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Subscribe to RSSAfter a year of bloodshed, the fighting spilled across Syria's border into Turkey for the first time. NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.
The United States on Monday dismissed demands by the Syrian regime that rebels provide written guarantees that they would lay down arms as a stalling tactic.
Syria was supposed to start pulling troops from towns and cities by Tuesday, paving the way for a cease-fire. President Bashar Assad over the weekend demanded written guarantees from his foes that they would stop fighting and lay down arms.
"This is just another way to stall for time," Victoria Nuland, U.S. State Department spokesperson, told reporters.
The State Department also said that instead of abating, the conflict in Syria had worsened. It said the Syrian government appeared to have little commitment to the plan negotiated by former U.N. chief Kofi Annan.
Earlier Monday, Syrian forces wounded at least five people in a camp in Turkey. The U.N. estimates some 9,000 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising began in March 2011.
Youtube.Com / AFP - Getty Images
An image grab taken from a video uploaded on YouTube on April 9, 2012 shows Syrian army tanks stationed in the Qusur district of the flashpoint city of Homs.
Cross-border gunfire: Syrian bullets kill one in Turkey
The Obama administration expressed its outrage, saying the cross-border attack coupled with incidents elsewhere bodes ill for a U.N.-brokered plan to end the violence.
"We strongly condemn any attack by the Syrian regime on refugees in bordering countries and were absolutely outraged by today's report," Nuland said Monday. "We join the Turkish government in calling for the Syrian regime to immediately cease fire."
"We certainly have seen no signs yet of the Assad regime abiding by its commitments," White House press secretary Jay Carney said.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he "deplores" the attacks.
There have been similar cross-border attacks into Lebanon, although Monday's shooting was believed to be the first inside Turkey.
Syrian soldiers shot dead a cameraman working for Lebanon's Al-Jadeed television channel on Monday near the border between the two countries, the television channel said.
It said cameraman Ali Shaaban was on the Lebanese side of the frontier, in the northern Lebanese region of Wadi Khaled, when soldiers opened fire on a car carrying the Al-Jadeed crew.
Nuland said there was no sign the Syrian government was removing heavy weaponry from populated areas as called for in the Annan plan.
"We see no indication that it is preparing to do so. It's done some moving around of its tanks and artillery, but only so that it can use them in other places."
"We're going to wait till tomorrow; the deadline is tomorrow," she said. "But based on what we're seeing today, we are not hopeful."
On Monday, opposition activists told Reuters that the Syrian army's bombardment has killed at least 115 people in the northern province of Idlib in the last two days, and troops also rounded up and shot 35 men during military operations in the region.
The activists reports, like others from inside Syria, could not be independently verified because Syria restricts access for foreign reporters.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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'truce prospects fade, US outraged.' guess what, they never existed in the first place. assad is a psychopath. who does not know that with the exception of our state department?
Well, lets see how long it takes to get this comment collapsed.
We have been in the region for over ten years now killing one muslim or another. What is the difference? Why can't we just sit back and watch the show of them killing each other instead of making more enemies by sticking our noses in where they don't belong?
@ john 737278 perfectly said
I totally agree with you. These are 6th century humans living in the 21st century and acquiring 21st century weaponry; scary as anything I can imagine. On top of that they do not value human life. Obviously they kill each other indiscriminately, so how do we, the infidels fit on their chart? I think we should send both sides short range artillery and other localized munitions. Then, as you said, let's stand back, turn on our drones, get great seats and watch these low-life scum bags kill each other. Our best, do not need, nor deserve to be placed in harms way for these animals! Semper Fi!
Like Rahm Emanual said: Never let a good crisis go to waste.
This is the new strategy with the Imperial nations. Use the "Arab Spring" as a pretext and cover in order to move against the regimes who won't go along with your program of domination and exploitation.
They did it in Libya last year and this time it's Syria's turn.
Imperialist powers manipulate Syrian peace plan to prepare for war
By Johannes Stern
9 April 2012
In recent days, the Western powers have stepped up efforts to foment civil war in Syria and prepare for imperialist intervention in this strategically important country. Media reports indicate increased fighting between Western-backed armed groups and the Syrian army, accompanied by terrorist attacks on government forces and civilians.
Heavy fighting has taken place in the Aleppo Governorate in northern Syria. The province has a 200-kilometer border with Turkey, where the Western-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA) is based. According to the news agency AFP, “rebel” forces attacked military intelligence headquarters in Aleppo, the second largest city in Syria, and the FSA launched a dawn assault on the nearby Minakh Air Base.
