Syrian Airstrikes Target Lebanese Border Town

By Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

BEIRUT, Lebanon – According to Lebanon’s official news agency, Syrian military helicopters have launched three air-raids in areas inside Lebanon near the town of Arsal on the Syrian border. The airstrikes signify a spill over of the Syrian Civil War, now in its third year, into neighboring countries as the regime attempts to cut-off supply routes used by rebel forces.

Syrian warplanes are routinely seen near Lebanon’s mountainous border with Syria. (Photo courtesy of Al Jazeera)

On 28 February Reuters reported that an airstrikes near the town of Arsal killed three people and wounded seven. Later that day Sunni militants inside Syria fired rockets into the Lebanese’s town of Britel, a Hezbollah stronghold. The attack wounded a women and her two children.

The majority of the people living in the border town of Arsal’s support the Syrian revolution and opposition fighters. The town is now home to tens of thousands of Syrian refugees and has experienced a sudden influx of displaced persons as the Syrian government launches a mass assault across the border in the Qalamoun region or Syria.

On Wednesday, Syrian helicopters carried out the air raids in the sparsely populated mountainous regions outside of the town of Arsal, near the Syrian border. Airstrikes have become common along the Lebanon-Syria border. Syrian war planes and helicopters routinely carry out air strikes along the border, inside of Lebanon.

Syrian warplanes carried out a series of airstrikes near a Lebanese border town on Wednesday, the latest evidence of a spill over of the Syria’s civil war into neighbouring countries. The town’s Deputy Mayor Ahmad Fliti said that an airstrike was carried out near the border town on Wednesday and that at least eight airstrikes have been carried out along the town’s outskirts where thousands of refugees have established tent-encampments.

Asem Alzein, a Syrian doctor who lives in Arsal said a 30-year-old woman and seven-year-old girl in Wadi Hmaied were wounded during the airstrikes. He said that one blast hit only a few hundred meters away from a school, forcing the teachers and students to flee the building.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damages from Wednesday’s round of air-strikes which appears to be linked to the regime’s military offensive against the rebel stronghold of Yabroud. Syrian journalists who were taken on a state-orchestrated tour of government-held areas around Yabroud on Tuesday reported that they heard gunfire and saw military jets flying overhead. The offensive is an attempt by the Assad regime to gain control of border regions in order to cut-off shipments of arms and other supplies to rebel groups.

For more information please see:

Al Aljazeera – Syrian air raids hit Lebanese border region – 05 March 2014

Reuters – Syrian Air Raids Hit Lebanese Border Region – 05 March 2014

ABC News – Syrian Aircraft Strike near Lebanese Border Town – 04 March 2014

Reuters – Syrian Air Strikes Kill Three near Lebanese Border – 28 February 2014

U.S. Terms Kunming Massacre as “Terrorism”

By Kevin M. Mathewson
Impunity Watch Reporter, Asia

BEIJING, China – The US State Department has described Saturday’s knife attack which killed 29 people in China’s Kunming city as “an act of terrorism”, but the lack of firearms and explosives in the attack has left some analysts unconvinced by the explanation.

Saturday’s attack at Kunming station killed 29 people and injured more than 130 others. (Photo Courtesy of Reuters)

Ten attackers dressed in black converged on passengers at a train station in the southwestern city of Kunming on Saturday, stabbing bystanders indiscriminately with a range of long knives, taking the lives of at least 29 people and injuring 143 more, according to state-run Xinhua News.

The statement comes after Chinese state-run media accused Washington of double standards for its initial reluctance to use the phrase.

The US Embassy in Beijing originally described the attack as “a horrific, senseless act of violence”, but on Monday US State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki revised that statement and described the attack as appearing “to be an act of terrorism targeting random members of the public”.

Officials have blamed separatists from Xinjiang – which is home to the Muslim Uighur minority – for the attack.

Both this attack and an incident late last year in which a car ploughed into pedestrians in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square have been attributed to separatists from the far-western region of Xinjiang.

Authorities traditionally blame extremists for these outbreaks of violence, while Uighur activists point to tight Chinese control as a cause of tensions. Establishing facts independently is difficult, because foreign journalists’ access to the region is restricted.

