Iraq & Syrian Civil Wars - Page 183

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has won a landslide victory in presidential poll securing 88.7 percent of the vote, parliament speaker Mohammad al-Laham has said.

Assad's two challengers, Hassan al-Nouri and Maher Hajjar, won 4.3 percent and 3.2 percent respectively.

Aleppo, Syria (CNN) -- The smell of burnt plastic leaps out at you. Acrid in the throat, omnipresent, extinguishing from the air all the other smells of city life -- because really there is none. The scenes of destruction -- the fact every street is pockmarked by two years of shelling -- you have seen in activist videos online. But the smell is something striking: it notifies you that you are on the edge of humanity.

Aleppo is a dusty, pale skeleton of the city I reported from 22 months ago. Since then, it has seen too much. It has seen the world lose much of its horror at its plight and instead focus on the extremists in rebel ranks who Western officials fear may eventually turn their ire on Europe.

It has seen the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad seem to edge towards collapse and then pull back from the brink with Russian and Iranian support, in the face of a divided opposition and international community. But most visibly of all, Aleppo has had the life bombed out of it. You cannot open your eyes without seeing the impact of Syria's internecine rush to oblivion. Every building is marked.

It is in keeping with the contempt Assad's regime has for those who disagree with him, that the largest city has born the brunt of his crudest and most indiscriminate weapon. The "barrel bomb" is itself a symptom of a war so long and exhaustive, the ways of state-backed killing have by necessity become homemade and improvised, rather than precise and militarized. It is a simple device: take a barrel and fill it with explosive and any shrapnel you can find. Then fly over Aleppo, normally in helicopters, and drop the barrel when you see a populated area.

Syrian President Bashar Assad declared a general amnesty on Monday for prisoners in the country, state media reported, less than a week after he was re-elected to another seven-year term amid a bloody civil war.

It was not clear how many if any prisoners would be freed by the Presidential decree. The government has issued several limited pardons for various offenses since the uprising against Mr. Assad began in March 2011 that have largely been seen as an effort to create the image of a compassionate leadership.

The official SANA news agency did not say whether the amnesty announced on Monday would apply to the tens of thousands of anti-government activists, protesters, opposition supporters and their relatives that international rights groups say are imprisoned in the country. However, SANA’s report suggested the decree would reduce some prisoners’ sentences without freeing them.

Iraq’s prime minister has declared a state of emergency after armed fighters believed to be part of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) seized the northern Iraqi province of Nineveh and freed hundreds of prisoners.

Overnight, hundreds of rebels launched an assault on the provincial capital Mosul, Iraq's second-largest city, engaging in combat with troops and police, officials said on Tuesday.

“The city of Mosul is outside the control of the state and at the mercy of the militants,” an Interior Ministry official told news agency AFP, making it the second city to fall to anti-government forces this year.

On June 11 2014 04:51 Ayaz2810 wrote:
I don't know enough about the situation. Are the right people the ones getting their hands on us equipment? Or are these the people murdering civilians?

On June 11 2014 09:48 PiPoGevy wrote:


I take your Assyrian, same here brother, lets just hope all the Christians moved North into Kurdistan. I know that recently some returned to Mosul not too long ago... We just need to go far up North and survive yet another Islamic extremist group

BEIRUT: Fighting is raging in eastern Syria as a jihadist group rooted in neighbouring Iraq pushes a fresh bid to create an "Islamic state" along the border, an activist group said Tuesday.

Since the Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) launched a new offensive in Deir Al-Zor province 40 days ago, 634 people, mainly fighters, have been killed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

At the same time, 130,000 people have been forced to leave their homes, with 39 civilians killed from shelling in the fighting.

The Britain-based Observatory said 354 of the dead were members of the Nusra Front -- Syria's official Al-Qaeda arm -- and allied rebel groups.

And 241 were members of ISIS.