize others in order to incapacitate them.

In response, he said the Syrian leadership decided to station them all in one safe place, leading to "gaps in radar coverage in some areas."

"These gaps became known to the armed gangs and the Israelis who undoubtedly coordinated together to target the research center," he said.

Despite al-Freij's uncommonly frank remarks, Elias Hanna, a retired Lebanese general and a senior lecturer at the American University of Beirut, said Syria's air defenses were still in good shape and would provide a stiff challenge to any foreign intervention.

Most of the country's air defense weapons, radar and other equipment have been positioned along Lebanon's border and in the Syrian-controlled part of the Golan Heights because Israel, which captured part of the territory in the 1967 war, was long perceived as the biggest threat, he said.

Some defense systems are also deployed along the Syrian Mediterranean coast and substantial air defense system have always been stationed in and around the capital Damascus.

"If there was an attack now," Hanna said, "Syria would have an upper hand."

___

Associated Press writer Jim Heintz in Moscow and Lolita C. Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.

View the original article here

Activists: Dozens killed in Syrian village

May 1 (Reuters) - Post position for Saturday's 139th Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs after Wednesday's draw (listed as barrier, HORSE, jockey, trainer) 1. BLACK ONYX, Joe Bravo, Kelly Breen 2. OXBOW, Gary Stevens, D. Wayne Lukas 3. REVOLUTIONARY, Calvin Borel, Todd Pletcher 4. GOLDEN SOUL, Robby Albarado, Dallas Stewart 5. NORMANDY INVASION, Javier Castellano, Chad Brown 6. MYLUTE, Rosie Napravnik, Tom Amoss 7. GIANT FINISH, Jose Espinoza, Tony Dutrow 8. GOLDENCENTS, Kevin Krigger, Doug O'Neill 9. OVERANALYZE, Rafael Bejarano, Todd Pletcher 10. PALACE MALICE, Mike Smith, Todd Pletcher 11. ...

View the original article here

Activists say dozens killed in Syrian village

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian troops backed by pro-government gunmen swept into a Sunni village in the mountains near the Mediterranean coast on Thursday, killing dozens of people, including women and children, and torching homes, activists said.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that at least 50 people — and possibly as many as 100 — were killed in the violence in Bayda, a village outside the city of Banias. It cited witnesses who said some of the dead were killed with knives or blunt objects and that dozens of villagers were still missing.

Syria's civil war has largely split the country down religious lines, and the violence in Bayda appeared to have sectarian overtones. The village is primarily inhabited by Sunni Muslims, who dominate the country's rebel movement, while most of the surrounding villages are home to members of President Bashar Assad's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

With the conflict now in its third year, the sectarian divide in the country is worsening. There has been heavy fighting raging between Sunni and Shiite villages in the area of Qusair, near the Lebanese border. Islamic extremists who have joined the rebels have destroyed Christian liquor stores, and sometimes refer to their dead adversaries with derogatory names insulting their sects.

Observatory director Rami Abdul-Rahman said there was heavy fighting in Bayda early Thursday that left at least six government troops dead and more than 20 wounded. He said regime troops backed by gunmen from nearby Alawite villages returned in the afternoon and eventually overran Bayda.

In the aftermath, telephone and Internet service to the village was cut and the area remained under regime control, making it impossible to verify the day's final death toll, Abdul-Rahman said.

But if confirmed, the violence would be the latest in a string of alleged mass killings in Syria's bloody civil war. Last month, activists said government troops killed more than 100 people as they seized two rebel-held suburbs of Damascus.

Some 70,000 people have been killed and thousands of others maimed, injured or missing in Syria since the uprising against Assad began in March 2011, according to the United Nations. Both the U.N. Human Rights Council and the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria have published multiple reports documenting crimes committed during the civil war, including the slaughter of more than 100 civilians in the central region of Houla last May blamed on pro-regime militiamen.

The conflict's humanitarian toll has accelerated as the fighting on the ground has grown more intense, and neither side appears willing to find a political solution at the moment. The rebels are trying to expand upon their gains in the past year that have put them in control of much of northern Syria as well as a growing foothold in the south along the border with Jordan.

The regime, meanwhile, has pushed an offensive to shore up its hold on Damascus and the corridor leading from the capital through the central city of Homs and on to the mountainous Mediterranean coastal area, which is the Alawite heartland.

The government made gains Thursday to secure its grip on Homs, seizing control of the Wadi Sayeh district in the heart of the city, the Observatory said. The neighborhood is strategically important for the Assad regime as its forces try to dislodge opposition fighters from several central neighborhoods that have been under rebel control for more than a year.

The regime pounded rebel-held districts with artillery and carried out at least one airstrike on a residential neighborhood, killing seven people, four of them children, according to the Observatory.

Regaining full control of Homs would be a psychological blow to the opposition, which considers the city a symbol of Syria's uprising, inspired by other Arab Spring revolts against authoritarian rulers around the Middle East. The city, the third largest in the nation, was the scene of massive street protests against Assad's regime in the early months of the uprising. Since then, it has seen some of the worst urban warfare of the conflict.

While Assad's forces advanced in Homs, they suffered a setback in the northern city of Aleppo, where rebels overran the headquarters of the government's anti-terrorism forces, according to the Aleppo Media Center activist group.

The building is located near the central prison where many of regime opponents, activists and their family members are believed to be held. Rebel fighters have for weeks battled government troops in the area in an attempt to storm the facility and free the prisoners.

In recent weeks, government forces have been on a counter offensive to reverse rebel gains in and around Aleppo, where the opposition controls entire neighborhoods and much of the countryside surrounding the city.

___

Associated Press writers Bassem Mroue and Barbara Surk in Beirut contributed to this report.

View the original article here

Syrian president showing renewed confidence

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian President Bashar Assad and his allies are showing renewed confidence that the momentum in the civil war is shifting in their favor, due in part to the rapid rise of al-Qaida-linked extremists among the rebels and the world's reluctance to take forceful action to intervene in the fighting.

His invigorated regime has gone on the offensive — both on the ground and in its portrayal of the conflict as a choice between Assad and the extremists.

Several factors appear to have convinced Assad he can weather the storm: Two years into the uprising against his family's iron rule, his regime remains firmly entrenched in Damascus, the defection rate from the military has dwindled, and key international supporters Russia and China are still solidly on his side.

Moreover, the regime has benefited from the fallout created by audio distributed last month in which the head of the extremist Jabhat al-Nusra group, one of the most powerful and effective rebel groups in Syria, pledged allegiance to al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri.

