Government Bombs IDP Camp Near Jordanian Border
Reuters reports that Syrian army helicopters killed at least 20 civilians and injured 80 others, mostly children and women, in what was the first barrel bomb attack on an internally displaced persons (IDP) camp in southern Syria. The predawn raid took place in the village of Shajra, along the Syria-Jordan border.
“Women were wailing hysterically as they saw their dead children lying on the floor,” Abu Mohammad al-Hourani, a farmer in the village who helped remove bodies, told the wire.
The camp was home to hundreds of families fleeing renewed fighting between rebels and the army in southern Syria. Thousands have taken refuge near the border, which Jordan closed last year after a flood of hundreds of thousands of refugees strained its already-shaky economy.
The bombing of the IDP camp led to a further crisis in Shajra, a town of 15,000 from which hundreds of families fled after the attack – starting another IDP movement.
U.S. Suggests Getting Tougher with Syria on Chemical Weapons Deadline
The New York Times reports that the U.S. suggested Tuesday that the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the group overseeing the ban on Syria’s chemical weapons cache, “would have to take more assertive action than a simple condemnation concerning Syria, which will miss a June 30 deadline for the destruction of its chemical munitions and has been accused of using chlorine-gas bombs in its civil war.”
Robert P. Mikulak, the OPCW’s U.S. representative, told its executive council that Assad’s regime had failed to honor a “parade of timelines” in the destruction plan, despite help from the OPCW.
“It was certainly the expectation of the United States and other members of the council that the elimination of Syria’s entire chemical weapons program would be completed by June 30, 2014,” he said in a statement posted to the State Department’s website. “Syria has deliberately frustrated the council’s efforts to complete destruction by June 30. The council will need to acknowledge that Syria has not met its obligations to remove these dangerous materials so that they can be destroyed.”
Assad Says Terrorism Will Strike the West
AFP reports that Bashar al-Assad said Wednesday that terrorism will strike back against the West and other countries that have “supported” the opposition, whom the regime typically call “terrorists,” in their “attacks” in Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East.
Assad told a North Korean delegation visiting Damascus that “the West and countries that support extremism and terrorism in Syria and the region … must realize that this growing threat will strike the whole world, especially the countries that support terrorism and that allowed it to grow.”
“Ever since a revolt broke out in March 2011, Assad has blamed all violence in Syria on a foreign-backed ‘terrorist’ plot,” the wire says. On June 3, the Syrian leader claimed re-election with 90 percent in a nationwide presidential election that the opposition and its Western backers called a “farce” and a sham.
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