Five Thousand Evacuated from Town Near Damascus

The AP reports that 5,000 people were evacuated yesterday from Adra, near Damascus, where Jabhat al-Nusra and government fighters have clashed for more than two weeks.

“On Sunday, Minister for Social Affair Kinda al-Shammat said more than 5,000 people were evacuated from the town. In a statement carried by the SANA state news agency, Shammat said the people have been moved to a safe place, and the ministry has established operation rescue rooms to offer aid and support,” the wire reports.

“Opposition fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra, or the Nusra Front, swept into Adra northeast of the capital in mid-December, reportedly killing civilians, many of whom are members of the Alawite and Druse sects. Both minority communities largely support President Bashar al-Assad, who himself is an Alawite, against the primarily Sunni-led rebellion.”

Barrel Bombs Kill 517 in Aleppo Since Dec. 15

The BBC reports that 517 people have been killed in Aleppo by government barrel bomb strikes in the last two weeks.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, “a UK-based activist group with links to the opposition, condemned the continuing use of barrel bombs in Aleppo and urged outside intervention. The organization, which relies on secret networks to relay information from the ground, also described those who failed to criticise the raids as ‘complicit in the massacres that have been committed and continue to be committed by the Syrian regime,’” the network reports.

“While most of those killed by barrel bombs over the past two weeks were civilians, 46 were rebels, according to the SOHR. The devices have rarely been used on such a sustained scale, says the BBC’s Arab Affairs Editor, Sebastian Usher.”

Syria Has Yet to Move Arms as Deadline Draws Near

The New York Times’s Nick Cumming-Bruce reports from Geneva on the precarious state of Syria’s chemical weapons cache, which has yet to be moved from Damascus to the Latakia coast, from where it is to be taken and destroyed in the sea.

“Two days before a deadline for getting its most deadly chemical weapons out of the country, and despite an international effort to mobilize the resources needed to do so, Syria has apparently not even begun to move them, observers familiar with the mission said Sunday,” he writes.

“Their assessment came as the United Nations and the international chemical weapons monitoring group overseeing the program acknowledged that Tuesday’s deadline would most likely be missed.

“‘At this stage, transportation of the most critical chemical material before 31 December is unlikely,’ the United Nations and the chemical weapons group said in a joint statement issued in the Syrian port city of Latakia on Saturday. They said that volatile security conditions in Syria had ‘constrained planned movements’ and that logistical problems and bad weather had contributed to the delay.”

Earlier this month, Syria Deeply spoke with chemical weapons expert Hamish de Bretton Gordon about the risks posed by the mission.

 

Suggested Reads from Our Editorial Team:

WSJ: On the Run From War, Syria’s Children Grow Up Fast

AFP: 15 Palestinians Dead From Hunger in Syria Camp

Financial Times: The West’s Policy on Syria Has Worked to Assad’s Advantage

Reporters Without Borders: ISIS – A Major Threat to Media Freedom in Both Syria and Iraq