There are signs of Assad's renewed confidence.

After dropping largely out of sight following an hour-long speech at the Opera House in central Damascus in January, Assad has appeared in two TV interviews in the past month. His wife, Asma, appeared in public in March for the first time in months, surrounded by women and children for a function honoring mothers.

"I can say, without exaggeration, that the situation in Syria now is better than it was at the beginning of the crisis," Assad said in an interview with state-run broadcaster Al-Ikhbariya on April l7.

"With time, people became more aware of the dangers of what was happening. ... They started to gain a better understanding of the real Syria we used to live in and realized the value of the safety, security and harmony, which we used to enjoy," he added.

On Wednesday, a smiling Assad made another rare public appearance, visiting a Damascus power station just a day after a bombing in the capital and two days after his prime minister escapade an assassination attempt.

Syrian TV showed Assad, looking confident and wearing a dark business suit, chatting with workers and shaking their hands on May Day.

"They want to scare us, we will not be scared. ... They want us to live underground, we will not live underground," Assad was shown telling a group of workers gathered around him in a garden.

Since the beginning of the uprising in March 2011, Assad's regime has tried to portray the movement as being driven by what it called terrorists and foreign-backed mercenaries. The government responded with a brutal military crackdown that led many to take up arms to fight back. Gradually, the rebellion turned into an armed insurgency, drawing in radicalized elements and foreign fighters from other countries.

Jabhat al-Nusra, designated a terrorist group by the U.S., has emerged as one of the most potent fighting forces.

Assad's regime has seized on the recording of Nusra Front's leader pledging allegiance to al-Qaida as proof it is fighting terrorists, prompting some members of the Syrian opposition to claim the audio was faked by the government to tarnish their movement.

"The regime is trying, and succeeding unfortunately, in brainwashing some segments of society into thinking that they are their protectors and whoever follows will massacre them," said opposition figure Kamal Labwani.

Many Syrians acknowledge feeling more secure under Assad.

A Christian Syrian tailor who fled last month to Lebanon said at least Assad was a known quantity. He said people fled when "heavily armed and bearded gunmen" from an anti-Assad group arrived in his hometown last month, setting up roadblocks and checking people's IDs. The tailor insisted on identifying himself only as Amin, his first name, for fear of reprisals from the regime or its opponents.

Despite losing large swaths of territory in northern and eastern Syria, Assad's military has retained his firm grip on Damascus, his seat of power, and key coastal areas. In recent weeks, his troops have made advances, pushing back rebels in parts of the Damascus suburbs and some areas where rebels regularly fire mortars on the capital.

Inspecting the site of a car bombing Tuesday in Damascus, Interior Minister Mohammed al-Shaar told reporters the attacks in the capital were in response to the "victories and achievements scored by the Syrian Arab Army on the ground against terrorism." Al-Shaar himself escaped a bomb that targeted his convoy in December.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which closely monitors the civil war, said the number of defections from the military as well as political circles has gone "significantly down" in recent months. Those who are now fighting are considered the "hard-core regime supporters" who will stay until the end, he said.

Syrians opposed to Assad accuse him of encouraging and planting extremists in the ranks of the rebellion, including releasing hundreds of jihadis from prison early in the uprising, knowing full well that they were bound to take up arms against it.

Ammar Abdulhamid, a Washington-based Syrian pro-democracy activist and director of the Tharwa Foundation, said that while the regime has probably lost control over these cells by now, their presence has helped it achieve its goal.

They can now point to these cells and their activities to bolster their message of "either us or the terrorists."

The Assad dynasty has long tried to push a secular and nationalist identity in Syria while flirting with extremists when it suited it. In 2003, the Syrian regime was known to be providing safe passage to jihadis to enter Iraq to fight U.S. forces.

"This is a game that the Assad regime has perfected by now. They create the problem and then they offer their services to the world to solve that problem," said Randa Slim, a research fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington.

Still, the extremists' role in the civil war has raised alarm among Syrians and officials in the West. Their presence has been among the chief reasons behind international reluctance to arm the rebels.

Allegations that the regime used chemical weapons have not triggered an international response, despite President Barack Obama's earlier assertion that use of such weapons would be a "game-changer" and a "red line."

Obama said Tuesday that the evidence available does not yet merit the quick use of U.S. military power.

Russia and China, Assad's main allies, have stuck by him during the course of the uprising, as have his supporters in the region — Iran and Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group.

In a further boost, Hezbollah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah said in a speech Tuesday that Syria's "real friends," including his Iranian-backed group, would intervene on the side of Damascus if needed.

Abdulhamid said that if groups like al-Nusra increase their profile in Syria, there will be a greater willingness among some Western leaders to listen to Assad's argument again.

"The mantra of 'Either us or the extremists' is slowly but surely regaining some of its popularity and relevance in decision-making circles in the West," he said.

View the original article here

Israel wary quiet on Syrian front about to end

ALONEI HABASHAN, Golan Heights (AP) — Against a vista of green fields and snowcapped mountains, all is silent but for a gusting wind. Then comes a burst of gunfire from the Syrian civil war raging next door, where jihadist rebels are battling Bashar Assad's troops in a village.

Watching it all unfold from a few kilometers (miles) away are Israeli soldiers atop tanks behind a newly fortified fence, while a large-scale Israeli drill sends off its own explosions in the background.

This is the new reality on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, for 40 years the quietest of Israel's front lines, a place of hiking trails, bird-watching, skiing and winery tour. The military predicts all that will soon change as it prepares for the worst — a power vacuum in Syria in which rogue groups could get their hands of the country's large stockpile of chemical weapons.

In many ways, a new era has already begun. The Syrian villages along the border change hands between military and rebel strongholds in daily battles. Their mortar shells and bullets frequently land on the Israeli side, including in in some cases narrowly missing soldiers and civilians. A Syrian army tank shell landed in the border community of Alonei Habashan in February.

Though Israel believes these have mostly been cases of errant fire, it has responded with firepower of its own on several occasions in the first round of hostilities since a long-term armistice took hold after the 1973 Mideast war.

"This area became a huge ungoverned area and inside an ungoverned area many, many players want to be inside and want to play their own role and to work for their own interests," said Gal Hirsch, a reserve Israeli brigadier general who is involved in the military's strategic planning and operations. "Syria became a place that we see as a big threat to Israel and that is why we started to work in the last two years on a strong obstacle, on our infrastructure, in order to make sure that we will be ready for the future. And the future is here already."

