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Subscribe to RSSActivists release amateur video reportedly showing the shelling of Aleppo by Syrian government forces while Japan confirms a war correspondent, Maya Yamamoto, was killed by gunfire in Syria. NBCNews.com's Dara Brown reports.
Updated at 12:00 p.m. ET: Russia rebuffed President Barack Obama's threat of unilateral action against Syria Tuesday, as officials said 2,500 refugees fled across the border into Turkey in just 24 hours – one of the highest daily refugee flows of recent weeks.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking after meeting China's top diplomat, said Moscow and Beijing were committed to "the need to strictly adhere to the norms of international law ... and not to allow their violation".
Obama draws 'red line' for Syria on chemical and biological weapons
Obama on Monday threatened "enormous consequences" if his Syrian counterpart used chemical or biological arms or even moved them in a menacing way.
The president used some of his strongest language yet to warn Assad not to use chemical or biological weapons – after Syria acknowledged for the first time that it had such weapons and could use them if foreign countries attacked it.
At an impromptu White House news conference, President Obama comments on GOP Mo., Senate candidate Todd Akin's remarks about rape, Mitt Romney's refusal to release more than two years' worth of tax returns, and the unrest in Syria. Watch the entire news conference.
"We have been very clear to the Assad regime, but also to other players on the ground, that a red line for us is (if) we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized," he said. "That would change my calculus."
Syria 'ready to discuss' Assad's resignation, deputy PM says
"We cannot have a situation where chemical or biological weapons are falling into the hands of the wrong people," Obama said, perhaps referring to Lebanon's Shiite Hezbollah group, an Iranian-backed ally of Assad, or to Islamist militants.
Turkey's foreign minister has warned it can accommodate no more than 100,000 refugees and that the United Nations may need to create a "safe zone" within Syria to shelter any beyond that number.
Goran Tomasevic / Reuters
After months of protests and violent crackdowns, a look back at the violence that has overtaken the country.
Thousands of refugees
A Turkish official told Reuters on Tuesday that about 2,500 people fleeing violence in Syria had entered Turkey in the preceding 24 hours, most of them entering the southeastern Turkish province of Hatay.
Turkish journalist Mahir Zeynalov reported on Twitter that four Syrian colonels and two captains crossed the border early Wednesday.
PhotoBlog: Clashes over Syrian conflict in Lebanon leave ten dead
Turkey is now sheltering close to 70,000 Syrian refugees and is struggling to accommodate the influx, which rose after a bomb attack near the border killed eight, spreading panic.
Four Syrian colonels, two captains are among 1,425 Syrians who crossed into Turkey this morning.
— Mahir Zeynalov (@MahirZeynalov) August 22, 2012
In Lebanon, street battles between Sunnis and Alawites continued for a second night running, fueled by conflicting loyalties in the conflict across the border. The BBC reported that seven were killed and more than 70 wounded in the country's second-largest city, Tripoli.
Syrian President Bashar Assad, an Alawite, is battling largely Sunni opposition fighters. Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati, himself a Sunni, appealed to both sides to end the "absurd battle" in Tripoli.
In Syria itself, the army deployed tanks on a ring road surrounding Damascus on Wednesday and shelled southern neighborhoods where rebels operate, in the heaviest bombardment on the capital since the army reasserted control last month, residents said.
At least eight people were killed in the shelling, which was accompanied by an aerial bombardment, on the Kfar Souseh, Daraya, Qadam and Nahr Aisheh neighborhoods, they told Reuters.
Regional news channel Al-Jazeera reported that at least 24 people were killed across the country on Tuesday, among them women and children in Aleppo - the city over which the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) claims two-thirds control, and where a Japanese journalist was killed on Monday.
Activists: Japanese journalist killed in Aleppo
"We now control more than 60 per cent of the city of Aleppo, and each day we take control of new districts," said Abdel Jabbar al-Okaidi, a colonel with the FSA. He went on to list some 30 districts which he claimed were under FSA control, including about half of the embattled neighborhood of Salaheddin.
But a security source in Damascus rejected the claims, according to the AFP news agency, calling them "completely false".
Syrian President Bashar Assad makes a rare public appearance for the Muslim holiday of Eid on Sunday. NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports.
