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UN agency heads visit Bekaa Valley refugees

United-Nations-Visit-To-Bekaa-Valley-Lebanon(BEKAA VALLEY, LEBANON) — The heads of UNHCR and the UN Development Program visited Syrian refugees and joint projects in the Bekaa Valley, Lebanon. High Commissioner António Guterres said that the Syria crisis had become the worst humanitarian tragedy of our times.

The visit underscored a shift in the international response to the Syrian crisis: not only should assistance flow to refugees, said Guterres and Clark, but increasingly it must also flow to host communities in neighboring countries to help them cope with the burden.

“The international community is not doing enough for Lebanon,” Guterres said, while visiting a refugee settlement. “The impact on the daily life of the Lebanese, on their salaries, on their rents, their school system, the health system, the infrastructure, water, electricity: all this requires massive solidarity from the international community and Lebanon has the right to ask the international community to share this burden.”

He added that, “preserving Lebanon’s stability is everybody’s business.”

According to an official report, the number of registered and unregistered refugees in Lebanon reached 1.5 million, around 30 percent of Lebanon’s population.

The three-year-old conflict in Syria has displaced some 6 million people, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency.

Watch the UN report:

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Syrian refugees to become third of Lebanese population

lebanon-syrian-refugees(BEIRUT, LEBANON) — Syrian refugees in Lebanon will constitute more than a third of Lebanon’s population by the end of 2014, according to a new report released by the United Nations on Thursday.

The report says these numbers are placing a heavy burden on Lebanon’s economy, particularly because of the large influx of refugees, especially children, who constitute 53 percent of total refugees.

“Failing to provide enough humanitarian support for Syrian refugees by the end of 2014 could result in dramatic consequences for refugees and the stability of the entire region, including a serious security threat to Lebanon,” said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres.

The UN says Lebanon will need $1.6 billion to be able to cope with the refugee crisis for the rest of the year. The report adds that only 23 percent of the $1.6 billion has been gathered.

“We no longer have the capacity to carry this burden alone. We have crossed all limits,” Social Affairs Minister Rashid Derbas said.

Lebanon currently hosts 1.1 million refugees, the highest number at 38 percent of Syrian refugees fleeing the war-torn country for other countries in the region.

U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees representative, Ninette Kelley says that 800,000 refugees will be unequipped to face winter, and 30,000 people including Lebanese will not have access to safe drinking water without the necessary financing.

“We need you to stand with us, we need you to stand with Lebanon to ensure that more funding is secured,” she said, addressing donor countries.

According to Central Bank of Lebanon statistics, the country faces a financial burden of $4.5 billion because of the refugee crisis.

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Cyrine Abdel Nour calls on world to help refugees

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(BEIRUT, LEBANON) Lebanese singer and actress Cyrine Abdel Nour appeared in a United Nations video on Thursday, calling on the world to help Lebanon with the overwhelming number of Syrian refugees that continue to enter Lebanon.

“I have a story to tell you. The story of a small country hosting more than one million refugees. It is a story of pain, fear and loss,” Abdel Nour said. “To help Lebanon and all the families who were torn away from home because of war, help us tell this story.”

Watch the video below:

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Lebanon asks refugees to refrain from entering Syria

SYRIA-CONFLICT

BEIRUT: Lebanon’s Interior Ministry Saturday asked Syrian refugees to refrain from entering Syria starting June 1 or risk losing their refugee status. The new decision comes as part of the government’s measures to organize the overwhelming presence of refugees in the country.

“In the framework of organizing the entry and exit of Syrians in Lebanon, all Syrian refugees registered with the UNHCR are asked to refrain from entering Syria starting June 1, 2014, or else they might be stripped of their refugee status,” the ministry said in a statement.

“The Interior Ministry hopes municipalities commit to this policy for the safety of refugees in Lebanon,” it added.

It also said that this new measure was aimed at preserving security in Lebanon as well as the relationship between “Syrian refugees and Lebanese citizens in host communities in order to avoid tensions.”

The ministry asked U.N. agencies and other international refugee organizations to take this matter seriously and inform Syrians of the new policy.

Lebanon has been working on a mechanism to govern the presence of Syrian refugees in Lebanon particularly that many enter under a refugee status in order to benefit from international aid.

The number of Syrian refugees fleeing into Lebanon has skyrocketed in the past year with more than one million registered refugees. Thousands of Palestinian refugees from Syria have also sought refuge in Lebanon as the war rages over the border.

 

Source: The Daily Star

Original Article

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Syria to hold presidential election on June 3: state media

BEIRUT: Syria will hold a presidential election on June 3, state media reported on Monday, setting the date for a vote likely to give President Bashar al-Assad a third term.

“The 3rd of June is the date for the election,” Syrian state television said, quoting the parliament speaker.

