[MIAMIHERALD] Shelling broke a United Nations...where theory meets practice and practice loses...
-brokered ceasefire in the government besieged Syrian city of Homs on Saturday as mortar rounds landed near an aid convoy as it tried to cross into the rebel-controlled old city district.
Syrian state television
... and if you can't believe state television who can you believe?
reported that four members of the Syrian Red Islamic Thingy were maimed in the attack, which it described as a terrorist attack and were trapped on the rebel side as night fell and the cease-fire expired.
Both sides accused the other of breaking the cease-fire. In a statement, the Red Islamic Thingy described the attack as deliberate but made no reference to who had conducted it. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britannia-based pro-opposition group that monitors violence in Syria, blamed government forces.
The difficulties in Homs came as the United Nations Relief and Works Agency announced that it had been told to stop its aid distribution program in the Yarmouk district of Damascus because of fighting.
In a statement, UNRWA front man Christopher Gunness said the agency was pressing authorities to let it continue the program, which has delivered 6,300 food parcels since Jan. 30. Each parcel is designed to feed between five and eight people for 10 days. An estimated 18,000 civilians remain in Yarmouk, which began its existence as a Paleostinian refugee camp, but became an urban neighborhood that once was home to 160,000 people, including Syrians.
"Clashes have taken place in the northern part of the Paleostinian refugee camp in Damascus, Yarmouk, including in the area close to the distribution point where UNRWA has been handing out food parcels," Gunness said. "Citing those festivities and the insecurity in the area, the authorities have advised that UNRWA's food distribution should not continue until the area is secured."
In its statement about the mortar attack in Homs, the Red Islamic Thingy said its trucks had just begun to enter the rebel-held Hamadiyeh neighborhood Saturday morning when mortar rounds landed near the convoy, which then came under small arms fire. At least one member of the team was maimed, the statement said.
Despite the shelling, most of the aid trucks arrived at their destinations, and the Syrian government hailed the delivery of supplies to the area.