Likened to Iraq invasion
Syrian soldiers killed a journalist sympathetic to the rebels during a raid in Damascus on Wednesday. Mosaab al-Odaallah, who worked for the state-run Tishreen newspaper, was shot at point-blank range at his home by troops conducting house-to-house raids in the southern Nahr Eisha district of the capital, opposition activists said.
Massoud Akko, head of the public freedoms committee at the underground Syrian Journalists Association, said Odaallah's death brought to 54 the number of Syrian journalists, bloggers and writers killed by security forces during the uprising.
"Most have been killed with shots to the head. The regime appears to have adopted a systematic policy of killing journalists and social media activists," Akko told Reuters by telephone from Berlin.
Earlier, Syria's deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil said Obama's talk of action against Syria was media fodder.
Speaking after the news conference held by Russia's Lavrov, Jamil said the West was seeking an excuse to intervene, likening the focus on Syria's chemical weapons with the run-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq by U.S.-led forces and the focus on what proved to be groundless suspicions that Saddam Hussein was concealing weapons of mass destruction.
"Direct military intervention in Syria is impossible because whoever thinks about it ... is heading towards a confrontation wider than Syria's borders," he told a news conference in Damascus.
Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reported the concerns of Christians, who make up about 10 per cent of Syria's population. It said Christians fleeing the fighting have detected an increasingly radicalized Islamist strain among the rebels that makes them fear for their future.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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Obama doesn't obey domestic laws (like the Constitution, for example) what make Putin think he's going to obey any of the international ones?
Well said
Because in the US we have very few who have any nuts to kick BO out of office for his treasonous acts. But when BO has to deal with real world leaders and powers, he is up against men with real balls who have the might to back up what they say. The world laughs at BO and the US now. They know how weak we are since BO stared destroying our country. I think they would actually love us to be in another conflict. It would make us ripe for the picking.
This isn't about any president, this is NOT an Obama thing. America likes war, big business makes a killing on it, not to mention big oil. We are at war with out a declaration of war by Congress, both Dems and Reps are guilty of this. Obama is not the countries problem, it is the super rich, they control our lives like we're their pets. Everything we do in these sand nations is about OIL, and nothing more.
You Trolls wouldn't know Treason if it jumped out of you cereal box and slapped you.
I agree with Russia and China, we need to stay out of it! If the country wants to have a civil war that is their business. The only thing I can think of is an export or something is getting messed up and the greedy pockets of someone isn't getting filled as much.
This is the reason for ALL wars since WWII, we stayed in Vietnam so long because some powerful American businesses were making a fortune on the war........., greed is the root of all evil if you dig deep enough.
Follow the money? Sounds familiar.
Another war, eh? Bye Bye Obozo!
Weapons of Mass Destruction....sounds familiar?
Screw Russia, what are they gonna do? They can't afford a trip to the zoo.
Roy far on the Right
said
Greg, please continue supporting your president who continues to destroy our Constiution. We have our own war brewing here and will soon need as many guns as possible. Thanks Nobama.
Roy you must have got your daily dose of Limbaugh and Faux nosie early today
Russia and China are promoting this war hell Syria is one of their biggest buyers of arms- they want to keep this protracted as long as posssible
Russia, China and Iran need to stop assisting the Syrian government with the murder of innocent women and children!
Obama and Clinton,
Stay out no matter what!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!When are we going to drop that policeman of the World mentality?????? No wonder other Countries hate us, we have our nose in everyone's business!!!!
I agree with you. This isn't about the people over there, its about OIL! WE don't get all of our oil from them we get maybe 32 to 35% of it from them. We have our own oil. Our prices are high because of this @!$%#. Our men and women are dieing because of this @!$%#. Bring them home now and stay the hell out of it over there!
War is coming,,,,it's inevitable,,,,,I don't trust russia and I hope the president doesn't either,,,
All the sheeple can keep on fighting for their parties, but when war does come, we'll all be on the same side,,,we are after all, Americans!
It's so heartwarming to see how patriotic the Right are when Obama is the subject. Right Comrades? :D
we need to stay out of this conflict ! let Syrians level there towns kill there kids and women . less vermin to spread and breed !
