Today’s Death Toll: 143 (including 10 children and 7 women)

85 in Damascus and Suburbs, 24 in Aleppo (most in Maysar neighborhood), 14 in Hama (7 in Kafranboudeh), 9 in Daraa, 4 in Homs, 3 in Idlib, 2 in Raqqa and 1 in Deir Ezzor.

Points of Random Shelling: 337

26 by warplanes, 7 by Cluster Bombs, 3 by Phosphorus Bombs, and 7 by barrel bombs. Artillery shelling was reported in 125 points, mortar shelling in 114 points and missile shelling in 62 points.

Clashes: 122

Rebels downed 3 jets in Manbej (Aleppo), Eastern Ghoutah (Damascus) and Hama Suburbs. In Raqqah City, they gained control of a gas station in Hamra area after a 3-day siege, meanwhile, 21 members of regime forces defected in the Karama neighborhood. In Qalamoun region, Damascus, rebels liberated the headquarters of the 413^th Battalion after fierce clashes with regime loyalists. They also completed their liberation of Regiment 14 and the fuels storage facilities in the city of Nabek, and liberated the suburb of Bahdaliyah. In the town of Zabadani, Damascus, rebels also managed to take control of a number of checkpoints destroying 5 military vehicles in the process. In Daraa, rebels gained control of Al-Gharbi checkpoint in Basr Al-Harir after fierce clashes (LCCs).

 

News

Envoy: 2013 could bring 100,000 deaths in Syria

Russia Sends Another Naval Ship to Syria

Israeli crosses border into Syria Kfar Qassem resident said to be mentally unstable crosses border in Golan Heights with apparent aim of urging Assad to stop killing his people

 

Special Reports

In Syria, What’s Left Behind?
War is in many ways about things that are left behind—people, items, ideas, innocence. It ages children before their time, turns neighbors into enemies (or family), it destroys communities and leaves scars that may or may not show. The confidently authoritarian Syria that existed before March 15, 2011 has eroded, its brutal decades-old secular pan-Arab regime is fighting for its existence. It will likely eventually go the way of other brutal decades-old secular pan-Arab regimes, like Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali’s Tunisia and Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya, to be replaced by a more religiously conservative, Sunni Muslim power structure of some sort.

Syria Civil War: Gravediggers Have No Time To Wait For The Dead
Gravediggers at the cemetery in the northern Syrian town of Azaz no longer wait for bombs to fall before they break the ground. The dead come too fast… “We know the plane is coming to hit us, so we’re being prepared,” said Abu Sulaiman, one of a few men digging at the Sheikh Saad cemetary. “Massacres are happening. We’re putting every two or three bodies together. We’ve been working and digging since 6 in the morning. We’re going to dig 10 new graves today,” he said.

 

Today’s Death Toll: 399 (including more than 20 children and 20 women)

227 in Homs 220 of them were field executed in Deir Baalbah, 62 in Damascus and Suburbs (10 of them in Nashabiya), 40 in Aleppo (13 in Tal Rifaat ), 22 in Deir Ezzor including 15 unidentified bodies, 17 in Daraa, 14 in Hama, 10 in Idlib, and 5 in Raqqa.

Points of Random Shelling: 399

34 by warplanes, 2 points by Phosphorus bomb, 3 by vacuum bombs, 5 by cluster bombs, 152 by heavy caliber artillery, 124 by mortar and 80 by missile and rockets.

Clashes: 112

In Damascus, rebels shelled several military centers inside Mazzeh Military Airport using domestically-manufactured rockets, they also managed to repel an attack by regime forces on the town of Darayya. In Daraa, rebels repelled an attack on the town of Basr Al-Harir (LCCs).

Bassem al-Sayid, son of acting Minister of State, Muhammad Turki Al-Sayid, was martyred on Friday in the town of Sarmada, Idlib, while fighting for the rebel group, Jundullah. His death comes as more and more family members of the official establishment come out against Assad and his lot, including in recent days Assad’s own sister-in-law, Rasha Al-Akhras.

 

News

Deadly day in Syria as diplomats talk At least 399 people were killed Saturday, the opposition Local Coordination Committees said… The figure includes 201 people who a captured Syrian soldier said had been executed in Deir Balbah, outside of Homs, after Syrian forces won a battle there, an LCC spokesman said.

Assad’s forces seize Homs district from rebels: activists The army moved into Deir Ba’alba, a neighborhood on the northeastern edge of Homs, they said, leaving the rebels controlling just the central neighborhoods around the old city and the district of Khalidiyah, immediately to the north.

