Major news in Lebanon on June 13: “Syria in state of civil war”: UN

Top news in <The Daily Star> : Syria in state of civil war: U.N.

After months of cautiously avoiding the term, a senior U.N. official Tuesday became the first to characterize Syria as in a state of civil war.

The admission came as U.N. observers reported they were fired upon as they tried to enter a town feared to be the target of a new government massacre, casting fresh doubts on the longevity of the monitoring mission.

Asked whether he believed Syria was in a civil war, U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous told reporters: “Yes I think we can say that. Clearly what is happening is that the government of Syria lost some large chunks of territory, several cities to the opposition, and wants to retake control.”

“There is a massive increase in the level of violence,” Ladsous said.

Opposition groups were quick to decry the label, which they said “does not reflect the reality.”

“This announcement makes the killer and the victim equal and ignores all the massacres committed by the Assad regime,” the Syrian Revolution General Commission said.

“We again assure all that our peaceful revolution and our self-defense will continue,” he added.

Rebel fighters said they had been forced to withdraw defenses from the northwestern town coastal city of Al-Haffeh after the U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria said observers were unable to reach the city.

The rebel stronghold had come under eight days of heavy government shelling and activists reported heavy fighting between Free Syrian Army fighters and regime troops as they tried to prevent them from entering the town’s outskirts. The U.N. mission said it had received reports of “a large number of civilians, including women and children trapped inside the town and are trying to mediate their evacuation.”

“But the monitors were driven back by an angry crowd of people who threw rocks and metal bars at them, and were then fired on by unknown assailants,” forcing them to retreat, the UNSMIS statement said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said “residents of the pro-regime village of Al-Sheer blocked the road and prevented the U.N. observer team from reaching Haffeh.”

Ammar al-Hasan, a member of the Syrian Revolution Coordinators Union in Lattakia, told the Daily Star some 100 people had been killed and 300 wounded in the week-long bombardment, adding that troops had used heavy artillery and helicopter gunships in their attacks on Al-Haffeh.

He said 250 rebel fighters had tried to keep the army at bay and ferry the injured out to safety, but said troops managed to enter from the Alzanqofah and Almsherfah suburbs, after the monitors turned back, forcing the rebels to retreat.

“We fear a massacre now,” he told The Daily Star via Skype.

“Heavy shelling by field artillery has forced the remaining 200 rebels defending Al-Haffeh to leave. There are several thousand civilians left without anyone to protect them from the Alawite militias surrounding the town,” Selim al-Omar said by phone from the coastal city of Lattakia, 30 kilometers west of Haffeh.

A day earlier, the U.N. confirmed for the first time activists’ repeated claims that Syrian helicopters had fired against rebel hotspots in central Homs, where a three-day shelling bombardment continued Tuesday.

“U.N. observers reported heavy fighting in Rastan and Talbiseh, north of Homs with artillery and mortar shelling, as well as firing from helicopters, machine guns and smaller arms,” U.N. spokesperson Sausan Ghosheh said in a statement.

The United States has voiced concerns that the regime is planning to carry out new atrocities, with the help of Russia, which it says is sending attack helicopters to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the U.S. was “concerned about the latest information we have that there are attack helicopters on the way from Russia to Syria” and warned that the Arab country’s 15-month conflict could become even deadlier.

She said the shipments “will escalate the conflict quite dramatically.”

Following the latest attack on monitors, Clinton also expressed doubts about renewing the U.N. monitoring mission in Syria once its mandate expires on July 20 without progress in implementing the six-point peace plan.

“If there is no discernible movement by then it would be very difficult to extend a mission that is increasingly dangerous for the observers on the ground,” Clinton told a think tank meeting in Washington.

Concerns that Syria has drifted into civil war mounted after reports of two massacres in the country in as many weeks. At least 55 people were reportedly killed last week in Al-Qubeir and at least 108 near Houla in late May, allegedly at the hands of Shabbiha loyalists.

“The United States joins joint special envoy Kofi Annan in expressing deep alarm by reports from inside Syria that the regime may be organizing another massacre,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Tuesday.

In its statement, the Syrian Foreign Ministry struck back by saying that “the U.S. administration is pushing forth with its flagrant interference in Syria’s internal affairs and its backing of armed terrorist groups.”

Meanwhile, the U.N. accused Syrian troops of using children as “human shields,” as it branded Damascus one of the worst offenders on its annual “list of shame” of conflict countries.

Children as young as 9 had been victims of killing and maiming, arbitrary arrest, detention, torture and ill-treatment, including sexual violence, a report said.

Annan, who brokered a faltering six-point plan, wants to bring together world and regional powers to put pressure on Syria’s leader, his spokesman said Tuesday.

Diplomats said Annan sees the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – taking part along with Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others.

At least 36 people were killed in shelling and clashes across Syria Tuesday, 24 of them civilians and 12 soldiers, the Observatory said.

More than 14,100 people have been killed in Syria since the anti-regime revolt erupted in March 2011, according to the Observatory.

news@theasian.asia