Officials say the military's present deployment on the plateau is its most robust since 1973, and its most obvious manifestation is the brand new border fence, 6 meters (20 feet) tall, topped with barbed wire and bristling with sophisticated anti-infiltration devices. The previous rundown fence was largely untested until it was trampled over last year by Syrians protesting on behalf of Palestinians.

The military would not detail other measures it is taking, but stressed it was actively defining the new border arrangement now, before it's too late.

On the other side of the frontier, the village of Bir Ajam is in rebel hands and Israeli troops report watching them successfully deflect Syrian military pre-dawn raids almost daily. In a village nearby, Syrian intelligence and commando forces are based in concrete, windowless structures.

At the triangle where the borders of Israel, Syria and Jordan meet along the Yarmouk River, a lone jeep is seen crossing uninterrupted from Jordan into Syria. In March, rebels kidnapped 21 Filipino U.N peacekeepers nearby. Thousands of refugees have used the route to flee the carnage into Jordan.

A few injured refugees have trickled into the Golan, and the military runs a field clinic to treat them. But there's no guarantee the trickle won't become a flood if Jordan in the south or Turkey in the north become unreachable.

"Syria right now is a kind of self-evolving system," Hirsch said. "No one can control or predict everything."

Israel, which borders southwestern Syria, has thus far been careful to stay on the sidelines of a civil war that has already claimed the lives of more than 70,000.

Assad is a bitter enemy, an ally of Iran and a major backer of Lebanese Hezbollah guerilla attacks against Israel. But like his father whom he succeeded as president, he has faithfully observed U.S.-brokered accords that ended the 1973 war. Israel worries that whoever comes out on top in the civil war will be a much more dangerous adversary.

Chief among Israeli concerns is that Assad's advanced weaponry could reach the hands of either his ally, the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, or Islamic extremist groups among the rebels trying to oust him.

"Syria is not a regular place ... it is the biggest warehouse for weapons on earth," Hirsch warned.

In an interview with BBC TV last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the rebel groups among "the worst Islamist radicals in the world."

"So obviously we are concerned that weapons that are ground-breaking, that can change the balance of power in the Middle East, would fall into the hands of these terrorists," he said.

This week, a senior Israeli military intelligence official said Assad used chemical weapons last month. After initial denials, American and British officials confirmed the assessment of Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, the head of research and analysis in Israeli military intelligence, that the lethal nerve agent sarin was probably used. U.S. President Barack Obama has warned that the introduction of chemical weapons by Assad would be a "game changer" that could usher in greater foreign intervention in the civil war.

For Israel, the specter of peace with Syria disintegrating adds to a growing sense of siege.

It saw the Gaza Strip fall to the militant Hamas movement in an election in 2006. And Egypt, the most populous Arab country and the first to make peace with Israel, is now ruled by the fiercely anti-Israeli Muslim Brotherhood. Israel has all but admitted that its warplanes destroyed a shipment of anti-aircraft missiles believed to be headed from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon in January, and on Thursday it shot down a drone which it claimed was operated by Hezbollah. (Hezbollah denied launching it.).

Hirsch, who commanded an Israeli division in a monthlong war with Hezbollah in 2006, said war regional roles have since then been reversed. While once Syria used Hezbollah in Lebanon as a proxy against Israel, Hezbollah is now deterred from acting on Lebanese soil for fear of Israeli retribution and is preparing to use the instability in Syria as its future staging ground.

"The fighting in Syria gives them an opportunity to open a new front against Israel," said Hirsch. "We must be ready for turbulence. We must be ready for the Iranian involvement inside Syria. We must be ready to be able to fight against radical fundamentalist activities that will come from Syria, and that is what we are doing here."

___

Follow Heller on Twitter (at)aronhellerap

View the original article here

Syrian rebels call on world to put words to action

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian opposition groups called Friday for international action after the Obama administration said U.S. intelligence indicates President Bashar Assad's regime has used chemical weapons. The government likened the accusation to false U.S. claims of weapons of mass destruction used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Washington's declaration was its strongest so far, although the administration said it was still working to pin down definitive proof — holding back from saying Damascus had outright crossed what President Barack Obama has said would be a "red line" prompting tougher action.

The rebels accused regime forces of firing chemical agents on at least four occasions since December, killing 31 people in the worst of the attacks, and warned that world inaction would only encourage Assad to use them on a larger scale.

The Obama administration said Thursday that intelligence indicates government forces used the nerve gas sarin in two attacks.

The regime countered that it was the rebels who fired chemical weapons — pointing to their capture of a chemical factory last year as proof of their ability to do so. On Friday, government officials repeated denials the military had used the weapons.

Both sides have used the issue to try to sway world opinion.

"The red line has been crossed, and this has now been documented by the international community. We hope the U.S. will abide by the red line set by Mr. Obama himself," Loay al-Mikdad, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army, the umbrella group for rebel fighters, told The Associated Press.

"We need urgent action, otherwise Bashar Assad will not hesitate to use his entire chemical and unconventional weapons stockpile against the Syrian people," he said.

Most Assad opponents say the U.S. and its allies should now arm the rebels in response to regime use of chemical weapons, a step Washington has been reluctant to take for fear the weapons will end up in the hands of Islamic hard-liners. Some have urged international airstrikes against regime warplanes and rocket launchers that have wreaked havoc on rebel forces. Few, however, advocate direct international intervention on the ground.

At the White House, Obama said Friday that any use of chemical weapons by Syria would be a "game changer," though he cautioned the United States needs more evidence that Assad has used the deadly agents against his people.

He said the U.S., along with the United Nations, would seek to "gather evidence on the ground" in Syria to solidify intelligence assessments.

State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said Friday that the U.S. is "working to establish credible and corroborative facts to build on this intelligence assessment" and to definitively say "whether or not the president's red line has been crossed."

Asked about Syria's denials, he said that "if the regime has nothing to hide, they should let the U.N. investigators in immediately so we can get to the bottom of this."

Use of chemical weapons would bring a frightening wild-card element to Syria's 2-year-old civil war, which is estimated to have already killed more than 70,000 people. Throughout the conflict, civilian casualties have been heavy as regime forces batter rebel-held towns, neighborhoods and cities with artillery, rockets and warplanes.

Still, the chemical attacks the rebels claim the regime carried out, if confirmed, would appear to be relatively small-scale and localized.

Bilal Saab, director of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, North America, said if the regime is behind them, it may be trying to make detection as difficult as possible and to maintain plausible deniability.