In another attack at Hreitan, an officer of the Syrian army and two security personnel were killed early Saturday. In Idlib province, one of the FSA’s main strongholds near the Turkish border, Syrian forces shelled an area held by the FSA.
Clashes and terrorist attacks have also taken place in central Syria. In several districts in the city of Hama, fighting was reported between armed groups and the regular Syrian army. The official Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported that 5 explosive devices planted by terrorist groups were dismantled in Homs. Over 100 people have reportedly been killed over the weekend, and thousands have fled over the Turkish border in recent days.
The US and its main NATO allies—France, Great Britain, Germany and Turkey—are leading the campaign to destabilize Syria. Together with the reactionary Persian Gulf monarchies, Saudi-Arabia and Qatar, they are funding and arming the so called “rebels.” During the April 1 “Friends of Syria” meeting in Istanbul, the Saudi and Qatari regimes officially announced they would put the Syrian “rebels” on their payroll, thus formalizing their status as a mercenary force of imperialism’s regional proxies.
The current offensive by the “rebels” and the reactions of their Western backers expose the fraudulent character of the six-point peace plan that former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan negotiated with the Syrian regime of President Bashar al-Assad. The imperialist powers never intended to find a political settlement to the conflict, as they claimed, but sought instead to create a pretext for further provocations against Syria, hoping to organize a Libyan-style overthrow of the regime….
…In last year’s imperialist war against Libya, calls for “buffer zones” and “humanitarian corridors” were advanced in the name of the “responsibility to protect” civilians. This was used to justify a war that killed tens of thousands and laid waste to entire Libyan cities. An imperialist attack against Syria would threaten the lives of millions. It would be directed not only against Syria, but also against Iran, Syria’s sole ally in the region, and ultimately against Russia and China, with the danger of triggering a conflict between the major powers.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2012/apr2012/syri-a09.shtml
Hypocrisy and Syria
by ALEXANDER COCKBURN
"…..The performance of the western press has been almost uniformly disgraceful. In the wake of the Aleppo atrocities, network journalists blandly quoted spokesmen for the Syrian rebels that the Syrian security forces had blown themselves up to discredit the rebels.
Aisling Byrne of Conflicts Forum recently described in considerable detail the propaganda machine that has provided a non-stop flow of mendacious bulletins eagerly seized upon by the western press.
As Byrne reported, “Of the three main sources for all data on numbers of protesters killed and numbers of people attending demonstrations – the pillars of the narrative – all are part of the ‘regime change’ alliance. The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, in particular, is reportedly funded through a Dubai-based fund with pooled (and therefore deniable) Western-Gulf money (Saudi Arabia alone has, according to Elliot Abrams allocated US$130 billion to ‘palliate the masses’ of the Arab Spring). What appears to be a nondescript British-based organization, the Observatory has been pivotal in sustaining the narrative of the mass killing of thousands of peaceful protesters using inflated figures, ‘facts’, and often exaggerated claims of ‘massacres’ and even recently ‘genocide’.”…"
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/02/17/hypocrisy-and-syria/
It won't work out that way. The Muslim fanatics will step in when the fighting stops and the smoke clears and rally the unwashed masses to their cause in the name of Islam. All the western powers are doing is to further permanently destabilize the region.
The President and the US Government are naive.
Did they really think Syria would stop the blood letting, and killings?
I could have told them the truth. Why did they not ask me or most Americans.
What is put out there by the Media is just Propaganda. No one believes anything they report. It is always backed up by another report that refutes their comments.
It has been "fading" real slow, for a year.
The time for diplomacy is over, Assad only understands one thing so it is time to show him what real power is.
NATO warehouses must be full of obsolete anti-tank weapons and ammunition - the 84mm Carl-Gustav comes to mind - perhaps it is time that our humanitarian aid has some real teeth. Assad's elderly Russsian tanks will be much less venturesome in urban areas when they face a weapon with a lot more punch than a Molotov cocktail.
It's true that the Syrian army is ill-equipped and ill-trained and completely incapable of overcoming any modern army.
However, Syrian is a largely urban country, which would mean lots of brutal building-to-building warfare with civilians everywhere and almost no opportunity for airstrikes. And there's a lot of doubt as to whether we can trust the rebels, which are neither unified and probably contain Jihadists among their ranks.
A military campaign would be awful, even if it was a multinational campaign with overwhelming force. Not gonna happen. None of our western leaders want to spend our soldiers' lives for the Arabs. That didn't work to well the last time we tried it.
