Israel's illegal act of war threatens to inflame the region far beyond the borders of Syria

It is highly likely that the US will have been notified about these attacks in advance and they are part of a growing campaign of intervention in the civil war in Syria.

By Lindsey German
Stop the War Coalition
5 May 2013

US-Led Sanctions Contribute To The Destruction Of Syria’s Millenary History.What a difference a week can make. The heaviest snow in Syria in a quarter-century, some claimed, last week’s storm closed for a time even the main highway from Damascus to Beirut.

But that was then and now its spring in Damascus, or so it feels to those of us used to New England Januarys. It’s nearly downright balmy here. Spring flowers are bursting out all over and the city parks are crowded with mothers pushing baby carriages, kids playing and young lovers cooing softly on the park benches. Park workers are raking the dead leaves and others trimming the palm trees and piling the branches neatly on flatbed trucks.

What “civil war”? What “crisis”? One is tempted to ask himself even though there continues to be intermittent “thuds” and a jet streaking overhead now and then en route apparently to one of the suburbs where clashes erupt intermittently.

UN report says at least 60,000 have died in Syrian war

ABIGAIL FIELDING-SMITH in Beirut

Syria’s uprising has claimed the lives of at least 60,000 people, according to a comprehensive UN study, significantly raising the estimated death toll and adding to pressure on world powers to stop the bloodshed.

Following what it described as “an exhaustive analysis carried out by data specialists” using seven sources, the UN human rights office compiled a list of 59,648 people killed since the start of the initially peaceful uprising against President Bashar al-Assad in March 2011 until the end of November 2012.

Entries that did not give the victim’s full name and the date and location of their death were excluded.

“Given there has been no let-up in the conflict since the end of November, we can assume that more than 60,000 people have been killed by the beginning of 2013,” said Navi Pillay, UN human rights commissioner. “The number of casualties is much higher than we expected and is truly shocking.”

Where now for Syria as revolution for democracy becomes sectarian civil war?
30 December 2012     Patrick Cockburn     Syria

The furies of civil war grow ever fiercer and the war has long ago reached the stage of what in Northern Ireland we used to call "the politics of the last atrocity".

By Patrick Cockburn
The Independent
29 December 2012

"Shame on you! Shame on The Independent!" boomed the voice of a Syrian intellectual in my phone half an hour after I had returned from Damascus to Beirut.

He was so incoherent in his rage that it was difficult to know his precise objections, but my sin seemed to be that I had been in Damascus, talked to members of the Syrian government and concluded that it was not going to collapse any time soon.

Our conversation was not of a high intellectual calibre. After an acerbic exchange, I asked why, if he felt so strongly, did he "not stop being rude to people like me, go to Aleppo and fight beside the rebels instead of spending all your time in the cafés of Beirut".

Shortly afterwards, there was a mutual clicking-off of mobiles.

Driving the short distance between Damascus and Beirut is like shifting from one planet to another. What seems obvious and commonsensical in the Syrian capital becomes controversial and a minority viewpoint over the border in Lebanon. Outside Syria there have been repeated media and diplomatic forecasts of imminent victory for the rebels and defeat for Bashar al-Assad. Ignored in this speculation is the important point that Assad's forces still hold, wholly or in large part, all the main cities and towns of Syria.

Syrian air strike kills dozens at bakery

Free Syrian Army fighters and residents carry the bodies of people killed by what activists said were missiles fired by a Syrian airforce fighter jet from forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad at a bakery in Halfaya, near Hama, yesterday. photograph: reuters/samer al-hamwi

Dozens of people were killed in an air strike while queuing for bread in Syria’s central Hama province yesterday, activists said, with some residents giving an initial count of 90 dead.

Such a toll, if confirmed, would make it one of the deadliest air strikes in Syria’s civil war.

Videos uploaded by activists showed dozens of bloodstained bodies crumpled in the street among piles of rubble and shrapnel.

“When I got there I could see piles of bodies all over the ground. There were women and children,” said Samer al-Hamawi, an activist in the town of Halfaya, where the strike hit a bakery. “There are also dozens of wounded.”