DAMASCUS, Oct 29, (AFP): UN chief Ban Ki-moon Saturday urged Syria “immediately” to end attacks on civilians, a day after dozens of people were killed in a fierce crackdown on dissent and 17 troops died in clashes with suspected army deserters.
Ban’s appeal follows condemnation by the Arab League of the deaths of 36 people on Friday activists said were killed by security forces during mass protests calling for the imposition of a Libya-style no-fly zone on Syria.
A rights watchdog meanwhile said another four civilians were killed on Saturday and that fighting flared again between troops and suspected defectors after clashes overnight killed 17 soldiers.
Ban “appeals for military operations against civilians to stop at once,” said his spokesman Martin Nesirky.
“The violence is unacceptable and must stop immediately,” he added. “The calls of the Syrian people for change must be answered with far-reaching reforms, not repression and violence.”
Friday’s violence, the worst in months, prompted fresh condemnation from the foreign ministers of the 22-strong Arab League, which has been trying to broker an end to the unrest that has rocked Syria since anti-regime protests erupted in March.
“The Arab ministerial committee expressed its rejection of the continued killings of civilians in Syria and expressed its hope that the Syrian government will take the necessary measures to protect them,” they said in a statement.
An Arab League task force met Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Wednesday in Damascus and is due to hold talks Sunday in Qatar with top Syrian officials to try to reach “serious results and an exit to the Syrian crisis,” it said.
The Syrian foreign ministry accused the Arab committee of stoking dissent and said that Foreign Minister Walid Muallem will “inform the committee tomorrow of the true situation in Syria,” the state-run news agency SANA reported.
The Arab task force is being influenced by “lies spread by television channels” and should have “helped to calm (the situation) and reach a solution to ensure the security and stability of Syria instead of reviving dissent.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces killed 36 people on Friday during the protests while reporting that 17 soldiers later died in overnight clashes between troops and suspected deserters in Homs.
Most of Friday’s killings took place in Homs and Hama provinces, which have been at the forefront of the anti-government protests that have been brutally put down by the security forces at a cost, according to the UN, of more than 3,000 lives, mostly civilians.
The Observatory said more than 100 people were wounded and 500 arrested during Friday’s protests.
On Saturday, another four civilians, including a woman, were killed and several wounded by gunfire from Syrian forces and snipers in Homs province, the Britain-based watchdog said.
Clashes also resumed Saturday in Duwar al-Rayess neighbourhood of Homs, where a loud blast was heard after an armoured car was hit, the Observatory said, adding that smoke could be seen billowing from a government building.
In northwest Syria, hundreds of soldiers deployed in Sarakeb, in Idlib province, the Observatory said, quoting local activists who feared the army could be preparing an “invasion” of the town.
Observatory chief Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP that Homs had seen the “highest number of martyrs to date,” accounting for 40 percent of protesters’ deaths over the past seven months.
Hundreds of protesters on Saturday marched to Syria’s embassy in London to condemn the country’s months-long crackdown on anti-government demonstrators, which the UN estimates has killed at least 3,000 people.
Organizers said Syrian human rights activists would later address crowds outside the building in central London, where at least 1,200 people had gathered. London’s Metropolitan police said the rally was peaceful, with no arrests reported.
Opposition leaders said Syrian troops on Saturday were shelling the restive Baba Amr district of Homs and that raids were reported around the eastern city of Deir el-Zour.
The uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad began in March. Activists have called for a no-fly zone over Syria to protect civilians.
Libya
The International Criminal Court said on Saturday that Libya’s Saif al-Islam Gaddafi was in contact via intermediaries about surrendering for trial, but it also had information mercenaries were trying to spirit him to a friendly African nation.
US military and government representatives held security talks in neighbouring Niger with local officials in Agadez, which has been a way station for other Libyan fugitives, including another son of Muammar Gaddafi, Saadi. A Reuters reporter saw a US military plane at Agadez airport.
A top Agadez regional official declined to say what the talks with the Americans were about, but spoke of escape plans by Saif al-Islam and former Libyan intelligence chief Abdullah al-Senussi, both wanted by the ICC for crimes against humanity.
“Senussi is being extricated from Mali toward a country that is a non-signatory to the (ICC) convention. I am certain that they will both (Senussi and Saif al-Islam) be extricated by plane, one from Mali the other from Niger,” said the official, who asked not to be named.
He said there were at least 10 airstrips in the north of Niger near the Libyan border that could be used to whisk Saif al-Islam out of the country.
However, a member of parliament from northern Mali, Ibrahim Assaleh Ag Mohamed, denied Senussi or Saif al-Islam were in his country and said they would not be accepted if they tried to enter.
The arrival of the US delegation followed remarks by Mohamed Anako, president of Agadez region, who said he would give Saif al-Islam refuge. “Libya and Niger are brother countries and cousins ... so we will welcome him in,” he said.