Insisting on Assad’s Exit Will Cost More Lives, Russian Says Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, said on Saturday that there was “no possibility” that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria could be persuaded to leave and that the opposition’s insistence on his departure as a precondition for peace talks would only cost “more and more lives of Syrian citizens” — suggesting slender hope for a breakthrough in negotiating an end to a conflict that has already killed more than 40,000… “He has repeatedly said, both publicly and privately, including during his meeting with Lakhdar Brahimi not long ago, that he has no plans to go anywhere, that he will stay in his post until the end, that he will, as he says, protect the Syrian people, Syrian sovereignty and so forth,” Mr. Lavrov said. “There is no possibility of changing this position.”

Syria opposition leader rejects Moscow invitation for peace talks Moaz Alkhatib, whose National Coalition opposition group has been recognized by most Western and Arab states, demands Moscow apologize for supporting Assad’s regime.

Assad is panicking, Russia is frustrated – and Asma’s cousin calls for blood While a vehement letter by a member of Assad’s family spreads across the Arabic web, a resolution for the strife in Syria has no end in sight.

Syria doomed to “hell” without political deal: envoy U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi said in Moscow that responsible people inside and outside Syria should “help the Syrians stop their descent into more and more bloodshed, into more and more chaos and perhaps a failed state”.

Syrian refugee influx could break Lebanon and Jordan, UN envoy warns Lakhdar Brahimi said: “If you have a panic in Damascus and if you have 1 million people leaving Damascus in a panic, they can go to only two places, Lebanon and Jordan.” Both those countries could break if faced with half a million refugees, he said on Saturday after meeting the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, in Moscow. “If the only alternative is really hell or a political process, then we have got, all of us, to work ceaselessly for a political process,” he said.

Syrian airline cancels flight to Aleppo Syria’s national airline canceled a flight to Aleppo on Saturday because of fighting near its international airport, while the United Nations’ top envoy to the country said it faced “hell or a political process” but gave no sign a truce was in sight. The two developments underscored just how far international efforts to end the violence in Syria have fallen behind developments on the ground, more than 21 months into the conflict.

Blood spattered on the bricks where Syria bomb falls Blood was spattered on the bricks that littered the area around the bomb site. A child’s teddy bear lay in the wreckage and nearby cars were marked by shrapnel and bullet holes. A bulldozer cleared the heavy rubble while young boys dug through the debris with their hands, hoping to find people still alive amid the broken bed frames and crushed furniture.

 

Special Reports

‘Til death do us part: Marriage destroyed by war
(CNN) — For the third time, Mahmoud Al-Qassab lowers the body of one of his children into the ground. He steps back as neighbors and relatives shovel dirt over his teenage daughter’s grave. He does not cry or wail. “I thank God this is my third martyr: Ahmed, Abdullah and now her. I thank God, and I will not say anything against his fate,” Mahmoud told an activist filming the small funeral. Just a few months ago, 18-year-old Ayat Al-Qassab sang and danced with her mother and aunts as they dressed the bride in her wedding gown. Now, her shattered and bloodied body lies in a grave below the crumbling, bullet-ridden buildings of Homs… A 120 mm rocket fired into the family home struck Ayat in the head, killing her and her unborn child instantly. Ayat’s father, who was standing nearby, was hit in the shoulder and wounded.

Persona non grata in Beirut
The sudden departure from Beirut of the Syrian interior minister, Mohammad al-Shaar, was a sign of how much has changed in the Syrian-Lebanese relationship. Shaar allegedly took to the skies after being warned by the Lebanese that Interpol might issue an arrest warrant for him, and that Lebanon would have to implement it.

U.S. impotence on Syria
… the crisis is the result of the brutality and ruthlessness of ruler Bashar al-Assad and the family clique around him, and their supporters in Iran and Russia. But it is also reflects a massive failure of Western — and particularly American — leadership, the worst since the Rwandan genocide two decades ago.

Syria’s war creates concern for its neighbor
The more than 40,000 refugees might be tucked into a barbed-wired corner of the high desert, but their arrival – and their country’s turmoil – is being felt all the way to Amman. The effects on Jordan’s economy and on its royal family’s always-precarious grip on power could be serious, especially now, as protests unfurl in a country outraged by the government’s decision to chop fuel subsidies – a necessary action for it to secure $2 billion (1.5 billion euros) in loans from the International Monetary Fund.