Air Strike Hits Aleppo Market
The AFP reports that an air strike on an Aleppo province market Thursday morning killed at least 21 people, including three children. The strike, in Atareb village, is the latest in the government’s months-long barrel bombing campaign on Aleppo city and its surroundings.
“Activists distributed video showing scenes of chaos, with bodies lying amid mounds of gray rubble in what was clearly a market. The amateur footage shows a woman in a white headscarf screaming as she leaned over the body of a loved one. Another image showed a man attending to a boy whose leg had been ripped off. It was unclear whether the child was alive or dead. ‘The area that was struck today is a market area, that’s why there were so many civilians killed,’” Aleppo-based activist Abu Omar told the wire.
U.N. Chief Demands Security Council Action on Syria
Reuters reports that U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has demanded that the Security Council take action in Syria “on violations of international law as he reported to the body that none of the warring parties was adhering to U.N. demands for aid access.
“In his second monthly report to the 15-member council on the implementation of a resolution demanding great humanitarian aid access in Syria, Ban said ‘none of the parties to the conflict have adhered to the demands of the Council. The Security Council must take action to deal with these flagrant violations of the basic principles of international law.’
“Two months after the 15-member council achieved rare unity to unanimously approve a resolution demanding rapid, safe and unhindered aid access, including across borders, Ban said the situation ‘remains an extremely challenging environment in which to work.’”
Assad’s Deadly Loophole in Syria Deal
ABC News reports on what it calls “substantial, potentially deadly loopholes” in the chemical weapons agreement between Assad and the international community, in which Assad vowed to hand over his cache of nerve agents after an Aug. 21 attack on the eastern suburbs of Damascus.
“Secretary of State John Kerry touted on Tuesday the fact that Syria had given up almost all its declared chemical weapons and would finish the process by the end-of-April deadline,” the network reports.
“But events in Syria paint a more complicated picture of Assad’s continued ability to kill civilians with chemical weapons. Earlier this month, the Assad regime allegedly used chlorine gas — a weapon Syria is not required to relinquish — against civilians in the town of Kafr Zita, causing victims to suffocate, choke, vomit, foam at the mouth and develop hypertension, according to a letter from the head of the Syrian Coalition, a Western-approved opposition group, to the United Nations Security Council.
Syrian opposition leaders have urged the U.N. and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) to inspect a research center in Damascus believed to produce Syria’s chlorine gas, ABC reports.
UK Police Make Syria Plea to Muslim Women
The BBC reports that British police have made an “unprecedented appeal to Muslim women to persuade their relatives not to go to Syria to fight. The national campaign for women to intervene follows a string of deaths of UK men who joined Syria’s civil war against President Assad’s regime. Co-ordinated events are being held in London, Birmingham and Manchester.
“Security chiefs think hundreds of people have travelled from the UK to fight in Syria, some of whom have returned. Forty people have been arrested over links to Syria this year, police said. And reports suggest up to 20 men from Britain have died in the conflict. Recent deaths have included Crawley father-of-three Abdul Waheed Majeed, who became the first British suicide bomber in the war, and a teenager from Brighton.”
Suggested Reads from Our Editorial Team
Reuters: Syria Eyes End of Chemical Arm Monitoring Mission; West Disagrees
AFP: Jordan Amends Anti-Terror Law to Face Syria Fallout
Al Jazeera: French Combatants in Syria and Cyber-Indoctrination