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Syria, Russia pound rebel enclave, put clinic out of service

Syria, Russia pound rebel enclave, put clinic out of service


ARBIN, Syria, Feb. 21 (AFP) - Syrian and Russian air strikes on the rebel-held Eastern Ghouta enclave have killed more than 100 civilians for the second straight day and put another hospital out of service.

In a major development in Syria's complex seven-year war, Damascus also sent pro-regime fighters to the northern Afrin region, where they came under fire by Turkish forces attacking the Kurdish-controlled enclave.

On the outskirts of Damascus, air strikes, rockets and artillery fire have been battering the Eastern Ghoutaenclave in apparent preparation for a government ground assault.

At least 250 civilians have been killed since the escalation began on Sunday, among them dozens of children, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Bombardment on Tuesday killed 106 civilians, including 19 children, the Britain-based war monitor said.

It was the second straight day that the civilian death toll topped 100, after 127 were killed Monday in Eastern Ghouta's bloodiest day in four years. The strikes left an important hospital out of action, further limiting the little medical aid that besieged civilians can access.

"The Arbin hospital was hit twice today and is now out of service," said Mousa Naffa, country director in Jordan for the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS), which supported the clinic.

The Observatory blamed Russian warplanes, saying Moscow carried out its first strikes in three months on Eastern Ghouta.

The rebel-held region is nominally included in a "de-escalation" deal meant to tamp down violence, but President Bashar al-Assad appears to be preparing troops for a ground assault to retake it.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres was "deeply alarmed by the escalating situation in Eastern Ghouta and its devastating impact on civilians," said spokesman Stephane Dujarric.

US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert criticised the "siege and starve tactics" of the Assad regime and said: "The cessation of violence must begin now."

- Six hospitals hit -

Eastern Ghouta is home to more than 400,000 people living under crippling government siege, with little access to food or medical resources.

The United Nations said six hospitals had been hit in the region in the past 48 hours, in addition to the one in Arbin. At least three were out of service and two were only partially functioning, said the UN's regional humanitarian coordinator for Syria, Panos Moumtzis.

"It's beyond imagination what is happening in East Ghouta today," he said. "The untold suffering is intolerable and residents have no idea whether they will live or die. This nightmare in East Ghouta must end and must end now."

Hours before the Arbin hospital was bombed, a doctor there spoke of the casualties they had been treating.

"February 19 was... one of the worst days that we've ever had in the history of this crisis," Abu al-Yasar told AFP. He described treating a one-year-old with blue skin and a faint pulse, rescued from under the rubble.

"I opened his mouth to put in a breathing tube and I found it packed with dirt," said Abu al-Yasar. He pulled out the dirt as fast as possible, put in the breathing tube and managed to save the baby. "This is just one story from among hundreds of wounded."

- 'No words' -

The bloodshed prompted the UN children's agency UNICEF to issue a largely blank statement saying "we no longer have the words to describe children's suffering."

Syria's main opposition group condemned the government onslaught as a "bloodbath" and a "war crime", saying it may pull out of UN-backed peace talks in protest.

Eastern Ghouta is mostly held by two hardline rebel groups that often fire rockets and mortar rounds into residential neighbourhoods of east Damascus. On Tuesday, at least nine people were killed and 49 wounded by rebel fire on the capital, state media reported.

Al-Watan newspaper, which is close to the government, said the bombing campaign "comes ahead of a vast operation on Ghouta, which may start on the ground at any moment."

The army already waged a ferocious five-day air assault on Eastern Ghouta earlier this month that left around 250 civilians dead and hundreds wounded.

- Turkey shells regime -

Syria's conflict erupted in 2011 with protests against Assad, but the ensuing war has carved the country into various zones of control among rebels, jihadists, the regime, and Kurds.

Turkey has been waging an air and ground offensive against the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG) militia in the Afrin enclave for the past month but on Tuesday the stakes were ratcheted up.

Hundreds of Syrian pro-government forces entered the region for the first time since 2012 to face off against Turkey alongside Kurdish forces that Ankara views as an offshoot of its own internal insurgency.

But they quickly came under shelling by Turkish forces, who said they had fired "warning shots" at the "pro-regime terrorist groups". In a statement, YPG spokesman Nuri Mahmud said the Kurdish forces had called on the Damascus government to help fend off Turkey's assault.

