Protests in Syria

[High_Gravity]

Syrian army regular forces captured more than a hundred French troops during an operation to suppress the rebellion in the city of Homs.
Were captured 18 officers and 100 troopers from France, and about 70 Lebanese fighters who fought in Homs, reports the Internet version of the Egyptian newspaper "Al Ahram"

With the capture by government troops quarter of Bab Amr in Homs Syrian military phase of the conflict is over.

We can say that the crisis is now behind us. After stripping Homs Idlib time.

Of course, all will be faced with several pockets of armed resistance, acting with the support of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, but it will take less than a month to deal with them.

You are a fucking idiot, this crisis is far from behind us.

 

[High_Gravity]

John McCain Calls For U.S.-Led Airstrikes On Syria

WASHINGTON -- Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Monday knocked the Obama administration for being too passive in its response to Syrian violence and called for U.S.-led airstrikes on President Bashar al-Assad's military forces.

"The time has come for a new policy," McCain said during remarks on the Senate floor. "The United States should lead an international effort to protect key population centers in Syria, especially in the north, through airstrikes on Assad’s forces. To be clear: This will require the United States to suppress enemy air defenses in at least part of the country."

McCain, the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said the goal of airstrikes should be to create safe havens in the country for opposition forces to plan their own political and military attacks against Assad. The benefit of the United States leading the military effort, he said, is that it would allow the U.S. to better empower Syrian groups that support U.S. interests to move toward a democratic transition.

"If we stand on the sidelines, others will try to pick winners, and this will not always be to our liking or in our interest," he said.

McCain is the first U.S. senator to publicly call for a military attack on Assad's regime. During his floor remarks, he said more than 7,500 lives have been lost in Syria amid the uprising and that the United Nations has declared Syrian security forces guilty of crimes against humanity.

For weeks, McCain has been ratcheting up calls for a U.S. military intervention in Syria. He said in early February that the U.S. should begin thinking of arming the opposition, though he also warned of the risks of doing so. By mid-February, he said the U.S. should consider sending diplomatic and military resources to the groups. The State Department has resisted doing so, though it has been planning ways to get humanitarian aid to the rebels.

During his Senate remarks, McCain noted that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton argued just last week that the U.S. continues to oppose providing military assistance because the identities of the rebels are unclear and U.S. aid could end up aiding terrorist groups like al Qaeda or Hamas. But in the meantime, McCain said, the U.S. has made "not much" of an effort to meet and engage directly with the rebels.

He cited other concerns by the administration that providing military assistance could enable a "bloody and indiscriminate" sectarian civil war. "This is a serious and legitimate concern, and it is only growing worse the longer the conflict goes on," McCain said, which means the U.S. needs to step in to end the fighting sooner than later. “Furthermore, the risks of sectarian conflict will exist in Syria whether we get more involved or not."

John McCain Calls For U.S.-Led Airstrikes On Syria

 

[Hugidwyn]

Putin said that McCain fought in Vietnam and to his credit enough blood of innocent civilians. In addition, Putin added that the senator was not just in prison, and put him into a pit, and from that he was crazy fucker.

The poster says:
McCain, a pit in Vietnam you learned nothing.

 

[High_Gravity]

Putin said that McCain fought in Vietnam and to his credit enough blood of innocent civilians. In addition, Putin added that the senator was not just in prison, and put him into a pit, and from that he was crazy fucker.

The poster says:
McCain, a pit in Vietnam you learned nothing.

 

[High_Gravity]

Syria Crisis: Smell Of Death Filled Baba Amr

BEIRUT, March 6 (Reuters) - Residents of Baba Amr who fled to Lebanon said the smell of decomposed bodies, sewage and destruction filled the air in the Syrian city of Homs as troops seeking to crush a revolt against President Bashar al-Assad bombarded it into submission.

With aid workers still blocked from reaching the former rebel stronghold and most foreign journalists banned from Syria, witness accounts from residents who fled across the border portrayed a grim picture of conditions in Homs.

"The smell of death was everywhere. We could smell the bodies buried under the rubble all the time," said Ahmad, who fled to Lebanon last week.

"Bodies are in the streets, many are decomposed but we could not bury them," he said, speaking at a relative's house in Lebanon, looking tired with dark circles around his eyes.

"We saw so much death that at the end the sight of a dismembered body of a relative or a friend stopped moving us."

Residents knew the end was near when, after a month of shelling, the Syrian army blew up a 3-km (2-mile) tunnel they had used to smuggle in essentials keeping them alive.

After that fighters of the Free Syrian Army, citing lack of ammunition and many casualties, urged people to leave.

Men fled to Lebanon, women and children to villages in Homs province. But some did not make it. Activists said last week at least 62 people were killed when they tried to leave Baba Amr.

Those who left said heavy bombardment had razed most of the neighbourhood. Many buildings and houses were flattened, water pipes were blown up and sewage and litter filled the streets.

"I stopped feeling anything when I see people I know dead... Many people started feeling like that - the atrocities we saw were beyond our imagination," said another former resident, speaking from a secret location as his presence was illegal.

Syrian state television reported residents were returning to Baba Amr, airing footage on Tuesday of dozens of men, women and children walking through grubby streets, passing pock-marked and semi-destroyed buildings.