"The government may also feel that the time for full-on use of chemical weapons has not come yet. It may also be indirectly communicating with Western powers and testing their resolve," he said.

If the rebels were using them as the regime claims, it would be a "strategic blunder," given how it would taint the movement, he said, adding that one possible scenario is that they were carried out by extremists within the rebel movement.

In December, after rebels seized control of a chlorine factory in Aleppo, the government warned the opposition might be planning a chemical attack to frame the regime. To back up its claims, the state-run SANA news agency pointed to videos posted on YouTube that purported to show regime opponents experimenting with poisons on mice and rabbits. The origin of the videos was not known.

It is not clear exactly how many people have died in alleged chemical attacks because of the scarcity of credible information. The Syrian government seals off areas it controls to journalists and outside observers, making details of the attacks extremely sketchy.

Al-Mikdad said the opposition has documented four attacks based on air and soil samples and the blood of victims, in addition to eyewitness accounts. He said the results have been shared with Western countries, though he declined to name them.

The deadliest was on the village of Khan al-Assal near the northern city of Aleppo, where at least 31 people were killed in March.

The village is controlled by the government, and the regime accused rebels of firing a missile carrying chemical agents.

The opposition contends it was regime fire. Aleppo-based activist Mohammed Saeed said the army appeared to have hit government troops by mistake, inflicting casualties among them and then blaming the opposition. Neither side has offered evidence to back their claims.

In another alleged chemical attack, a government air raid on April 13 on the contested Sheikh Maqsoud neighborhood in Aleppo killed at least four people and wounded more than a dozen others. Activists say doctors treating the wounded said many showed symptoms of inhaling a toxic gas, including severe vomiting and irritation to the nose and eyes.

Eyewitnesses speaking in a video allegedly taken a day after the attack and posted online by activists reported that an explosion left several people unconscious and others reporting aches and dizziness.

"There was a smell, so we went out and I felt dizzy and my eyes turned red," a young boy said.

Another video showed several people on stretchers at a hospital, some twitching and foaming at the mouth and nose.

The videos were consistent with AP reporting of an attack in the area on April 13, although it was not known if the symptoms resembled those triggered by a chemical weapons attack.

A defense analyst who viewed the video of the victims lying on stretchers after the attack said that, while it was impossible to verify that a nerve agent caused their symptoms, they appeared to be the result of something other than traditional weaponry.

"What you're immediately struck by is this is not your normal ordnance ... that it seems of a different type," said Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.

"Now whether that automatically guarantees that it is a specific nerve agent, I wouldn't go so far as to say based on my knowledge. But it does have the effect, it does have the appearance of being something caused by something besides traditional explosives or penetrating metal," O'Hanlon said.

Activists reported two other alleged chemical attacks, including one in December in the central city of Homs in which they said six rebels died after inhaling white smoke pouring from shells fired on the area.

Videos of the aftermath of that attack showed men in hospital beds coughing and struggling to breathe as doctors placed oxygen masks on their faces.

"The smell was like hydrochloric acid. People started choking and I wasn't able to breath," a man identified as a rebel said in a video posted online after the attack by activists.

The video appeared genuine and corresponded to AP reporting of violence in Homs in December, although it was impossible to verify if the symptoms were triggered by a chemical weapons attack.

The Britain-based Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists on the ground, said the group has documented the two attacks in Aleppo province, but did not have proof of the other two.

A Syrian government official denied the government carried out any chemical attacks, saying Assad's military "did not and will not use chemical weapons even if it had them." The army, he said, can reach any area in Syria it wants without them.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to give official statements.

A Syrian lawmaker, Sharif Shehadeh, echoed that assertion, saying the Syrian army "can win the war with traditional weapons" and has no need for chemical weapons.

Syria's official policy is to neither confirm nor deny it has chemical weapons.

Shehadeh likened the allegations to the false accusations that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that U.S. policymakers used to justify the 2003 invasion.

"What is being designed for Syria now is similar to what happened in Iraq," he said.

Following the Khan al-Assal attack, the government called for the United Nations to investigate alleged chemical weapons use by rebels.

Syria, however, has not allowed a team of experts into the country because it wants the investigation limited to the single Khan al-Assal incident, while U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has urged "immediate and unfettered access" for an expanded investigation.

U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky said Friday that U.N. disarmament chief Angela Kane wrote another letter to Syrian authorities on Thursday urging the government to grant access to the U.N. chemical weapons experts without conditions.

___

AP reporter Albert Aji contributed to this report.

View the original article here

Israel fears end to 40-year peace on Syrian front

ALONEI HABASHAN, Golan Heights (AP) — Against a vista of green fields and snowcapped mountains, all is silent but for a gusting wind. Then comes a burst of gunfire from the Syrian civil war raging next door, where jihadist rebels are battling Bashar Assad's troops in a village.

Watching it all unfold from a few kilometers (miles) away are Israeli soldiers atop tanks behind a newly fortified fence, while a large-scale Israeli drill sends off its own explosions in the background.

This is the new reality on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, for 40 years the quietest of Israel's front lines, a place of hiking trails, bird-watching, skiing and winery tour. The military predicts all that will soon change as it prepares for the worst — a power vacuum in Syria in which rogue groups could get their hands of the country's large stockpile of chemical weapons.

In many ways, a new era has already begun. The Syrian villages along the border change hands between military and rebel strongholds in daily battles. Their mortar shells and bullets frequently land on the Israeli side, including in some cases narrowly missing soldiers and civilians. A Syrian army tank shell landed in the border community of Alonei Habashan in February.

Though Israel believes these have mostly been cases of errant fire, it has responded with firepower of its own on several occasions in the first round of hostilities since a long-term armistice took hold after the 1973 Mideast war.

"This area became a huge ungoverned area and inside an ungoverned area many, many players want to be inside and want to play their own role and to work for their own interests," said Gal Hirsch, a reserve Israeli brigadier general who is involved in the military's strategic planning and operations. "Syria became a place that we see as a big threat to Israel and that is why we started to work in the last two years on a strong obstacle, on our infrastructure, in order to make sure that we will be ready for the future. And the future is here already."

Officials say the military's present deployment on the plateau is its most robust since 1973, and its most obvious manifestation is the brand new border fence, 6 meters (20 feet) tall, topped with barbed wire and bristling with sophisticated anti-infiltration devices. The previous rundown fence was largely untested until it was trampled over last year by Syrians protesting on behalf of Palestinians.

