Asma Al Assad, wife of Syrian President Bashar Al Assad, is greeted by people during an event to remember the “Mothers of Martyrs” at the Opera House in Damascus, yesterday.
DAMASCUS: Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s wife and his children have made a rare public appearance at a charity fund-raiser in Damascus for mothers of soldiers killed in the two-year conflict, his office said on Facebook yesterday.
The office said that Asma Al Assad, her three children as well as their cousins “took part on Saturday in a charity event called... at the Damascus Opera House on the occasion of Mother’s Day.”
The event, dubbed ‘Mothers Rally’, was aimed at raising funds for the mothers of Syrian soldiers killed in fighting with rebels through the sale of crafts, the office said in a statement. Assad’s stylish British-born and British-educated wife is rarely seen in public, let alone with her three children — two sons and a daughter. In June last year Russia dismissed as “rumours” speculation on the Internet she had taken refuge in the country amid the escalating violence in Syria.
In January Assad’s mother, Anisa Makhluf, reportedly left the war-torn country for Dubai to join her daughter Bushra, according to Syrian expatriates and an activist in the United Arab Emirates.
Bushra’s husband General Assef Shawkat, an army deputy chief of staff, was killed along with three other high-ranking Syrian officials in a July 18, 2012 bombing at the National Security headquarters in Damascus.
The following September, Syrian residents in the Gulf emirate said that Bushra had enrolled her five children at a private school in Dubai where she had moved.
Meanwhile, Arab League Secretary General Dr Nabil El Arabi will meet today with Joint UN-Arab League Envoy on Syria Lakhdar Brahimi, the Arab League said. They will discuss the developments in Syria as well as the latest efforts to find a political solution to the conflict. The National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces is currently attempting to form a interim government according to the resolution of the Arab League Council at the Ministerial level.
Agencies
