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March 14th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda
“We are seeing a systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing with the
intention of emptying anti-Assad neighbourhoods,” the activist said. “Yet
many have died as they attempt to flee, so the intention is also of
maximising terror.”
With the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad about to mark its first
anniversary on Thursday, civilians are becoming increasingly vulnerable. At
least 30,000 Syrians have fled to neighbouring countries, with 200,000 more
displaced within the country, the United Nations refugee agency reported.
Those who try to escape the country face an increasingly hazardous mission,
with Human Rights Watch reporting that the
army has spent recent weeks mining Syria’s border with Turkey.
“Any use of anti-personnel landmines is unconscionable,” said Steve
Goose, the New-York based group’s arms division director said. “There
is absolutely no justification for the use of these indiscriminate weapons
by any country, anywhere, for any purpose.”
The recent mining, which mirrors similar actions carried out on the border
with Lebanon last November, seems to be part of a wider operation to sever
rebel escape and resupply routes between Turkey and northern Syria.
The Free Syrian Army, the main rebel fighting unit, has de-facto bases inside
Turkey, allowing it greater freedom of manoeuvre in northern Syria than
elsewhere in the country.
Buoyed by military victories in Homs, the Syrian army appears intent on
eliminating the rebel presence in the area. In pursuit of that goal
government soldiers launched simultaneous offensives against a number of
towns in Idlib province closer to the border.
There was heavy fighting reported in the towns of Khan Shaykhoun and Jisr
al-Shughour, both close to the Turkish frontier. Rebels were able to inflict
casualties on a checkpoint in Idlib province as well as the southern city of
Dera’a.
Rebels also mounted operations in eastern Syria, suggesting that opposition
forces were taking advantage of the deployment of the government’s best
units in Homs and Idlib. It is an indication that the rebels, though at a
disadvantage, are not a spent force and that the regime’s military capacity
is overstretched.
The main Syrian opposition nonetheless suffered another setback on Tuesday,
when Haitham al-Maleh, a former judge and long-standing dissident, quit the
Syrian National Council, the main political group outside the country
representing the revolt against Assad. He said there was “a lot of
chaos in the group and not a lot of clarity over what they can accomplish
right now.”
With Syria’s death toll mounting – the UN estimates that it stands at more
than 8,000 – the head of the Arab League, Nabil Elaraby, demanded an
international investigation into the killing of civilians, which he said
amounted to crimes against humanity.
But the call is unlikely to find favour with Russia, Mr Assad’s strongest
foreign supporter, which on Tuesday pledged to keep supplying the regime
with weapons despite Western criticism.
“We have good, solid military and technical cooperation with Syria and today
we don’t have a basis to reconsider this military cooperation,” Anatoly
Antonov, Russia’s deputy defence minister, said.
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