Syria violence intensifies
February 11, 2012
Unknown gunmen assassinated a senior military doctor in the Syrian capital, Damascus, on Saturday, state news agency SANA reported.
"An armed terrorist group" killed Brigadier-General Issa al-Khouli in the morning as he left his home in the Damascus neighborhood of Rukn-Eddine, SANA said.
As chief of a military hospital in the capital, he was the most senior official to be killed in the 11-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the killing.
Damascushas remained comparatively unaffected by violence which has spread across other Syrian cities in recent months. Saturday's attack suggests, however, that it is reaching the tightly controlled capital.
Uprising intensifies
In Homs, meanwhile, forces loyal to Assad bombarded the city, causing numerous casualties.
"Twenty people were killed in the districts of Baba Amr and al-Khalidiyeh [in the province of Homs]. The regime's forces have intensified shelling the area to prevent activists and army defectors from escaping," an opposition activist told Germany’s dpa news agency via satellite telephone.
Other activists in the areas put the figure closer to 50, however. Opponents of Assad's regime say several hundred people have been killed in Homs over the past week.
These figures could not be independently verified due to severe restrictions placed on foreign news agencies by Assad’s regime.
The latest reports of violence came just a day after at least 28 people were killed and more than 100 others wounded in two separate explosions that hit the industrial city of Aleppo. No one has claimed responsibility, but the two sides, which appear to be slipping into a civil war, have blamed each other for the attack.
From the Security Council to the General Assembly
Arab foreign ministers meet in Cairo on Sunday to discuss a proposed joint Arab League-UN monitoring mission to be sent to Syria to investigate Assad's adherence to a series of past pledges.
The meeting comes just days after China and Russia vetoed a resolution at the UN Security council aimed at ending violence in Syria and pressuring Assad to step down.
Moscowand Beijing's ambassadors to the UN argued that last week's resolution was unbalanced, as it failed to blame both the Syrian opposition and Assad's government for the violence. Significant concessions by the Europeans on the wording of the draft failed to win Russian and Chinese support.
The 193-nation UN General Assembly is scheduled to discuss Syria again on Monday, after Saudi Arabia circulated a draft resolution that would back an Arab League peace plan for Syria.
The fact that no country has the power of veto in the General Assembly would make it easier to get this latest resolution passed. However, it wouldn't carry the same weight, as unlike Security Council resolutions have no legal force. A vote on the resolution isn't expected until later in the week.
ccp, pfd/dfm (AP, Reuters, dpa)