The military would not detail other measures it is taking, but stressed it was actively defining the new border arrangement now, before it could be too late.

On the other side of the frontier, the village of Bir Ajam is in rebel hands and Israeli troops report watching them successfully deflect Syrian military pre-dawn raids almost daily. In a village nearby, Syrian intelligence and commando forces are based in concrete, windowless structures.

At the triangle where the borders of Israel, Syria and Jordan meet along the Yarmouk River, a lone jeep is seen crossing uninterrupted from Jordan into Syria. In March, rebels kidnapped 21 Filipino U.N peacekeepers nearby. Thousands of refugees have used the route to flee the carnage into Jordan.

A few injured refugees have trickled into the Golan, and the military runs a field clinic to treat them. But there's no guarantee the trickle won't become a flood if Jordan in the south or Turkey in the north become unreachable.

"Syria right now is a kind of self-evolving system," Hirsch said. "No one can control or predict everything."

Israel, which borders southwestern Syria, has thus far been careful to stay on the sidelines of a civil war that has already claimed the lives of more than 70,000.

Assad is a bitter enemy, an ally of Iran and a major backer of Lebanese Hezbollah guerilla attacks against Israel. But like his father whom he succeeded as president, he has faithfully observed U.S.-brokered accords that ended the 1973 war. Israel worries that whoever comes out on top in the civil war will be a much more dangerous adversary.

Chief among Israeli concerns is that Assad's advanced weaponry could reach the hands of either his ally, the Hezbollah militant group in Lebanon, or Islamic extremist groups among the rebels trying to oust him.

"Syria is not a regular place ... it is the biggest warehouse for weapons on earth," Hirsch warned.

In an interview with BBC TV last week, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the rebel groups among "the worst Islamist radicals in the world."

"So obviously we are concerned that weapons that are ground-breaking, that can change the balance of power in the Middle East, would fall into the hands of these terrorists," he said.

This week, a senior Israeli military intelligence official said Assad used chemical weapons last month. After initial denials, American and British officials confirmed the assessment of Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, the head of research and analysis in Israeli military intelligence, that the lethal nerve agent sarin was probably used. U.S. President Barack Obama has warned that the introduction of chemical weapons by Assad would be a "game changer" that could usher in greater foreign intervention in the civil war.

For Israel, the specter of peace with Syria disintegrating adds to a growing sense of siege. It saw the Gaza Strip fall to the militant Hamas movement in an election in 2006. And Egypt, the most populous Arab country and the first to make peace with Israel, is now ruled by the fiercely anti-Israeli Muslim Brotherhood. All this against the backdrop of the Iranian nuclear program and its threats to destroy the Jewish state.

Israel has all but admitted that its warplanes destroyed a shipment of anti-aircraft missiles believed to be headed from Syria to Hezbollah in Lebanon in January, and on Thursday it shot down a drone which it claimed was operated by Hezbollah. (Hezbollah denied launching it.).

Hirsch, who commanded an Israeli division in a monthlong war with Hezbollah in 2006, said war regional roles have since then been reversed. While once Syria used Hezbollah in Lebanon as a proxy against Israel, Hezbollah is now deterred from acting on Lebanese soil for fear of Israeli retribution and is preparing to use the instability in Syria as its future staging ground.

"The fighting in Syria gives them an opportunity to open a new front against Israel," said Hirsch. "We must be ready for turbulence. We must be ready for the Iranian involvement inside Syria. We must be ready to be able to fight against radical fundamentalist activities that will come from Syria, and that is what we are doing here."

___

Follow Heller on Twitter (at)aronhellerap

View the original article here

Syrian troops capture key town near Damascus

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian activists and state media say President Bashar Assad's forces have captured a strategic town near Damascus after a five-week battle with rebels.

The director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdul-Rahman, says government troops regained control of the town of Otaybah, east of the capital, late Wednesday.

State-run SANA news agency said Thursday that the army has "restored complete control" over Otaybah.

The town is located on a road linking Damascus to its international airport, along which rebels have been transporting weapons and other supplies from neighboring Jordan. The opposition has found strong support in the city's surrounding towns and neighborhoods since the beginning of the 2-year-old conflict.

Rebels fighting to topple Assad hope to eventually storm the capital from there.

View the original article here

Al Qaeda adds urgency to search for Syrian peace

By Khaled Yacoub Oweis

AMMAN (Reuters) - International powers will search for a peaceful settlement to Syria's civil war with fresh urgency at an Istanbul meeting after a rebel faction aligned itself with al Qaeda, diplomats and opposition sources said on Sunday.

Saturday's meeting of 11 countries from the Friends of Syria alliance will come after the al-Nusra Front, among the strongest formations seeking to topple President Bashar al-Assad, pledged allegiance to al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri on April 10.

"We will be meeting under the shadow of the advances of Nusra and other militants. The recent al Qaeda statements have injected a new urgency for the international community to push to end the conflict," said an official who will attend the meeting on the conflict that has killed more than 70,000 people.

Western powers, which want to see the end of the Assad family's 43-year rule but do not want to intervene militarily in Syria, have been alarmed by the advance of groups like the Nusra Front in a conflict which has deepened the Middle East's sectarian divide.

Among those invited to Istanbul will be Moaz Alkhatib, a moderate cleric from Damascus, who said he was resigning as head of the Syrian National Coalition in March after other members of the main opposition group attacked his proposal for negotiating with Assad, the sources said.

Envoys representing most of the 11 Friends of Syria countries met in Cairo this month to press Alkhatib to stay on as leader of Coalition, a 60-member opposition umbrella group backed by the West and Gulf Arab states, the sources said.

The Istanbul meeting, whose full agenda has not been finalized, will also discuss how to pressure Assad, who has been backed by Iran and Russia, into accepting a negotiated settlement, the diplomats said.

"The international powers are inclined to call Assad's bluff and see if he is ready to accept a peaceful solution," another diplomat said, adding that Russia might also favor such a move.

SECTARIAN CONFLICT

The conflict, which pits the Sunni Muslim majority against Assad's supporters among his Alawite sect, has prompted both Sunni and Shi'ite militants from elsewhere in the Middle East to fight in Syria. The Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

The Syrian National Coalition said in a statement on Sunday that the Nusra Front's announcement "contradicts the will of the Syrian people and the objectives of the revolution". But it added that the group could not be ignored.

Sectors of the opposition want to force a U.S.- and Russian-backed settlement on both Assad and hardline groups like the Nusra Front, but Russia has first to be won over, a senior opposition source said.

