BEIRUT: Syrian artillery and warplanes pounded rebel areas in Damascus yesterday as President Bashar Al Assad’s foes pleaded for advanced weapons from the United States, which has promised them unspecified military aid.
Free Syrian Army (FSA) commander Salim Idriss said on Friday that rebels, pushed back by Assad’s forces and their Lebanese Hezbollah allies in recent weeks, urgently needed anti-aircraft and anti-tank missiles, as well as a protective no-fly zone.
“But our friends in the United States haven’t told us yet that they are going to support us with weapons and ammunition,” he said after meeting US and European officials in Turkey.
A source in the Middle East familiar with US dealings with the rebels has said planned arms supplies would include automatic weapons, light mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.
The United States, which called for Assad to step down early in the 27-month-old Syrian uprising, this week pledged military support to rebels, citing what it said was the Syrian military’s use of chemical weapons - an allegation Damascus has denied.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said chemical attacks by Syrian forces and Hezbollah’s involvement on Assad’s side showed a lack of commitment to negotiations and threatened to “put a political settlement out of reach”.
The United States and Russia announced in May they would try to convene peace talks involving the Syrian government and its opponents, but no date has been set. Kerry had not previously expressed such pessimism about prospects for the conference.
Outgunned rebels have few ways to counter Assad’s air power. The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said jets and artillery yesterday attacked Jobar, a battered district where rebels operate on the edge of central Damascus.
It said heavy artillery was also shelling opposition fighters in the provinces of Homs, Aleppo and Deir Al Zor. A Turkish official said 71 Syrian army officers, including six generals and 22 colonels, and two policemen had defected to Turkey, in the biggest single mass desertion from Assad’s military in months.
Western diplomats said on Friday that Washington was considering a limited no-fly zone over parts of Syria, but the White House noted later that it would be far harder and costlier to set up one up there than it was in Libya, saying the United States had no national interest in pursuing that option.
Russia, an ally of Damascus and fierce opponent of outside military intervention, warned against any attempt to enforce a no-fly zone over Syria using F-16 fighter jets and Patriot air defence missile systems from Jordan. “You don’t have to be a great expert to understand that this will violate international law,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.
The United Nations says at least 93,000 people, including civilians and combatants, have died in the Syrian civil war, with the monthly death toll averaging 5,000 in the past year.
REUTERS