"The Syrian government responded to the invitation, answered the call of duty and sent military units today, February 20, to take up positions on the borders, and participate in defending the territorial unity of Syria and its borders," the statement said. The YPG has controlled Afrin since government forces withdrew from Kurdish-majority northern areas in 2012

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What Does the US Want in Syria ?

What Does the US Want in Syria ?


- Christopher R Hill

After seven years of bloodshed across shifting battlefronts, the conflict in Syria has become so complicated that a workable resolution seems all but impossible anytime soon. And the United States' failure to define its long-term interests in the country and the region is not making matters any easier.

DENVER, Feb. 21 Given that most of the Middle East is now in a state of turmoil, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson should be commended for keeping the Syrian conflict in mind during his recent trip to the region.

His job hasn’t been easy. American diplomacy has been all but invisible in the Middle East, and the State Department does not seem to have any ideas or, more importantly, funding with which to take the lead. If the United States is serious about addressing the increasingly deadly crisis in Syria, it needs to start showing sustained interest – and put its money where its mouth is.

The complexity of the situation in Syria has far surpassed the world’s capacity to master it. Rapidly changing events, a growing number of players, and constantly shifting battle lines all point to a quagmire.

Just six months ago, there were two clear trends in the conflict: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with the support of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, was well on his way to victory; and the Islamic State (ISIS) was about to be soundly defeated by a US-led coalition. Today, the successful campaign against ISIS seems Pyrrhic, at best. Hundreds of thousands of lives have been lost, and a resolution of the larger conflict is nowhere in sight.

If anything, the world is even more on edge now. In recent weeks, Israel has clashed with Iranian forces in southern Syria to show that it will not allow Iran to establish a presence there. And Turkey has launched a bold campaign against Syria’s Kurds, whom it hopes to drive out of the northwest province of Afrin to prevent them from linking up with Turkish Kurds across the border. Assad has come to terms with reality and indicated that he would cede territory to the Syrian Kurds. But Turkey remains unwilling to countenance an autonomous Kurdish entity along its border.

The US, for its part, has spent the past six years marshaling various groups of Sunni Arab fighters under the auspices of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces, an offshoot of what was previously called the Free Syrian Army. Some elements of the SDF have been more effective than others, and have even fought alongside the Kurds against ISIS. But now they find themselves in the crosshairs not just of Assad, but also of Russia and various Iran-backed Shia militias.

The US was right to focus on defeating ISIS; but now it faces a much broader mission: to ensure the survival of its various allies on the ground. This raises the prospect of a direct conflict with other powers, not least Russia. In fact, the US may already have killed dozens of Russian military contractors in a recent airstrike.

The US and its European partners have been reluctant to come down hard on their NATO ally Turkey, and have merely urged Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to show restraint. But jawboning, one of the US’s favorite diplomatic tools, rarely works on those in the heat of battle.

Moreover, Turkey doesn’t seem to care what its allies think. For example, it recently raised eyebrows within NATO yet again by purchasing new-generation Russian S-400 antiaircraft batteries. This does not bode well for any future peace process. After all, Western countries will need Turkey to counterbalance the Russians, whose broader strategic agenda goes well beyond the Middle East.

When historians look back at the Syria conflict, they will praise both former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump for relentlessly pursuing ISIS. But they will fault the US for not comprehending the larger war.

It is already clear that the Obama administration didn’t know what it was bargaining for when, without thinking about what would come next, it called in 2011 for Assad’s removal. In July of that year, Robert S. Ford, the US ambassador to Syria, was sent to the Sunni town of Hama, where Assad’s father had ordered a massacre 30 years earlier. According to the State Department at the time, the point of the visit was to “[express] our deep support for the right of the Syrian people to assemble peacefully and to express themselves.” Did the administration really not foresee that Assad – like his father before him – would react to a popular uprising with violence?

When the US took a side against Assad seven years ago, it was asserting its national interest in Syria while ignoring the interests of other key players such as Turkey, Russia, Iran, and Israel. And now, with the US vacillating, there is a very real danger of a full-fledged US-Russian proxy war.