Assad is battling a three-year-old rebellion against his rule. International powers who back his opponents have described plans to hold the election as a “parody of democracy”.

The announcement followed a SANA report that a pair of mortar shells hit near the parliament building in central Damascus, killing five people.

Source: Reuters

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Rebels in Syria’s Homs go on counteroffensive

BEIRUT: Syrian rebels in the central city of Homs were on the counteroffensive Sunday, taking control of several buildings in regime-held areas, an activist group said.

The change comes nearly a week after the army launched a fierce ground offensive aimed at reclaiming a handful of besieged areas that are the opposition’s last remaining bastion in the city.

Rebels and troops meanwhile battled on the edges of Homs’ besieged Old City, as the army pounded a handful of opposition areas there with tank and rocket fire.

“The rebels have reclaimed the initiative, and have taken control of several buildings in the Jeb al-Jandali area” of Homs city, said Rami Abdel-Rahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based group with sources inside Syria.

The counteroffensive began after the jihadist Nusra Front, an ally of Syria’s rebels, killed five troops in a suicide car bomb attack Saturday in the Jeb al-Jandali area.

The car bomb attack came after soldiers at a regime checkpoint at the entrance of the neighbourhood defected and abandoned their positions, Abdel-Rahman said.

“The rebels’ entry into Jeb al-Jandali, which has been under army control for a year and a half, has diverted the loyalists’ attention from attacking the Old City to defending their positions,” he added.

Only a handful of districts in the heart of Homs, referred to by activists as “the capital of the revolution” against President Bashar Assad, remain under rebel control.

Some 1,500 people were evacuated from the Old City in a U.N.-supervised operation in February, leaving some 1,300 others still trapped inside.

Most are rebel fighters, according to opposition activists.

Activists posted photographs Sunday showing food rebels had seized from regime-held areas a day earlier, such as pasta and vegetables.

For nearly two years, people living in besieged areas of Homs had been surviving on little more than herbs.

Elsewhere in Syria, a man and his two children died in a mortar attack on Arnus Square in the heart of Damascus, the Observatory said.

Rebels operating on the outskirts of the capital frequently launch mortar attacks against regime-controlled areas. Most of the casualties are civilians.

Syria’s conflict began as an Arab Spring-inspired protest movement demanding political change, but escalated into an armed insurgency after the regime launched a fierce crackdown on dissent.

In three years, more than 150,000 people have been killed and nearly half the country’s population have fled their homes.

Source: AFP

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Car bombs kill at least 10 in central Syria

DAMASCUS: Two rebel car bombs targeted two central Syrian areas controlled by government forces on Saturday, killing at least ten people as opposition forces fought fiercely to hold onto territory, officials and activists reported.

Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said one car bomb killed at least four people in the city of Homs, in an area dominated by Alawites – the same sect as President Bashar Assad. State-run television also reported the bombing but did not immediately have a death toll. The Observatory obtains its information from a network of activists on the ground.

Rebels in Homs have undertaken a spate of suicide car bombings targeting soldiers and civilians in government-held neighborhoods as Syrian forces launch their toughest assault yet on opposition-held areas. Rebels are already badly weakened by hundreds of defections and a blockade that caused widespread hunger and suffering.

Earlier in the day, another suicide bomber in a car blew himself up at a checkpoint near the government-controlled town of Salamiya, killing at least six soldiers, activists said. The bombing also left an unknown number of civilian casualties, the Observatory said.

A Syrian government official confirmed the bombing but said four people were killed and nine were wounded. Conflicting death tolls are routine after such attacks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.

The bombing at the entrance of the town comes in the midst of fierce fighting in the central province of Hama.

Assad-loyal forces have been clashing with rebels in the nearby town of Morek, and military helicopters have been dropping crude, explosive-filled barrels over the town of Kafr Zeita, some 40 miles away.

Two activists and a medic in Kafr Zeita told The Associated Press this week that at least three of the crude “barrel bombs” that fell on their town in April contained canisters of chlorine gas that have caused residents to choke and faint.

The Syrian government accuses rebels of using the canisters, which are readily available and can be used easily.

Car bombings are a prized tactic of Syrian rebels, particularly those belonging to hard-line Sunni groups.

Source: Associated Press

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Syrian state TV: 14 killed in car bombing in Homs

BEIRUT: A powerful car bomb exploded Friday outside a mosque in a pro-government district of central Syria, killing 14 people in the latest violence to hit the war-shattered city, state-run Syrian television reported.

The bombing occurred as worshippers left the Bilal al-Habshi mosque on the edge of Akrama after attending Friday prayers, the report said, and also wounded at least 50 people.

The area, populated mainly by Alawites, members of President Bashar Assad’s minority sect, repeatedly has been targeted by car bombs in recent months.