"There is a growing realization that a peaceful settlement has to be imposed on Assad and on the jihadists," the opposition source said.

In February, Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said in Moscow that Assad's government was ready for talks with rebels. But fighting intensified and rebels made gains particularly in Syria's east, which accounts for all the country's oil output and most of its grains production.

The Istanbul meeting will be attended by representatives from Turkey, Egypt, Jordan, United Arab Emirates as well as Qatar, and Saudi Arabia - the two main Arab powers backing the two year revolt. From the West, the United States, Britain, Germany, Italy and France will attend, the sources said.

The Friends of Syria last met on February 28 in Rome.

Hardline Islamists including the Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham seized Raqqa in east Syria over the past two months. The Nusra Front also expanded its influence in the southern province of Deraa, according to opposition military sources.

Jordan's Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour told parliament on Sunday that Syrian crisis was "threatening the country's national security," adding that Jordan would appeal to the United Nations Security Council over the impact on its economy of hosting Syrian refugees.

Jordan says it has received Syrian 450,000 refugees.

At east one Lebanese man was killed on Sunday when a shell fired from Syria hit a built-up area in no man's land between the two countries, a Lebanese security source said.

Witnesses say fighting intensified in the last few days in the Qusair region along the Syrian-Lebanese border in the Bekaa Valley between Syrian Shi'ite militia backed by Assad's ally Hezbollah and Sunni rebel fighters.

(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi Oweis, Amman newsroom; Editing by Jason Webb)

View the original article here

Syrian regime's air power keeps rebels in check

BEIRUT (AP) — President Bashar Assad has exploited his greatest advantage in the Syrian civil war — his air power — to push back rebel advances and prevent the opposition from setting up a rival government in its northern stronghold.

Along the way, fighter jets and helicopters have hit civilian targets such as hospitals, bakeries and residential buildings, according to a report released Thursday by a U.S.-based human rights group. It accused the regime of committing war crimes with indiscriminate airstrikes that have killed more than 4,000 civilians since summer.

The Human Rights Watch report said Assad's air force has dropped "imprecise and inherently indiscriminate" munitions, including cluster bombs, on civilian areas.

In recent months, large parts of northern Syria near the border with Turkey have fallen to the rebels, including several neighborhoods of Aleppo, the country's largest city. With the recent influx of more advanced weapons and other foreign aid, the rebels have also made major gains in the south, seizing military bases and towns in the strategically important region between Damascus and the border with Jordan.

Two years into the uprising, however, the Assad regime's control of the skies is hampering rebels' efforts to hold on to territory they capture with any efficiency. An interim leader of the opposition has been elected, but he and others opposed to Assad have made only a few, brief forays into rebel-controlled areas.

"The air force is extremely important for Assad right now," said Joseph Holliday, a Syria analyst at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.

"It has allowed Assad to prevent rebels from establishing a part of Syria where people can be safe and the opposition can focus on governing the place," he said. "It very difficult to do that without a space that is free from constant harassment from the aircraft."

Although the rebels have been able to shoot down several aircraft after capturing some heavier weapons from military bases, they are largely helpless when it comes to Assad's air supremacy.

The opposition has repeatedly asked their foreign backers for weapons that can shoot down the regime's aircraft and help hasten the fall of Assad. But the United States and its European allies have been reluctant to provide opposition fighters with anti-aircraft missiles for fear they may end in the hands of radical Muslim groups that have been the most organized fighting force on the opposition side.

The rebels also want a no-fly zone established over northern Syria, but the countries opposed to Assad have taken no action on that option, either.

The top U.S. military commander in Europe, Adm. James Stavridis, said last month that some NATO nations are looking at a variety of military operations to end the deadlock and assist the opposition forces, including using aircraft to impose a no-fly zone, providing military assistance to the rebels and imposing arms embargoes.

As with U.S. and international involvement in Libya in 2011, a resolution from the U.N. Security Council and agreement among the alliance's 28 members would be needed before NATO takes a military role in Syria, Stavridis said.

Late last year, NATO deployed Patriot batteries along Turkey's border with Syria, with the alliance's leaders emphasizing that the missiles will not be used to shoot down aircraft operating in Syrian airspace.

Military experts say it is unlikely the West will revisit the no-fly zone any time soon.

"It's not easy to just go on and establish a no-fly zone, and the West has said so before," said Beirut-based military analyst, Brig. Gen. Hisham Jaber, a retired Lebanese army officer who heads the Middle East Center for Studies and Political Research in Beirut.

"They know that the Syrian army remained strong, the air force is behind Assad, and they also know that Syria has a very sophisticated air defense system," he said.

Jaber said Syria has about 400 operational aircraft, although analysts say it is difficult to come up with reliable figures on the Syrian air force and air defenses because of the extreme secrecy that blankets its military matters.

Like his late father and predecessor, Hafez, the younger Assad stacked key military posts with members of their minority Alawite sect in the past 40 years, ensuring the loyalty of the armed forces by melding the fate of the army and the regime. The air force is particularly close to the regime. Hafez Assad was an air force pilot and commander before seizing power in 1970.

However, many pilots are Sunni Muslims, and defections from the air force since the beginning of the uprising in March 2011 have been rare.

In the most dramatic escape from Syria, a fighter pilot on a training mission flew his MiG-21 warplane to neighboring Jordan in June. Only three other pilots have reportedly defected, crossing into Jordan by land last summer.

Syrian officials denounced the pilot, who is a Sunni Muslim, and military experts with knowledge of Syria suggested that the regime has grounded Sunni pilots, relying on Alawites to carry out airstrikes instead. No order has appeared in public to support their claims.

While the air force is an important tool in Assad's battle for survival, it's not his last one, said Joshua Landis, a Syria expert at the University of Oklahoma.

"It's the 3 million Alawites who believe that they will be ethnically cleansed by the opposition if the rebels overthrow Assad," Landis said. "It's because of the fear of those who could come after him that has spread around Syrian minority communities in the past year of the revolution, that many — including Sunnis — continue fighting on the regime's side."

In their campaign against the opposition, the Syrians have been using helicopters, MiG jets and trainer aircraft to hit targets daily in the north, the east, the south and in rebel strongholds on the edges of the capital of Damascus.

"The aim of the airstrikes appears to be to terrorize civilians from the air, particularly in the opposition-controlled areas where they would otherwise be fairly safe from any effects of fighting," Ole Solvang of Human Rights Watch told The Associated Press.

