I call it that because Saturday is the slowest sales day and least read day of the week.
"Russia’s mission to the United Nations accused the United States of blocking its attempt to seek approval of a Security Council statement that would have condemned the Damascus bombings as terrorism. The US mission denied the accusation, saying it only requested that the Russian statement include a paragraph that also condemned the Syrian government’s ‘‘continued, indiscriminate use of heavy weaponry against civilians.’’"
This is the kind of thing the U.S. does when a resolution condemning Israel's aggression against Palestinians makes it before the SC. I suppose that is about as close an admission as your gonna get.
"Syria reported to fire Scuds at Aleppo targets; At least 12 die, and dozens are buried in rubble" by Hwaida Saad and Rick Gladstone | New York Times, February 23, 2013
BEIRUT — Antigovernment activists in Syria said the military fired Scud missiles into at least three rebel-held districts of Aleppo on Friday, flattening dozens of houses, killing at least 12 civilians and burying perhaps dozens of others under piles of rubble.
The assertion, which appears to be corroborated by videos posted on the Internet, came one day after Syrian government targets in central Damascus were hit by multiple car bombings that were among the deadliest and most destructive so far in the nearly two-year-old conflict.
They don't even qualify it anymore.
The report said the Hamra, Tariq al Bab, and Hanano areas of Aleppo were hit with Scuds, which are not known for their accuracy; it was the second report this week of the military using such missiles on rebel-held areas.
Aleppo, once Syria’s commercial capital, has become one of the focal points of rebellion in the uprising against President Bashar Assad. On Tuesday, according to activists in the city, a Syrian missile leveled part of Jabal Badro, another neighborhood controlled by the rebels.
I'm just wondering who fired it because the rebels have missiles, too.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group with contacts inside Syria, said in a statement that the victims of missile explosions in Aleppo on Friday included children and that the number of victims ‘‘is expected to rise significantly because there are dozens of wounded under the rubble.’’
State-run news media made no immediate mention of the Aleppo attacks. The website of Syria’s official SANA news agency was dominated by the aftermath of the car bombings in Damascus on Thursday, which killed more than 70 people. The ferocity and scope of those bombings were unusual for central Damascus, which until now has been largely insulated from the carnage and destruction wrought by the conflict in the city’s outer suburbs and other parts of the country.
Which sort of tips you in the right direction as to who is responsible.
Also see: Syrian Rebels Strike Again
Who is Winning the War in Syria?
Well, I've been told a lot of things.
Most of the casualties in Damascus were caused by an especially powerful bomb near the headquarters of Assad’s Ba’ath Party and the Russian Embassy, which were both damaged, according to Russian news reports and witnesses contacted in the capital. SANA reported that a hospital and neighboring schools also were damaged.
No group has taken responsibility for the Damascus bombings but the government has said they were carried out by terrorists, its generic description for the alliance of armed rebels seeking to oust Assad....
A hallmark of western intelligence operations, and when the U.S. press goes generic it's all kosher.
The bombings appeared to create a new source of diplomatic friction between the United States and Russia, which has supported the Syrian government during the conflict and has rejected any proposed solution that would force Assad to relinquish power.
Just a day after the Russians were on the peace path. Hmmmmm!
Russia’s mission to the United Nations accused the United States of blocking its attempt to seek approval of a Security Council statement that would have condemned the Damascus bombings as terrorism. The US mission denied the accusation, saying it only requested that the Russian statement include a paragraph that also condemned the Syrian government’s ‘‘continued, indiscriminate use of heavy weaponry against civilians.’’
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"Syrian attack aims to keep rebels from airport; Fighting focuses on highway leading to Aleppo" by Barbara Surk | Associated Press, February 24, 2013
BEIRUT — The battle for Syria’s second-largest airport intensified Saturday as government troops tried to reverse recent strategic gains the rebels have made in the northeast in their quest to topple President Bashar Assad.
I sure hope it wasn't a TRAP!
Assad’s forces have been locked in a stalemate with rebels in Aleppo since July....
Which is oddly just about where I've picked up the posts.
For months, rebels have been trying to capture the international airport....
I was under the impression they already had.
The rebels have cut off the highway, which the army has been using to transport troops and supplies to a military base within the airport complex. Rebels have made other advances in the battle for the airport in recent weeks, including overrunning two army bases along the road to the airport.
