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March 2nd, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
It also called on EU foreign ministers to prepare further targeted restrictive
measures against the regime.
Syrian forces overran the Baba Amr district of Homs following a rebel retreat,
with relief agencies hoping to gain access to the bombarded city on Friday
to deliver aid and evacuate the wounded.
As rebel fighters pulled back on Thursday, the opposition Syrian National
Council (SNC) warned of a “massacre” in Baba Amr.
The UN Security Council called on Syria to allow “immediate”
humanitarian access to protest cities in a statement supported by Russia and
China, who had vetoed two resolutions on the conflict that has claimed
thousands of lives.
US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said she had seen press
reports that the Syrian government was promising to allow aid into Baba Amr.
“So if in fact it’s true, it would be a good step forward, but we, you
know, we are obviously sceptical of Syrian government promises,” Nuland
said in Washington.
The International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent
were preparing to urgently reach the conflict zone, an ICRC spokesman said.
“The ICRC and the SARC will go on Friday to Baba Amr to deliver
humanitarian aid and evacuate the wounded,” Damascus spokesman Saleh
Dabbakeh told AFP.
The rebels said they had pulled out “tactically” from Baba Amr on
Thursday, the second day of an all-out ground assault by the feared Fourth
Armoured Division led by President Bashar al-Assad’s younger brother Maher.
The SNC, citing “confusion” on the ground in Syria, said in Paris
that it would provide leadership to an outgunned and fragmented force, and
control the flow of arms to fighters.
The storming of the rebel bastion began early Wednesday, following 27 straight
days of relentless shelling of Homs, a central city that has been a protest
hub since anti-regime demonstrations erupted in March last year.
Syrian
authorities found the bodies of US journalist Marie Colvin and French
photographer Remi Ochlik in Baba Amr after the rebels retreated, the foreign
ministry said. The journalists were killed in a rocket attack last month.
The FSA was formed in mid-2011 in response to the brutal crackdown by Assad’s
forces on anti-regime protesters, and now boasts up to 40,000 armed
fighters, although the numbers are impossible to verify.
A Syrian security official said in Damascus that the army was in total command
of the Homs neighbourhood.
State television aired what it said was footage filmed inside Baba Amr,
including interviews with people it said were residents angry with the
rebels.
The SNC urged the international community to act to prevent to protect
residents, charging that the Fourth Armoured Division was conducting “barbaric
operations against civilians.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 21 people were killed in Homs on
Thursday, including 17 civilians caught up in the battle for control of Baba
Amr.
In total, 39 people, including eight loyal soldiers and seven deserters, were
killed in violence across Syria on Thursday, the Observatory said.
French journalists Edith Bouvier, who sustained serious leg wounds in Syria,
and William Daniels, trapped for days in bombarded Homs, escaped Syria for
Lebanon, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said late Thursday.
“I have just spoken with Edith Bouvier, who is naturally exhausted,
having suffered hugely, but she knows she is free and that she will soon be
taken care of,” said Sarkozy.
The French president said the pair could be brought back to France “tonight”
in a government-owned plane if doctors gave their go-ahead.
Bouvier suffered multiple fractures in the same February 22 rocket attack on a
makeshift media centre that killed Colvin and Ochlik.
Two short videos released by activists in Homs claimed to show the burials of
the pair.
In the videos, a man claiming to be a doctor and dressed in a surgeon’s green
gown and a white coat opens body bags and shows the faces of the two slain
journalists. Their names are inscribed on the respective body bags.
“We have no means to preserve the bodies due to a lack of electricity
for the refrigerators,” the man says in Arabic.
“Therefore we have decided to bury them here, in a cemetery in Baba Amr.”
Photographer Daniels was also on assignment for Le Figaro, and was trapped
alongside Spaniard Javier Espinosa of El Mundo daily.
The Spanish daily said Espinosa had safely escaped to Beirut, despite claims
in Syria that his body had been found alongside those of Colvin and Ochlik.
Another journalist wounded in the attack, British photographer Paul Conroy,
was evacuated to Lebanon on Tuesday.
On the political front, the SNC said its military bureau, announced on
Wednesday, would coordinate the flow of weapons to the rebels following
mounting calls from Gulf Arab states for arms to be delivered despite US
fears that al-Qaeda may exploit any further militarisation of the crisis.
“The SNC will be this link between those who want to help and the
revolutionaries,” its leader Burhan Ghalioun told reporters in Paris.
“It is out of the question that arms go into Syria in confusion,”
he added.
The assault on Baba Amr came as international envoy Kofi Annan said he hopes
to travel to Damascus with a clear message that the “violence must stop.”
Britain announced that it was following the United States in closing its
embassy and pulling out its remaining diplomats in response to the “deterioration
of the security situation in Damascus.”
UN political chief B Lynn Pascoe told the Security Council on Tuesday that “well
over 7,500” people have been killed since the start of the crackdown.
Europe’s leaders meanwhile pledged to tighten the noose on Syria with fresh
sanctions failing an end to violence and rights abuses by the regime.
Source: agencies
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