More than 4,300 people have been killed since summer in such attacks that amount to "serious violations of international humanitarian law," and people who commit such breaches are "responsible for war crimes," the New York-based group said in the report, the most comprehensive study of Syrian air force operations in rebel-held areas since the beginning of the conflict. The U.N. estimates that more than 70,000 people have been killed in the civil war.

The Assad regime has significantly increased its use of air power since July, when the rebels captured territory in the north after an offensive, as well as last month after they seized their first provincial capital, Raqqa. The city is bombed almost daily.

Human Rights Watch said it inspected 52 sites in northern Syria and documented what it labeled 59 unlawful attacks by the Syrian air force in rebel-held areas.

Based on inspections and more than 140 interviews with witnesses, HRW said warplanes "deliberately targeted four bakeries (in the north) where civilians were waiting in bread lines a total of eight times."

Repeated aerial attacks on two hospitals that the group visited in the northern areas under opposition control "strongly suggest that the government also deliberately targeted these facilities," HRW said.

Assad's jets have dropped incendiary weapons on residential areas in the north that are designed to set fire to objects and people, the group said.

The planes have also hit civilian areas with makeshift bombs, made from hundreds of pounds (kilograms) of explosives stuffed into barrels. HRW even found unexploded naval mines on sites hit by airstrikes in northern Syria, Solvang said.

"They seem to be using pretty much everything they have to bomb places," he said.

Officials in Damascus could not immediately be reached for comment on the Human Rights Watch report. The Syrian government describes the rebels as foreign-backed terrorists set on destroying the country.

HRW also criticized the Free Syrian Army and other opposition groups for not taking measures to avoid deploying forces and headquarters in or near densely populated areas.

View the original article here

Syrian troops launch counterattack on south

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian government forces launched a counteroffensive in the south, capturing a town and killing at least 45 people including women and children, opposition activists said Thursday.

The attack on the town of Sanamein followed a rebel advance in the area in recent weeks. They opposition fighters captured army bases and a major town in the strategic province of Daraa along the border with Jordan.

"They slaughtered any person they found," an activist in the nearby town of Busra al-Harir who goes by the fake name of Hamza al-Hariri told The Associated Press via Skype. He would not give his real name for fear of government reprisals.

"This is the ugliest massacre since the one in Houla," he added, referring to a region in the central province of Homs where more than 100 civilians were killed by government forces in May last year.

Rebels advancing in the south in recent weeks have been aiming to secure a corridor from the Jordanian border to Damascus about 60 miles away in preparation for an eventual assault on the capital.

Regional officials and military experts note a sharp increase in weapons shipments to opposition fighters by Arab governments, in coordination with the U.S., in the hopes of readying a push into Damascus — the ultimate prize in the civil war that has killed more than 70,000 in two years.

Rebels already control vast portions of northern Syria bordering Turkey.

State-run Syrian TV said the armed forces "wiped out terrorist groups" in Sanamein and the nearby town of Ghabagheb. It added that troops were targeting rebel hideouts in different parts of Daraa. They included the villages and towns of Tafas, Jasssim, Dael and Tseel and the report said they had inflicted casualties in those areas.

The city of Daraa, the provincial capital, was the birthplace of the uprising against President Bashar Assad in March 2011

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights activist group reported clashes on Thursday in the city of Daraa and said there were casualties among regime troops.

State-run Syrian TV said government forces killed or wounded dozens of gunmen in the city of Daraa, including foreign fighters.

The Observatory said at least 45 people, including five children and seven women, were killed in the attack on Sanamein. It said they were killed by "shooting, shelling and field execution," a reference to people reported to have been shot at close range.

The Syrian National Coalition, the main opposition group, said more than 60 people were "brutally" killed in the town. After troops stormed Sanamein, the group said they used some civilians as human shields and took others as hostages before looting some homes.

The differing death tolls could not be reconciled.

The SNC said the regime carried out the attack in Sanamein after it failed "to stop the operation to liberate the province of Daraa, the southern entrance to Damascus."

In addition to the stronghold in the north, rebels have also captured parts of the east along the border with Iraq recently. But the strategic region between the southern outskirts of Damascus and Jordan — known as the Houran plains — is seen as a crucial gateway to the capital.

Dozens of rebel units have carved out footholds in areas to the east and south of the capital, and use their positions there to fire mortar shells at the heavily guarded city.

Daraa borders Jordan and the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights.

"The regime is trying to score a victory in Daraa and send an internal and external message," said Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory.

Al-Hariri, the activist from the nearby town, said the attack on Sanamein began at 5 a.m. Wednesday with intense shelling. About five hours later, troops began advancing into the town and clashing with rebels, he said.

He said he had a list of 48 names of the dead as well as about 20 who have not been identified yet.

By nighttime, troops were in control of the whole town, he said.

An amateur video posted online showed 15 bodies covered with sheets, some with their faces covered with blood. The dead included four children and a woman.

"These are the bodies that we have been able to collect so far," said a man wearing a black Islamic headband and an opposition flag around his neck.

The video appeared genuine and corresponded to other AP reporting on the events depicted.

Activists also reported clashes and shelling Thursday in the central province of Homs, Deir el-Zour in the east and Raqqa, Aleppo and Idlib provinces in the north. They said rebels shot down a helicopter carrying food and supplies to an army base near the northwestern town of Maaret al-Numan, killing the pilot and three other soldiers.

Also Thursday, Syria's Foreign Ministry complained to the United Nations and the U.N. Security Council about al-Qaida's activities in Syria, saying that Damascus has been fighting the group for two years.

The Syrian government denies there is an uprising and says it is fighting terrorists carrying out a foreign conspiracy.

The letter came a day after the leader of the most formidable rebel group in Syria pledged allegiance to al-Qaida but distanced himself from a claim that his Islamic extremist faction had merged with the terror network's Iraqi branch.

Al-Qaida in Iraq said Tuesday that it had joined forces with Jabhat al-Nusra or the Nusra Front — the most effective force among the disparate rebel factions fighting to topple Assad. It said they had formed a new alliance called the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant.

In other developments, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch accused Syria of committing war crimes by indiscriminate and sometimes deliberate airstrikes against civilians, killing at least 4,300 people since the summer.

The regime's air power is its biggest advantage in the civil war, helping to repel rebel advances on Damascus and to prevent a rival government from setting up in the northern stronghold.

