The Syrian town of Haffeh was smoldering and nearly deserted on Thursday after days of clashes between government forces and rebels, while activists reported more army assaults on pro-opposition areas across the country.
Western powers brushed aside Russian criticism of a U.S.-drafted Security Council resolution authorizing an advance team of U.N. observers to monitor Syria\’s fragile ceasefire and said on Friday they hoped to put it to a vote this weekend.
Syrian opposition activists called mass protests for Friday to test a fragile, day-old ceasefire by President Bashar al-Assad\’s forces, and international pressure mounted for Damascus to fully comply with a U.N.-backed peace plan.
Syria\’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva stormed out of the U.N. Human Rights Council Tuesday after demanding angrily that countries stop \”inciting sectarianism and providing arms\” to opposition forces in his country.
Leaders of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas turned publicly against their long-time ally President Bashar al-Assad of Syria on Friday, endorsing the revolt aimed at overthrowing his dynastic rule.
Western and Arab nations will demand that Syrian forces implement an immediate ceasefire to allow relief supplies to reach desperate civilians in bombarded cities such as Homs when they meet in Tunis on Friday.
Syria is in the midst of a civil war. The common wisdom both from inside and out is that the Assad dynasty is doomed to follow the plight of Ben Ali in Tunisia, Mubarak in Egypt, and Gadhafi in Libya, not to mention Saddam Hussein in Iraq. The questions are how, when and how many more dead.
A U.N. Security Council statement condemning Syria\’s crackdown on dissidents was inadequate, the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League said.
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