In a statement, the World Uyghur Congress – a Germany-based umbrella organization of Uighur groups – condemned the violence “unequivocally”, but also called on Chinese authorities to be open and transparent in their investigation.

It urged Beijing “to refrain from using this as a pretext to further and indiscriminately crack down on Uighurs as precedents suggest, and to show a measured response”.

“It is absolutely vital the Chinese government deal with the longstanding and deteriorating human rights issues facing Uighurs if tensions are to be reduced,” its president, Rebiya Kadeer, said in the statement.

For more information, please see:

BBC News – US says Kunming attack is ‘act of terrorism’ – 4 March 2014

The Wall Street Journal – China Calibrates its Police Response to Train Station Attacks – 4 March 2014

Descrier – China blames bloody Kunming massacre on international terrorism, but many remain unconvinced – 4 March 2014

The Irish Times – Police capture remaining suspects after Kunming knife attack – 4 March 2014

The Huffington Post – Chinese Netizens Lash Out At U.S. For Downplaying Severity Of Deadly Knife Attack – 3 March 2014

Thousands of Refugees Blocked From Receiving Food Aid in Syria

By Kathryn Maureen Ryan
Impunity Watch Reporter, Middle East

DAMASCUS, Syria – According to the United Nations and activists, food aid deliveries to thousands of people living in a blockaded area in southern Damascus have been cut off after a truce collapsed and fights once again broke out between Syrian rebel groups and regime forces. The Yarmouk district of Damascus is home to thousands of Palestinian refugees.

Residents of the Yarmouk district of Damascus line up in hopes of receiving food aid. (Photo courtesy the Irish Examiner)

Yarmouk is the largest of nine Palestinian camps in Syria. Since the camp’s was founded in 1957, it has evolved into a densely populated residential district, only five miles from the centre of Damascus. The camp has been home to several generations of Palestinian refugees. Before the conflict more than 160,000 Palestinian refugees lived in Yarmouk, around 18,000 Palestinian refugees remain in the district.

Chris Gunness, a spokesperson for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency in Damascus, urged both parties to “immediately allow” delivers of food and medical aid to be resumed in order to fight the malnutrition epidemic in the area. On Monday Gunness said the United Nations “remains deeply concerned about the desperate humanitarian situation in Yarmouk, and the fact that increasing tensions and resort to armed force have disrupted its efforts to alleviate the desperate plight of civilians,” Gunness said on Monday. He urged both regime and rebel fighters to facilitate “safe and unhindered humanitarian access”

Over the course of the three year old conflict the Yarmouk area of Damascus has seen some of the worst violence in the nation’s capital. The fighting has led to severe shortages in food and medical supplies leading to severe malnutrition, illness and hunger.

Israa al-Masri, a young boy who lived in the Palestinian neighborhood of Yarmouk in Damascus, Syria was one of thousands of Syrian children to suffer from hunger in the region, he passed away from a hunger-related illness, on Jan. 11, 2014 (Photo courtesy of CBS News)

On Tuesday Filippo Grandi, the Commissioner General of UNRWA, called the extent of damages to the refugees’ homes in the Yarmouk area shocking, he said “the devastation is unbelievable. There is not one single building that I have seen that is not an empty shell by now.”

On Saturday rebel fighter claimed that Assad loyalists were sneaking weapons into Yarmouk under the pretext of the joint patrols, delaying food distribution and arresting young men waiting for food parcels from the United Nations. The next day rebels returned to the area and clashes broke out between regime and al-Nusra and other rebel fighters.

In total, the United Nations has distributed 7,708 food parcels to the Yarmouk district’s 18,000 registered Palestinian refugees. According to activist groups, there are thousands more displaced Syrians living in the district suffering from malnutrition, illness and hunger as a result of food shortages.

For more information please see:

Al Jazeera – Thousands of People Living In Blockaded District in Southern Damascus Are Cut Off From Aid As Truce Collapses – 04 March 2014

Irish Examiner – Thousands ‘Slowly Dying’ in Yarmouk Camp – 01 March 2014

CBS News – U.N. Renews Call For Syria Regime, Rebels To Allow Aid Into Yarmouk Camp For Starving Refugees – 26 February 2014

The Guardian – Queue for Food In Syria’s Yarmouk Camp Shows Desperation Of Refugees – 26 February 2014