View the original article here

Syrian militant group unites with al-Qaida in Iraq

BEIRUT (AP) — Al-Qaida's branch in Iraq and the most powerful rebel extremist group in Syria have officially joined ranks against President Bashar Assad to forge a potentially formidable militant force in the Middle East.

The merger of the Islamic State in Iraq and Jabhat al-Nusra forms a new entity that could be an even stronger opponent in the fight to topple Assad and become a dominant player in what eventually replaces his regime.

The new group, called the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, underscores the growing confidence and muscle of Islamist radicals fighting on the rebel side in Syria's civil war. It also bolsters the Syrian government's assertions that the regime is battling terrorists and that the uprising is a foreign-backed plot.

While the U.S. and its European and Gulf allies are concerned about the rising prominence of Islamists among the rebels, the merger is unlikely to prompt a shift in the international support. Late last year, Washington declared that Jabhat al-Nusra had ties to al-Qaida and designated it a terrorist organization.

To try to counter the rising influence of Jabhat al-Nusra and other Islamic extremists in the civil war, the U.S. and its allies have boosted their support for rebel factions deemed to be more moderate.

On the political front, they helped created the opposition umbrella group, the Syrian National Coalition, in the hope that it will serve as the united face of those trying to unseat Assad and administer much of the territory in northern Syria that rebels have managed to pry away from regime forces in the past year.

The U.S. and other countries also have stepped up covert support for rebels on the ground by helping to coordinate shipments of new weapons and training rebels in Jordan, officials say. Those receiving training are mainly secular Sunni Muslim tribesmen from central and southern Syria who once served in the army and police.

The force is seen as a counterbalance to the Islamic militant groups — chief among them Jabhat al-Nusra — that have proven to be among the most effective of the myriad rebel factions fighting Assad's forces, officials say.

The merger was announced by the leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in a 21-minute audio message posted on militant websites late Monday. A website linked to Jabhat al-Nusra known as al-Muhajir al-Islami — the Islamic emigrant — confirmed the merger.

Together, the groups will now be known as the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, al-Baghdadi said. The Levant is the traditional name referring to the region from southern Turkey to Egypt on the eastern Mediterranean.

"It is time to announce to the Levantine people and the whole world that Jabhat al-Nusra is merely an extension and part of the Islamic State of Iraq," he said.

He said the Iraqi group was providing half of its budget to the conflict in Syria, and that Jabhat al-Nusra would not have a separate leader but instead be led by the "people of Syria themselves" — implying that he would be in charge in both countries.

The announcement comes two days after the leader of al-Qaida, Ayman al-Zawahiri, urged Islamic fighters in Syria to unite in their efforts to oust Assad.

Jabhat al-Nusra, which has welcomed militants from across the Muslim world into its ranks, has made little secret of its links across the Iraqi border, but until now it has not officially declared itself to be part of al-Qaida.

The Syrian group, which wants to oust Assad and replace his regime with an Islamic state, first emerged in a video posted online in January 2012. Since then, it has demonstrated its prowess — and ruthlessness — on the battlefield.

It has claimed responsibility for many of the deadliest suicide bombings against Syrian government institutions and military facilities. The group's success helped fuel a surge in its popularity among rebel fighters, although it has also emerged as a source of friction with more moderate and secular brigades in Syria.

The group also has tried to provide basic services in the parts of northern Syria under rebel control, including security and food to civilians struggling to survive.

Bilal Saab, director of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, North America, said the merger will make Jabhat al-Nusra an even more formidable force in Syria.

"I think you're going to have a pooling of resources, a more massive influx of fighters coming from Iraq into Syria. It will help them better position themselves in the period after Assad. It will certainly better help them defeat the Syrian regime more quickly," Saab said.

"It does matter for them that they're getting more materiel and more people and more expertise, especially Iraqi veterans who have really been vetted on the battlefield and who have fought coalition forces since 2003," he added.

Al-Qaida in Iraq arose after the 2003 U.S. led-invasion of Iraq, and fought a bloody insurgency against American troops and Iraqi government forces. Generally, the group has not operated beyond Iraq's borders.

The union with al-Qaida also poses risks for Jabhat al-Nusra.

Coming under the banner of a non-Syrian group could tarnish the group's image in the eyes of some rebels and Syrian civilians, particularly if the group tries to impose its strict Islamic beliefs.

"It has the potential to backfire, and help marginalize the group from other fighting factions and from the civilian population," said Elizabeth O'Bagy of the Institute for the Study of War.

She said by email that the merger could prompt a growing number of Syrians to view Jabhat al-Nusra's actions "as an outside imposition that is detrimental to Syria's future."

For now, it is unlikely to undermine Jabhat al-Nusra's standing in the eyes of the broader rebel movement, which desperately needs the group's unmatched skills on the battlefield to defeat a government war machine that enjoys far superior firepower with its tanks, helicopter gunships, fighter jets and artillery.

Still, for rebels who favor a civil state in post-Assad Syria, the presence of jihadi fighters presents a dilemma: It helps their immediate goal of getting rid of Assad, but it hurts them politically to have a group designated as a terrorist organization on their side.

"Their thinking is ... 'let's deal with the problem right now of deposing the regime, and then take care of these rogue, radical elements later when we have international support,'" Saab said. "For now, they need them. When everything is over, there's going to be a huge fight over basically all of Syria."

Among those most concerned by the merger is Iraq, whose Shiite-led government has been trying for years to snuff out an al-Qaida-led Sunni insurgency.

In a column published Tuesday in the Washington Post, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki warned that a Syria controlled by al-Qaida and its affiliates "would be more dangerous to both our countries than anything we've seen up to now." He added that such a scenario "grows more likely by the day."

A top Iraqi intelligence official told The Associated Press in Baghdad that his organization has always known that "al-Qaida in Iraq is directing Jabhat al-Nusra." He said the groups announced their union because of "political, logistical and geographical circumstance." The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to brief the media, said Iraqi authorities will take "strict security measures to strike them."

Iraqi officials say the groups are sharing three military training compounds, logistics, intelligence and weapons, and are growing in strength around the Syria-Iraq border.

One of the most dramatic attacks by the group — and at the time the clearest indication of cross-border cooperation with al-Qaida in Iraq — came on March 4, when 51 Syrian soldiers were killed in a well-coordinated ambush. The Syrians had crossed into Iraq to seek refuge following clashes with rebels on the Syrian side of the border.

___

Associated Press writers Zeina Karam and Bassem Mroue in Beirut, Maamoun Youssef in Cairo, and Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad contributed to this report.

View the original article here