Lebanese Army Surrounds Border Town, Evacuates Refugees
Reuters reports from Arsal that the Lebanese army has surrounded the town – occupied by Islamist militants – as mediators reported “progress” in negotiations to end the jihadists’ siege. Saudi Arabia has also granted $1 billion to help the army bolster its security.
“Soldiers arrested men and evacuated refugees from the hill town of Arsal on the border with Syria. One Syrian refugee said she had seen fighters’ bodies lying in the streets,” it writes.
“We saw death with our own eyes,” Mariam Seifeddin, a 35-year-old mother of nine, tells Reuters. She says she has been sheltered in a single room with 50 others for several days, without food or water.
The wire adds: “Sunni Muslim clerics trying to mediate an end to the fighting said a ceasefire frequently violated since it was agreed on Tuesday was extended for a second day. Fighting flared just one hour into the extension: the army fired artillery when soldiers came under fire.”
Palestinians Escaping Syria Turned Away from Jordan
Human Rights Watch reports that Jordan is refusing entry to – or deporting, by force – Palestinian refugees escaping Syria in what it calls a “clear breach of its international obligations.”
The monitoring group says “Jordan has officially banned entry to Palestinians from Syria since January 2013 and has forcibly deported over 100 who managed to enter the country since mid-2012, including women and children. Jordan’s uncompromising treatment of Palestinians fleeing Syria contrasts with its treatment of Syrian nationals, at least 607,000 of whom have been accepted into the country since the beginning of the Syrian conflict. Before the March 2011 uprising began, Syria was home to at least 520,000 Palestinian refugees.”
Sunni Extremists Repel Kurdish Forces in Iraq
The New York Times reports that “Sunni extremists repelled efforts by Kurdish pesh merga forces on Wednesday to push them back in areas east of Mosul in northern Iraq, and shelled a predominantly Christian village there, in what appeared to be a renewed push along the Kurdish border to take ground, control oil fields and water resources and expel minority groups.”
“It is a humanitarian tragedy,” Housam Salim, the head of the Solidarity and Brotherhood Yezidi Organization, tells Bloomberg News from an area of Mosul controlled by Kurdish forces. “Men were executed in the streets, women were kidnapped and raped,” he said, describing the Islamist takeover. “When we are captured, they kill us immediately, and they take our women.”
One Man’s Journey To Become the First American Suicide Bomber in Syria
Mike Giglio of Buzzfeed profiles Moner Mohammad Abusalha, thought to be the first American suicide bomber in Syria.
“The young American arrived in the small Syrian village of Khirbet al-Joz one day last summer, after crossing the mountains from southern Turkey. He made the trek with a group of fellow mujahideen, men from places like Egypt and Tunisia and Saudi Arabia, there to fight alongside the rebels in Syria’s civil war,” Giglio writes.
“The Arab fighters were battle-hardened, fit and tested from previous jihads. But the American was pasty and overweight, clearly the product of an easier life. “He looked like a child,” remembered an opposition activist from the village, who would become a friend. The American spoke only broken Arabic. He kept mostly to himself during his early days in Khirbet al-Joz, as he settled into life in a rebel training camp.”
WSJ: U.S. Rules Out Working with Syria’s Assad to Counter al Qaeda
AP: Lebanese Free 7 Soldiers Held by Syrian Militants
AFP: Dozens Die as Jihadists Storm Army Base in Raqqa
Reuters: Two Italian Aid Workers Kidnapped in Syria