Archive for March 13, 2012

Militants in Afghanistan have launched an attack on a government delegation visiting the site where a US soldier killed 16 civilians.

Two of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s brothers and several top security officials were in the delegation in Panjwai in Kandahar province.

One Afghan soldier and three of the militants were killed, police said. The delegation is heading back to Kandahar.

The US soldier said to have carried out Sunday’s attacks is under arrest.

A US military official said that “probable cause” had been found, meaning they could continue to hold the soldier. The unnamed 38-year-old staff sergeant is being held at an undisclosed location.

via BBC News – Afghanistan militants attack Kandahar killings site.

Syrian troops committed another massacre in Idlib on Monday that left as many as 55 people dead, Al Arabiya reported on Tuesday citing activists at the Syrian Revolution Commission. The new massacre comes one day after the Syrian regime committed killed 50 people in a massacre in Karm al-Zeitoun neighborhood in Homs. Most of Sunday’s victims were women and children, according to activists.

Activists said that death toll from Monday’s violent crackdown on protesters hit 114 people, mostly in Homs and Idlib.

Scores of tanks were deployed in Rankous in Damascus suburbs and in the capital Damascus, Syrian troops launched a wide-scale campaign of crackdown and arrests in al-Assaly neighborhood, Al Arabiya reported.

In the Christian neighborhood of Humaideya in Homs, churches opened their doors to receive the homeless residents who fled the shelling in other neighborhoods.

The West clashed with Russia at the United Nations Security Council over Syria on Monday.

The conflict appeared to inch closer to civil war with the exiled Syrian National Council (SNC) saying it was preparing to arm anti-government rebels with foreign help. But the opposition to President Bashar al-Assad remained fragmented.

via Syrian troops commit another massacre in Idlib; U.S.-Russia wrangling widens.

(CNN) — Opposition activists have declared Tuesday a day of mourning across Syria as the death toll from a year of government attacks escalates.

More than 8,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict, including many women and children, said Nassir Abdulaziz Al-Nasser, president of the U.N. General Assembly. Opposition activists have put the toll at more than 9,000.

“Violations of human rights are widespread and systematic,” Al-Nasser said Monday. “The international community has a responsibility to act.”

The call for a day of mourning follows what activists described as a brutal massacre in Homs over the weekend, which included dozens of women and children stabbed and burned to death.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime insists “armed terrorist groups” — which it routinely blames for the violence — were behind the killings in the Karm al-Zaytoun neighborhood. The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said Tuesday that such groups had “committed a most atrocious massacre against women, children and elderly citizens in Karm al-Zaytoun neighborhood and mutilated their bodies in order to put pressure to elicit international stances against Syria.”

Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby called Tuesday for “an international neutral investigation into the massacres of Homs, Hama, Idlib, Baba Amr, and other areas where dozens of citizens including women and children were killed, leaving many questions on who committed them as they are clearly crime(s) against humanity,” an Arab League official said.

via Opposition calls day of mourning in Syria – CNN.com.