Wow, MSNBC viewers are the dumbest on the planet. I have to say they give Fox viewers a run for their money as far as stupidity. I'm not sure who is more racist, the Fox viewers or the MSNBC viewers. Both believe the whites are superior to the Muslims, Blacks, Mexicans, Slavics and Asians.Fox news makes a lot of noise about Muslims and Blacks, and MSNBC viewers are anti-Mexicans and Asians. Pathetic. MSNBC viewers catered to the unions and last I read from my history books, the unions were the most racists towards the Mexicans and Asians. Seems like that sentiment is echoed throughout these comments right here. Don't believe me, go back and look at some of your posts.
" Watch out now, take care beware of greedy leaders, who take you where you should not go." George Harrison ( Beware of Darkness)
VLADIMIR PUTIN MUST DIE. Peace will not be had until his corpse burns to ash., until his children are burnt at the stake and his followers shot dead. Mr. President, destroy Russia Now.
In the famous words of Doctor Gregory House, " Your an idiot."
Why must we be the playground monitor? Let them kill each other, it is all those subhuman, sand ni@@ers know how to do. Killing in the name of a particular faith......, you must live like me and believe like me or you will die.......I just don't understand.
Weeks ago, as it became more and more obvious that Russia was on the wrong side of the ENTIRE Syrian issue, why did Obama engage Putin so as to include him in ANY post-Assad, Syrian strategy ?
POTUS is nothing but an overmatched, political puppet..What a flippin' LIGHTWEIGHT!!
Russia is once again acting as the world's most hypocritical nation by calling on the US to obey international law when their friends in the Syrian government fail to abide by international law and another one of their friends, Iran, is actively meddling in the internal affairs of another sovereign nation by sending paramilitary troops into Syria.
Its ridiculous that our president says that chemical and biological weapons are more dangerous if they fall into the wrong hands....p-l-e-a-s-e!!! Does it really matter? Once that crap is released, it affects everyone far and wide. There are no borders for that stuff and it doesn't really matter who releases it. It will be dangerous regardless. For sure, if it does get into the hands of radicals or anyone other than 'officials' it could be released more rapidly and with less so called strategy. My point is that who ever releases it, it will still be devastating to large populations. Is there such a thing as a good person releasing chemical and biological weapons on society????
Too much like Iraq 10 years ago.....look at the similarities.....and where did that get us??......laser tag the stock piles....if the saudi's and the arabs don't care.....this the muslim faith in action.....
We need to stay of there, we need to bring our men and woman home. We have enough problems here because of our government sticking it to us. Bring them home and put the gas prices back down. I wish the American people could just stop driving all together and show the government and the oil company what for. I like my safe SUV, I don't want a coffin on wheels and I am being punished for having a bigger and safer car. This is wrong. Stay away from over sea's, we are not the big brother of the world and we don't need to be. If the rest of the world want to destroy themselves so be it. We need to stay the hell out of it, BRING OUR MEN AND WOMAN HOME AND BRING THE GAS PRICES BACK DOWN!!
I remember a few years ago when an Iraqi general was interviewed on tv and he was saying that he saw truckloads of chemical and biological weapons that had been stockpiled by Saddam Hussein being transported to Syria before the US invaded. Who knows how many of those weapons they still have and are preparing to use against their own people just like Saddam did. Russia and China are showing their true colors when they are protecting a leader that would do something like that.
Can you imagine the worst elected president in history having to make decisions in a nuclear crisis!! With Obama....you can just kiss your a— — goodbye.
LOL
The Iranians and Syrians started moving some of those chemical weapons to Iran a while back when Iran sent it's naval ships through the Suez Canal after Mubarak was removed from power and the Muslim Brotherhood took over Egypt and gave Iran the pass through. Obama didn't do anything then and he won't do anything now. But when the attack on Iran takes place and chemical weapons are used to repel it, you can thank Mr. Obama for that. And when those chemical weapons find their way to a city near you for use in a terrorist attack just remember, Obama built that.
Since Russia and China have so much input into what we should and or should not do... Let Russia and China open their boarders/doors to all the Syrian people that do not like what is going on in their country. That would only leave the people in Syria that like what is going on, which should end all disagreements. Open your boarder doors Russia.. Open you boarder doors China..
The great Satan "ha ha" better watch his mouth because what I heard is that Gog and those fellows over in the east might just wipe out one third of mankind.
who is gog? who are the 1/3 of mankind you refer to?
Try reading the Bible and then you will know what the poster is talking about
And then sparkly unicorns and leprechauns will appear!