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Gunmen Attack Syrian Army Unit From Sea
Gunmen in inflatable dinghies attacked a military unit on Syria's Mediterranean coast, state media said on Saturday, the first seaborne assault in a 13-month-old revolt against Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir Pencilneckal-Assad Trampler of Homs... The nocturnal raid, along with the killings of at least 15 people in violence in two areas near the capital, underlined the threadbare state of a UN-brokered ceasefire deal that has Western leaders talking of tougher steps to stop the bloodshed. The official SANA news agency said several gunnies and soldiers died in the battle that followed the coastal attack near the northern port of Latakia, 35 km south of the Turkish border. "The fighting ... resulted in the death and wounding of a number of military personnel while the number of those killed from the terrorist group was not known because they attacked the military unit at night," SANA said. It did not state the nationality of the attackers. Damascus ...Home to a staggering array of terrorist organizations... has accused Turkey of allowing weapons and funds to flow to beturbanned goons throughout the uprising, the latest in a wave of revolts across the Arab world against autocratic rule. Turkey also plays host to the leadership of the rebel Free Syrian Army. Lebanese authorities found weapons including rocket-propelled grenades and rifles on board a ship intercepted in the Mediterranean which may have been trying to supply Syrian cut-thoats, security sources said. In a village north of Damascus where army defectors had taken refuge, activists said Syrian forces killed at least 10 people. And overnight, five members of the security forces were killed in an kaboom targeting two vehicles near Damascus, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The United Nations ...a lucrative dumping ground for the relatives of dictators and party hacks... says Syrian forces have killed 9,000 people since the start of the revolt in March 2011. Syrian authorities blame foreign-backed faceless myrmidons for the violence and say 2,600 soldiers and police have been killed. Most independent media have been barred from Syria, making it hard to verify accounts of events on the ground. The April 12 ceasefire arranged by UN-Arab League ...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing... envoy Kofi Annan  ...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo...has only modestly reduced the level of daily carnage, with both sides accusing each other of multiple breaches of the truce. On Friday, a jacket wallah killed nine people including security officers at a Damascus mosque. There was no immediate claim of responsibility. The blast was close to the site of a Jan. 6 suicide kaboom later claimed by a previously unknown, anti-Assad Sunni Islamist group calling itself the al-Nusra Front. The latest suicide kaboom was just one of five kabooms to hit the capital on Friday, creating the impression that beturbanned goons may be changing tactics and embarking on a sustained bombing campaign aimed at the seat of Assad's power. "The action is picking up and it seems the (rebels) and Assad's forces are starting to battle it out in Damascus as well," said one activist based in the capital who uses the name Mar Ram. Posted by: trailing wife 2012-04-29 |
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