The rebels also control large swaths of countryside outside Aleppo and whole neighborhoods inside the city, which is carved up into areas controlled by the regime and others held by rebels.
Months of heavy street fighting has left whole neighborhoods of the storied city in ruins.
On Friday, regime forces fired three missiles into a rebel-held area in eastern Aleppo, hitting several buildings and killing 37 people, according to the Observatory. Some bodies were recovered from the rubble of apartments flattened in the strike, which apparently involved ground-to-ground missiles.
A similar attack on Tuesday in another impoverished Aleppo neighborhood killed at least 33 people, almost half of them children.
Do they really know who fired them, or is it just accepted as a given it was the government?
In Damascus, government forces shelled several rebellious suburbs Saturday as part of their efforts to dislodge opposition fighters who have used the towns and villages surrounding the capital as a staging ground for their attempts to push into the center of the city.
Recent rebel advances in the suburbs, combined with the bombings and three straight days of mortar attacks earlier this week, marked the most sustained challenge to the heart of Damascus, the seat of Assad’s power.
This is from today's paper after all the lies have been exposed above earlier. They are incorrigible.
A suicide car bombing on Thursday near the ruling Ba’ath Party headquarters in central Damascus killed 53 people and wounded more than 200, according to state media. Antiregime activists put the death toll at 61, which would make it the deadliest bombing of the revolt in the capital.
The different tolls could not be reconciled.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack. Car bombs and suicide attacks have been a hallmark of Jabhat al-Nusra, an Islamist militant group that is one of the myriad factions fighting on the rebel side.
And of the western intelligence agencies that employ them.
Nusra fighters, the most effective group on the battlefield, have led assaults on military installations and control swaths of territory in the north, including parts of Aleppo.
The fighting has increasingly taken on sectarian overtones with members of Syria’s Sunni Muslim majority dominating the rebel ranks, who are fighting Assad’s regime that is mostly made up of Alawites, an offshoot Shi’ite group.
The media would like us to believe that -- as the Christians, Kurds, and rest of Syrian society sits it out.
Efforts to stop the bloodshed in Syria have failed, leaving the international community at a loss of how to end the civil war.
Russia, one of Assad’s closest allies, and the Arab League proposed on Wednesday to broker talks between the Syrian opposition and Assad’s regime....
And then their embassy was bombed.
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NEXT DAY UPDATE:
"Syria rebels fight for police academy near Aleppo" by Barbara Surk | Associated Press, February 25, 2013
BEIRUT — Rebels backed by captured tanks launched a fresh offensive on a government complex housing a police academy near the northern city of Aleppo on Sunday, while the government hit back with airstrikes to try to protect the strategic installation, activists said.
If rebels capture the complex on the outskirts of Aleppo, it would mark another setback for President Bashar Assad. In recent weeks, his regime has lost control of key infrastructure in the northeast, including a hydroelectric dam, a major oil field and two army bases along the road linking Aleppo with the airport to its east.
Rebels also have been hitting the heart of Damascus with occasional mortars shells or bombings, posing a stiff challenge to the regime in its seat of power....
After what I've been posting for the last week can you take it?
trying for months to storm....
The state-run SANA state news agency said regime troops repelled the rebel attack on the police academy, a key focus for the rebels as they try to capture the city is Aleppo’s international airport, which they have been attacking for weeks.
Regime forces also fired an apparent ground-to-ground missile Sunday on the town of Tal Rifat, some 20 miles north of Aleppo, the Observatory said. There was no immediate word on casualties.
The report follows similar strikes last week on impoverished rebel-held Aleppo neighborhoods that killed at least 60 people.
Also on Sunday, prominent Syrian comedian Yassin Bakoush, 75, was killed in Damascus after apparently being caught in the crossfire between rebels and government troops.
SANA said Bakoush was killed by a rebel mortar round that landed on his car in the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp in southern Damascus, which has seen heavy fighting in recent months.
See: Taking Refuge in This Post
However, the antiregime Observatory said Bakoush was killed when a rocket-propelled grenade launched by government forces slammed into his car.
French freelance photographer Olivier Voisin, who was wounded on Thursday in Syria and taken to Turkey for treatment, died of his wounds at an Istanbul hospital, the French Foreign Ministry said Sunday.
Voisin is the second French journalist this year to be killed while reporting on the civil war.
Also see: Forgetting Jim Foley
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Time to forget Syria for a while.