The ICC has warned Saif al-Islam, 39, apparently anxious not to be captured by Libyan interim government forces in whose hands his father Muammar Gaddafi was killed last week, that it could order a mid-air interception if he tried to flee by plane from his Sahara desert hideout for a safe haven.
Saif al-Islam, the son of Muammar Gaddafi trying to negotiate safe passage to the International Criminal Court from a refuge in the Sahara, was once on a mission to put Libya on the cultural map — by exhibiting his own paintings.
The late Libyan leader’s would-be heir launched a touring exhibition of Libyan antiquities and contemporary art called “The Desert Is Not Silent” in London’s upmarket Kensington in 2002 which was dominated by his paintings.
The show was scheduled to go to Paris, Geneva, Berlin, Tokyo, Madrid, Sao Paulo and Moscow.
“Not only do we buy weapons and sell gas and oil, but we have culture, art and history,” Saif al-Islam, who studied at the London School of Economics and portrayed himself as a patron of the arts, said in a statement at the time.
A website set up by Saif al-Islam’s Gaddafi International Charity and Development Foundation to promote the exhibition no longer works.
Volunteers are still finding dozens of bodies in Muammar Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte that fell on October 20, including those of Libyan civilians killed in a suspected NATO air strike.
Twenty-six makeshift and unmarked graves covered by breeze-blocks were discovered at a water treatment plant in Number Two district where pro-Gaddafi fighters put up a final stand after several weeks of heavy bombardment.
With the pungent odour of decomposing bodies filling the air, the shallow graves in the sand were scattered amidst the plant’s devastated buildings, an AFP correspondent said.
According to Ibrahim Suleiman, one of the volunteers collecting bodies in Sirte over the past week, they were of pro-Gaddafi fighters hastily buried by comrades as new regime forces closed in on the city.
A US military plane flew more than 20 Libyans wounded in the country’s eight-month civil war to the United States for treatment on Saturday.
Thousands have been wounded in the fight to topple Muammar Gaddafi, and Libya’s new leaders say caring for them is a critical need.
Some two dozen people boarded the US aircraft at an airport in the Libyan capital of Tripoli. Two men had their arms in a sling while another walked unaided but with crutches. Several men smiled broadly at the cameras and flashed a victory sign.
The US ambassador to Libya, Gene Kretz, says US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton initiated the evacuation after visiting a Tripoli hospital last week.
Fighters and residents in this battle-scarred city of Misrata celebrated victory over Muammar Gaddafi’s regime with parade of tanks and anti-aircraft guns Friday, as Nato announced that it would end its air campaign over Libya after the weekend.
Revolutionaries riding atop a dozen tanks and scores of pickup trucks equipped with heavy weapons rode through Misrata’s main Tripoli Street, which was badly damaged during a weekslong siege of the city by Gaddafi loyalists. Horsemen in traditional Libyan dress led one of the convoys, and one of the tanks swerved wildly to cheers from onlookers.
Meanwhile, Abdullah Ahmed Belal had all but given up on the sprawling seaside villa his family lost to squatters decades ago because of a provision in Muammar Gaddafi’s Green Book saying anybody who lives in the house should own it.
Belal, a 48-year-old naval officer, is one of many Libyans who want their properties back now that the hated dictator is gone.
Mustafa Abdul-Jalil, head of the governing National Transitional Council, has called for such disputes to be settled legally. Belal is willing to be patient, but others have taken matters into their own hands - a sign of the post-revolutionary fights that threaten to rattle Libya as it transitions from decades of autocratic rule to what its interim leaders say will be democracy.
Yemen
Yemeni police arrested five suspects after the killing of a top security agent in a car bombing blamed on al-Qaeda in the southern city of Aden, a source close to the security services said Saturday.
“The five suspects were arrested shortly after the assassination of Colonel Ali al-Hajji, head of an anti-terrorist unit in Aden, and are being questioned” on their role in the attack, the source said.
He said they were found in a nearby vehicle with a remote control device when the officer was blown up in his car on Friday in Al-Arish district near Aden airport, in an attack which also wounded two of his children.
A police source told AFP that four members of the security forces were wounded in another bomb attack late on Friday on a checkpoint near a police station in Aden.
Meanwhile, a south Yemen activist from the separatist Southern Movement was shot dead Saturday by security forces who opened fire to disperse a protest, a member of the group said.
Mohammed Abdullah Moftah was killed in the southern city of Mukalla when security forces confronted activists who had blocked a road during a protest, Nasser Baqazquz told AFP.
The opposition group had called for a day of civil disobedience demanding the release of Hasan Baoum, who heads the supreme council of the Southern Movement.
The movement, whose members want either secession or increased autonomy for the formerly independent region, was the main organiser of protests in the south earlier this year and last year.
But separatist demands were put on the back burner after nationwide protests broke out in January demanding the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, in office since 1978.
Residents of the south complain of discrimination by the Sanaa government in the distribution of resources since union between north and south in 1990.
The south broke away again in 1994, sparking a brief civil war that ended with the region overrun by northern troops.