Opposition activists also reported the blast. The Syrian Observatory for Human rights said the explosion killed at least nine people, adding that the number likely would rise because many of the wounded were in critical condition.

The attack coincides with a crushing offensive by government forces aimed at retaking the last rebel bastions in the historic quarters of the old city of Homs. The last few days has seen some of the fiercest fighting there in months, and the government claimed more progress on Friday.

A military official quoted by the state-run news agency said troops seized several buildings in the Wadi al-Sayeh area, including the landmark St. George church.

The old neighborhoods of Homs, a city often referred to as the capital of the revolution, is the last major stronghold for rebels in central Syria, and the fight to take it underscores how emboldened Syrian forces have become in opposition-held areas, bolstered by fighters from the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

Activists say more than 150,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict since it began in March 2011 with largely peaceful protests calling for Assad’s ouster. The larger fight to topple Assad has been undermined by fierce rebel infighting, particularly since the beginning of the year.

In an audio message posted on militant websites late Thursday, the spokesman of a powerful al-Qaida breakaway group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, slammed the terror network’s chief, blaming him for the widening rift between rival Islamic rebels.

Abu Mohammed al-Adnani accused al-Qaida’s top leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, of “deviating from the right approach” and betraying the cause of jihad, or holy war.

Since January, the Islamic State has been engaged in fierce fighting against an al-Qaida affiliate called the Nusra Front. Thousands of fighters have been killed.

The fighting intensified after al-Zawahri stepped into the rivalry. The Islamic State rejected his orders that the Nusra Front take the lead among Islamic fighters in Syria.

“The al-Qaida of today is no longer the al-Qaida of jihad, but its command has become a pickaxe to demolish the Islamic State,” al-Adnani said.

He said that al-Qaida’s leadership has been calling ISIL followers renegades without a proof, inciting other Muslims to kill their fighters.

The shadowy al-Adnani is one of the world’s most feared terrorists, infamous for his relentless bombing campaigns against Iraqi civilians, audacious jailbreaks of fellow militants and for expanding the organization into Syria.

His audio message suggested that rebels in Syria will remain locked in the infighting that has eroded their ranks and cost them territory to government forces supporting Assad.

Al-Golani, the Nusra Front leader, called on the Islamic State in February for arbitration by Islamic clerics, but the group did not respond to the initiative.

The infighting escalated few days later after the killing of Abu Khaled al-Suri, who had acted as al-Zawahri’s representative in Syria.

Rebels and activists believe he was assassinated by two suicide attackers from the Islamic State.

Source: Associated Press

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Rebels attack army barracks in Aleppo

BEIRUT: Nearly 50 people were killed Thursday when Syrian rebels attacked one of the largest military barracks in the country, in northern Aleppo, according to the anti-regime Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

The Britain-based group said at least 27 soldiers and pro-regime militiamen were killed and the rebels lost 20, including a commander.

“Rebels, including fighters from the Nusra Front and the Islamic Front, launched an assault today on the barracks in Hanano in Aleppo,” Observatory director Rami Abdel-Rahman said.

State media, meanwhile, reported the army had “foiled an attempt by terrorist groups to infiltrate the barracks” and killed a number of them.

President Bashar Assad’s regime refers to rebels battling to topple it as “terrorist” groups.

Abdel-Rahman said the barracks is one of the largest in Syria.

“It’s strategically important because it’s on a hill that overlooks parts of northern Aleppo,” Abdel-Rahman added.

Once Syria’s economic hub and its largest city, Aleppo has been divided between regime control in the west and rebel control in the east since shortly after combat began there in mid-2012.

Abdel-Rahman said the attack began when “rebels detonated explosives in tunnels they had dug beneath army positions around the barracks.”

State television also reported the rebels had “detonated explosives in three tunnels around the barracks.”

Anti-regime activists posted videos purporting to show the first detonation, as well as rebel groups as they moved closer to the barracks.

Abdel-Rahman said the barracks overlooked a key supply route for rebels going north into the rest of Aleppo province.

Regime forces have advanced around some of the eastern outskirts of Aleppo city, reopening its international airport to the east.

The air force has also waged a relentless campaign against eastern parts of the city, including dropping explosives-packed “barrel bombs.”

Rebels respond by firing rockets into pro-regime areas. The Observatory said that such rocket attacks killed at least 11 civilians, including two women and a child, Thursday and wounded 40.In the Zahra district in the west of the city, rebels have seized buildings near the Air Force Intelligence headquarters, it said.

Fighting has raged in the area since April 12, with rebels led by the Nusra Front battling to take the key target.

Clashes between regime troops and rebels also raged in areas around the capital, as well as in Deraa, Idlib and Deir al-Zor provinces.

The Observatory said five rebels were killed in fighting around the Deir al-Zor military airport.

In the Damascus suburb of Mliha, two Hezbollah fighters and a rebel were killed in the clashes there, the Observatory said.