Unless you were talking about supplying the rebels, which is an option, but also has its own controversies.
Assad is a damned wimp! We need to send Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey to show him how to take charge and go ahead without giving a shi& about anyone else's opinions/ideas, etc.
It wouldn't have to be a multinational coalition to provide overwhelming force, and just use our aircraft to destroy all of his heavy equipment, that should only take a couple of days :) worst case loan the rebels a platoon of Abrams for support.
Once the UN gets involved its generally a big joke anyways.
Have the CIA and Mossad agreed to the truce?
Did anyone actually believe a washed up old UN official could actually persuade the murdered Assad to stop killing his countrymen? If Kofi Annan actually believed it, he is worse than Barack Obama when it comes to credibility. Syria is not going to stop the bloodshed. There will be no truce, no cease fire, no peace until Assad is DEAD. Of course, nobody in the Middle East is going to help stop the killing, so Obama dares not cross them to get the US involved. Just forget Syria and work on Texas, Arizona and Mexifornia's borders. We didn't start this war, so we shouldn't have to finish it.
Syrias in real trouble now..harsh ,pointed words from obama..yikes!
It's been clear for some time: Assad will keep stalling and killing by the thousands. Pretty soon, there will be nothing left to protect, or defend.
Assad will reduce his country to a crony state. Who wants to live there now? It's an atrocity to see people slaughtered like this. He'll get his in the end. It seems like a trap at this point.
Assad has friends, unlike that freak in Libya, who the world cared less if the US provided military aid...
Russia, China and Iran...
Understand why now the UN is useless and the US is staying out of it...
Well said!
if they lay down their weapons they will be summarily executed
sounds good to me. Then we send more weapons so the next group can pick up the fight. Then we withhold arms again and so on. Sounding even better!
Let's stop writing postings that look like you are jerking off into a wet wind. Arm the rebels. let's get it on! The boys of Libya took down Gaddafi. Let the boys of Syria take down this vicious killer Assad.
Thats the idea! Though they should be thoroughly tortured first. I like the idea of thier legs being broken so badly that Syrians and the world would know who they were and what they are. Children would spit at them in the streets. I am the only one that did not get paid to post here.
The Kofi Annan peace plan has never had a chance of success.Its inbuilt drawback is it asks the Syrian government forces to withdraw from the towns and villages without imposing a similar obligation on the rebels.Moreover,not all the rebels have agreed to the plan.In addition, the NATO and the Arab League countries have not stopped egging on the rebels with rhetoric,aid and arms and sabotaging the peace plan successfully to settle scores with Russia and China.
PLEEEEEZE! Kofi anal is a do nothing puppet of a never great, worthless actually, body of ambassaholes.
So let me get this straight, as Obama and Congress pass laws and executive orders that allow THEM to use the US military on US civilians in the US if they dare rise up against their government, they are overthrowing Assad halfway around the world for using the Syrian military on Syrian citizens that the US military armed so that they would dare rise up against the Syrian government?
Those laws were passed a long, long time ago and exist in the United States Constitution. While I am quite confident that Obama is a jackass, he isn't making any special laws that weren't already there. If so, you are too ignorant to really carry a conversation with. Please read the Constitution, it's free and on-line.
No Matt they do not exist in the US Constitution, in fact the Insurrection Act of 1807 and the Posse Comitatus Act passed in 1878 expressly forbids the use of the US military for maintaining "law and order" in the US. In other words, the federal government cannot use the military as a police force like Hitler used the SS. I would like for you to show me where in the US Constitution it says that the executive branch can call up the US military to suspend the 1st, 2nd, and 4th Amendment in the US. If these laws already existed as written, then there would have been no need to write them again. They are preparing for the same thing that happened in Egypt, Libya, Syrian, Behrain, and Greece.
If you want to see the facts watch the russian news in english, our goverment is arming the rebels, also arabia, the news here are onlu propaganda from the goverment, go to diferent newspapers around the world, the new york mayor gulliani was in london promoting to work with terrorists organisations, to be send to syria, we need to get out we dont need another enemies, let this country fis her own problems, the rebels from the 9000 thousand deaths, the kill 3000 security forces ans soldiers read difernts newspapers
I agree but the problem is that all the news of the world, weather it be the Daily Mirror, The New York Times, Pravda, etc. They are all controlled by a core that itself is subservient to multinational intelligence services. In other words, the 'true' Russian news lets us see just what we are supposed to.