So far, the Trump administration has not been spurred to action by the humanitarian catastrophe confronting Syrian civilians. But perhaps it would do more if it considered the threat the conflict poses to the entire region.

If the administration wants to show leadership, it should start by consulting the other regional powers to understand their interests and determine if they can be reconciled. Tillerson may be trying to do just that. But even before asking the regional players what they want, the Trump administration should ask itself the same question. With the stakes in Syria rising fast, one can only wonder where America stands.

Christopher R. Hill, former US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia, was US Ambassador to Iraq, South Korea, Macedonia, and Poland, a US special envoy for Kosovo, a negotiator of the Dayton Peace Accords, and the chief US negotiator with North Korea from 2005-2009. He is Chief Advisor to the Chancellor for Global Engagement and Professor of the Practice in Diplomacy at the University of Denver, and the author of Outpost.

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Iran teams find wreckage of plane in Zagros mountains

Iran teams find wreckage of plane in Zagros mountains

Iranian search teams found the wreckage on Tuesday of a plane that went missing in the Zagros mountains two days earlier with 66 people on board, a spokesman said.

Aseman Airlines flight EP3704 disappeared from radar as it flew over the Zagros range on Sunday morning, around 45 minutes after taking off from Tehran. After two days of heavy snow and fog, the weather finally cleared on Tuesday morning, giving helicopter teams better visibility.

"The Revolutionary Guards' helicopters this morning found the wreckage of the plane on Dena mountain," spokesman Ramezan Sharif told state broadcaster IRIB. Footage from the helicopter showed a glimpse of the wreckage in deep snow high up on Dena mountain which forms part of the Zagros range.

A pilot told IRIB he had seen "scattered bodies around the plane" and that it was located in Noghol village, at around 4,000 metres (13,000 feet).

But the steep terrain made it impossible to land and officials warned there was only a small window of time before bad weather returned later on Tuesday.

Kioumars Heydari, commander of the army ground forces, told IRIB, they were hoping ground teams would reach the site within two hours. "They are equipped to carry bodies on snow. If the weather allows, they are also prepared to transfer the bodies by air but I've been told that it's not possible for helicopters to land in the region," he said. The Revolutionary Guards said drone images had helped locate the wreckage before two air force helicopters were dispatched. Around 100 mountaineers have been making their way up the peak since Monday.

"Last night, a number of people stayed on the mountain and through coordination with local guides managed to search all crevices," Mansour Shishefuroosh, head of a regional crisis centre, told the ISNA news agency.

- Aviation safety -

The ATR-72 twin-engine plane, in service since 1993, flew early Sunday from the capital's Mehrabad airport towards the city of Yasuj, some 500 kilometres (300 miles) to the south. A team of crash investigators from French air safety agency BEA had been due to arrive in Iran on Monday, but Iranian officials said they were now due later on Tuesday.

The incident has reawakened concerns over aviation safety in Iran, which has been exacerbated by international sanctions over the years. Aseman Airlines was blacklisted by the European Commission in December 2016.

It was one of only three airlines barred over safety concerns -- the other 190 being blacklisted due to broader concerns over oversight in their respective countries.

Iran has complained that sanctions imposed by the United States have jeopardised the safety of its airlines and made it difficult to maintain and modernise ageing fleets.Aseman was forced to ground many of its planes at the height of the sanctions due to difficulties in obtaining spares.

In a working paper presented to the United Nations' International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) in 2013, Iran said US sanctions were blocking "the acquisition of parts, services and support essential to aviation safety". Iran has suffered multiple aviation disasters, most recently in 2014 when 39 people were killed as a Sepahan Airlines plane crashed just after take-off from Tehran, narrowly avoiding many more deaths when it plummeted near a busy market.

But figures from the Flight Safety Foundation, a US-based NGO, suggest Iran is nonetheless above-average in implementing ICAO safety standards.

Lifting sanctions on aviation purchases was a key clause in the nuclear deal that Iran signed with world powers in 2015.

Following the deal, Aseman Airlines finalised an agreement to buy 30 Boeing 737 MAX jets for $3 billion (2.4 billion euros) last June, with an option to buy 30 more.The sale could still be scuppered if US President Donald Trump chooses to reimpose sanctions in the coming months, as he has threatened to do.

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