Regime troops also sought to push forward with an offensive against besieged neighborhoods of Old Homs, as a rebel and a lieutenant in the National Defense paramilitary group were killed in the clashes, it added.

Syria’s government and opposition groups should resume talks to lift the siege on Homs, international mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said.

U.N.-Arab League envoy Brahimi said the discussions had been well underway between the government and “a negotiating committee representing the civilians and fighters still trapped in the Old City of Homs as well as the inhabitants of the Waer neighborhood.”

“It is a matter of deep regret that negotiations were brutally stopped and violence is now rife again when a comprehensive agreement seemed close at hand,” Brahimi added in the statement distributed at the U.N. headquarters in New York.

“We urge all the parties to return to the negotiating table and complete the deal which was on the verge of being signed,” he said. “We have reached out to all those who could help put an end to this tragedy.”

The Syrian army launched an assault Tuesday against the rebel-held neighborhoods in Homs and “have achieved key successes” and “killed a number of terrorists,” Syrian television said.

Homs, Syria’s third-largest city, has long been referred to by activists as the “capital of the revolution” because of the huge pro-democracy protests held there when the uprising began in March 2011.

Most of the central city is now under regime control. Rebel-held pockets have been under a siege for nearly two years, leading to dwindling food and medical supplies.

According to rebel groups, around 1,300 people, mainly combatants, are still trapped inside army-besieged neighborhoods, after around 1,400 civilians were evacuated at the beginning of the year.

Source: The Daily Star

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Syrian Christians long to return to Maloula

DAMASCUS: In the Bab Touma district of Syria’s capital Damascus, Fadi Mayal dreams of returning home to the ancient Christian town of Maalula which was retaken by government forces this week.

But he and many other residents chased out when rebel forces including jihadists entered the town in September fear it may still be too early to go back.

The Syrian army recaptured Maloula on Monday, saying it had restored “security and stability” to the picturesque hamlet where 5,000 people lived before the war began in March 2011.

“I would love to go back and celebrate Easter there, but it’s still a bit early,” said Mayalm in the capital’s Christian district of Bab Touma.

“I’ll go back, that’s for sure. My father is buried there,” added the 42-year-old building contractor.

“But there are still sleeper cells in Maloula.”

On Monday, as the army worked to recapture the town, three employees of Al-Manar, the television channel of Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement, were killed there.

An AFP correspondent who was in the town on Monday saw widespread destruction.

The Al-Safir hotel, which rebels had used as a base, was almost completely destroyed, its facade collapsed.

Downhill from the hotel, the Mar Sarkis Greek Catholic monastery was also damaged, its walls pierced by mortar rounds, and icons and other religious objects strewn on the ground inside.

Mayal said he saw his own house burning in a video that rebels posted on YouTube.

He suspects it was targeted because he had put up a picture of President Bashar al-Assad, but he is still eager to return to Maloula.

“Social life is different here in Damascus, and because of the crisis work is scarce,” he said.

Nearly half of Syria’s population has been displaced inside or outside the country by the conflict that began in March 2011.

More than 150,000 people have been killed, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group.

Antoinette Nasrallah, a 35-year-old Maloula native wearing sunglasses and white jeans, said she felt “great joy” when she heard that the Christian town had been “liberated”.

“But I’m saddened by the destruction of the churches,” she added.

She too hopes to be able to return as soon as possible.

“We want to spend next summer there,” she said.

“Celebrating the Feast of the Cross there on September 14, as we do every year, has become a dream.”

Built into a dramatic cliff, and full of churches, convents and monasteries, Maloula is considered a symbol of Christian presence in the Damascus region.

Its residents are renowned for speaking Aramaic, the language Jesus Christ is believed to have spoken.

“I hope with all my heart that the situation will go back to how it was before,” Nasrallah said.

“We’re afraid of forgetting Aramaic. We don’t know when we’ll be able to go back home.”

Maloula’s residents, who are mostly Greek Orthodox Christians, have found refuge in and around Damascus, which is around 55 kilometres (35 miles) from their home town.

Some are afraid of returning even after the army recaptured Maloula, traumatized by their flight and worried about the destruction to their homes.

“The houses were looted and some were burned,” said Diab Bahkit, a 62-year-old.

But others said they were ready to head back immediately, including one man who refused to give his name but said he wanted to “defend” his town and religion.

“I’m going back to Maloula as soon as possible — I won’t stay here a minute more,” he insisted.

He said fighters had tried to “destroy Maloula, especially its religious establishments”.

And a mother from the town, living in a single room in Damascus with her husband and four children, said she too was ready to return straight away.

“If they allow us, we’ll go back immediately,” the 50-year-old said, declining to give her name.

“Life is hard here. We’re living on aid, and it’s hard to come by,” she added.

Source: AFP

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