One other thing while I have your attention, Можно прочитать информацию на русском языке? Just curious.
You don't have to read the Muslim news, our own State Department has admitted to arming the rebels and even bringing in Al Qaeda to pose as "rebels".
While I hope the rebels defeat Assad, I do have to say, in all fairness, that if the rebels are attacking Syrian forces on the border then hiding amongst civilians in refugee camps in Turkey, they should expect to be fired on in those camps. Fighting for freedom is one thing, deliberately bringing down firepower on civilians is a whole different ballgame. Both sides stay out of refugee camps. Period.
The rebels will defeat Assad. Then they will have elections and surprise, surprise (props to Gomer Pile!), they will elect a strongly Muslim leadership council and be another Iran. On the other hand, if something crazy good happens and Turkey steps in big time, perhaps they can develop a tolerant Muslim nation; the kind that respects everyone and doesn't treat you like @!$%# if you are not a Muslim. Of course I doubt that will happen. Turkey is an older, wiser nation and far, far above those other nations. The only thing it has in common is the religion; nada mas.
Please give them more time until the truce deadline. If we're really lucky, they can kill another few thousand of their own people. That's one less potentially radicalized piece of horse dung that we will need to deal with. We will need to deal with these scum you know, everyone not of them is an infidel. You see how they treat each other, so how are they going to treat us; hmmmm.
We also see how Americans treat others in the countries their military occupies with mass arrests and detentions, air raids, night attacks, helicopters machinegunning down killing civilians on video, civilian massacres... The US is the world's leading instigator of state sponsored violence.
Peace in this world is limited.
So true George-3883793, so true. That's why I love a good Peace, I mean piece of ass!
Peace in this world with humans in it is impossible.
"There are wars, and always will be wars, as long as man is on this Earth".
the idiot that says russian news tells the truth is stupid there is no more independant news in moscow but nothing state news and they want paint russia as protector while they not saying anything about russia training syrians on how to use deadly mines on women and children leaving country on the border.... russia rescently has sent a unit of soldiers to that country for what reason????Russian news is so full of @!$%# trust me russia is last place i go for any truth specially country is ruled by same person for so many years and many more to come sorry but one man ruling country for next few decades doesnt show creditbility i mean our government may be corrupted but atleast they cant stay no longer than second term unlike russia
A US pres can skip a term or two then run again. Grover Cleveland did it and won. Putin is doing the same thing. Some Krazy history huh.
The US is outraged? Oh so when the US military kills 100,000 Iraqis during its occupation of Iraq- 30,000 during Shock and Awe and initial invasion in March 2003, Bush's own words- this same US is not at all outraged. Only when regimes use violence that does not serve US meddling is when there is outrage. Hypocritical American sociopaths.
America is not hypocritical.
We have just become a nation of chickens.
And the US does not "meddle".
Our primary mission is to establish peace and democracy.
We have, in trial and error done this wrong at times.
THIS time we need to intervene.
Send in a few A-10's, take out the tanks, even the battle field, THEN sit back and watch.
Are you on meth? The US has at least 200 military bases outside its own borders.
viewer ready wrote: Our primary mission is to establish peace and democracy.
We have, in trial and error done this wrong at times.
THIS time we need to intervene.
Criminal US errant intervention and meddling has destroyed other peoples' lives and countries. Are you a sociopathic savage? Real killing and destruction of a society isn't a video game that which you allude to with "... send in a few A10s to take out the tanks..." As long your country makes war with far away weak countries you may have that flippant attitude. You military misadventures always have to have to include your poodle, the UK.
Just Muslim's the most evil entity on the face of the earth doing what they are programed to do and that is kill, kill, kill. It's all they know and their ilk will kill all of those in the US if given a chance and I fear we welcome them in our land to kill us.
You must not read much world history nor have knowledge of US military interventionism since 1945.
There is this scary new thing.... an Arab Democracy. We haven't seen one, and they may only be a figment of our imagination, but (in name) they will be coming. With this many "newly liberated" Arab nations, one true democracy SHOULD emerge. The mystery is what that creature will actually look like!
Tommorows deadline ought to be interesting..im sure Koffi Annan isnt sleeping well...I say let them arm the rebels sit back and watch one heck of a muslum slaughter..less people after our butt.
Assad forces attacked across borders by firing into Turkey. I think this will be the next stage of his downfall. Not only is he killing his own people, now he has in effect, put himself against war with Turkey.