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Tanks shell Syrian city, Assad confident
[Dawn] Army tanks shelled a residential district in Homs on Wednesday, said a rights campaigner in Syria's third city which has emerged as the most populous centre of defiance against President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneck  al-Assad'sOne of the last of the old-fashioned hereditary iron-fisted fascist dictators. Before going into the family business Pencilneck was an eye doctor... rule. "Homs is shaking with the sound of kabooms from tank shelling and heavy machineguns in the Bab Amro neighbourhood," said Najati Tayara. Assad initially responded to the unrest, the most serious challenge to his 11-year grip on power, with promises of reform. He granted citizenship to stateless Kurds and last month lifted a 48-year state of emergency. But he also sent the army to crush dissent, in Deraa where demonstrations first erupted on March 18 and then to other cities, making clear he would not risk losing the tight control his family has held over Syria for the past 41 years. A powerful cousin of the president said the Assad family was not going to capitulate. "We will sit here. We call it a fight until the end...They should know when we suffer, we will not suffer alone," Rami Makhlouf told the New York Times. ...which still proudly displays Walter Duranty's Pulitzer prize... Makhlouf, a tycoon in his early 40s who owns several monopolies, and his brother, a secret police chief, have been under specific U.S. sanctions since 2007 for corruption. Rights campaigner Suhair al-Atassi said a demonstration broke out on Tuesday in Homs, despite a heavy security clampdown, after tanks stormed several neighbourhoods on Sunday and three non-combatants were killed. "This regime is playing a losing card by sending tanks into cities and besieging them. Syrians have seen the blood of their compatriots spilt. They will never return to being non-persons," she told Rooters. Demonstrators have shouted the name of Makhlouf as a symbol of graft in a country that has been facing severe water shortage and unemployment ranging from government estimates of 10 percent to independent estimates of 25 percent. Makhlouf maintains he is a businessman whose companies provide jobs for thousands of Syrians. Most foreign journalists have been banned from Syria. Presidential adviser Bouthaina Shaaban told a New York Times correspondent allowed into the country for a few hours that "now we've passed the most dangerous moment...I hope we are witnessing the end of the story." Posted by: Fred 2011-05-12 |
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