Syria Crisis: Smell Of Death Filled Baba Amr

 

[Hugidwyn]

Meanwhile, in Syria, made ​​the ceremonial laying of the well for McCain. The pit will be located in the central square of Damascus.

Permission to conduct excavations in the center of the city gave the head of the architectural bureau in Damascus Abdul Rauf al-Casma. Opening the asphalt began to personally Bashar al-Assad. At the opening of the pit has gathered nearly 550 thousand inhabitants.

According to the project, the pit will be an exact copy of the Vietnamese well, in which McCain has spent the most memorable years of his youth. Draft prepared by the College of Architecture and Fine Arts of Damascus, whose representatives have returned two weeks ago from a special trip to Vietnam to conduct all the necessary measurements.

 

[High_Gravity]

U.N. Syria Aid Plan To Feed 1.5 Million

GENEVA, March 8 (Reuters) - The United Nations said on Thursday it was readying food stocks for 1.5 million people in Syria as part of a 90-day emergency contingency plan to help civilians deprived of basic supplies after nearly a year of conflict.

"More needs to be done," John Ging of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA) told a one-day Syrian Humanitarian Forum in Geneva.

"The U.N. side of the humanitarian community is looking at the process of additional food stocks pre-positioned to target 1.5 million people," said Ging, who is chairing the meeting.


He described the situation in Syria as "very fluid" and said the capacity of Syrian health services to provide trauma care and medicines must be restored. Water systems damaged during shelling of residential areas must be repaired.

The world body, which has been shut out of Syria, has drawn up an initial three-month aid plan of $105 million which is likely to translate into a funding appeal to donors, diplomats and U.N. sources told Reuters.

The U.N. estimates more than 7,500 civilians have died during Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's crackdown on a popular uprising.

Top U.N. aid official Valerie Amos is midway through a three-day visit to Syria, where she made a brief visit on Wednesday to the shattered Baba Amr district of Homs.

The International Committee of the Red Cross, the only international agency to deploy aid workers in Syria, is also taking part in the meeting.

"The political process is getting very complicated but the Syrian people cannot wait. Humanitarians have to step in," Claus Sorensen, director general of the European Union's aid department ECHO, told the talks.

"The purpose of this meeting is to give an answer to the immediate suffering...It is about getting access, access and access -- that is a precondition for actually providing any type of relief," he said.

Faysal Khabbaz Hamoui, Syria's ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, took the floor to reject the Geneva forum as having been convened "contrary to the U.N. Charter".

"Syria is not undergoing a humanitarian crisis," Hamoui said, accusing some media of trying to "prepare the ground for foreign mlitary intervention".

U.N. Syria Aid Plan To Feed 1.5 Million

 

[High_Gravity]

Abdo Husameddine, Syria Deputy Oil Minister, Defects

BEIRUT — Syria's deputy oil minister defected and posted his parting words to President Bashar Assad in a video on YouTube Thursday, calling the regime criminal and urging his colleagues to also abandon the "sinking ship."

Abdo Husameddine's defection came at the height of international pressure against Assad's regime as it tries to suppress an uprising now morphing into an armed insurgency, with the U.S. considering options for military intervention.

The deputy minister is the highest ranking civilian official to abandon the regime since the revolt against Assad's iron-fisted rule began a year ago.

"I don't wish to end my life servicing the crimes of this regime," Husameddine said in the video, dressed in a suit and tie and apparently reading from a piece of paper. "This is why I have chosen to join the voice of righteousness, knowing that this regime will burn my home, persecute my family and come up with a lot of lies. I advise my colleagues who have been silent in the face of crimes for a year to abandon this sinking ship which is about to drown."

It was not clear when or where the video was made and he did not disclose his current location. There was no comment from the regime in Damascus.

"I declare that I am joining the revolution of the dignified people," Husameddine said.

"You have inflicted on those you claim are your people a full year of sorrow and sadness, and denied them their basic rights to life and humanity and pushed the country to the edge of the abyss with your intransigence and detachment from reality. The economy of the country has reached near collapse," he added.

Husameddine identified himself as an engineer and assistant to the oil minister. He said he was member of the ruling Baath Party, but was now quitting, and added he had served 33 years in various government positions. Cabinet ministers in Syria may have several assistants known as deputies.

Assad's regime has suffered a steady stream of army defectors, who have joined a group of dissidents known as the Free Syrian Army, now numbering in the thousands. But civilian government officials have remained largely loyal.

That made Husameddine's defection all the more rare.

Among numerous military defections recently was that of Brig. Gen. Mostafa Ahmad al-Sheik, who fled to Turkey in January, becoming the highest ranking officer to bolt. In late August, Adnan Bakkour, the attorney general of the central city of Hama, appeared in a a video announcing he had defected from the regime. Authorities reported he had been kidnapped and said he was being kept against his will by gunmen. He has not been heard from since.

International pressure on Assad reached a new peak Wednesday when a senior U.S. military commander said President Barak Obama was assessing options for military intervention in Syria.

Although there are widespread concerns that military action could cause a regional upheaval in the Middle East, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Obama has ordered up a Pentagon review of options.

Dempsey said the options to be examined include enforcing a no-fly zone and humanitarian airlifts. He added that the military would study the situation and report back on points like Syria's sophisticated air defenses and its extensive stockpile of chemical weapons.

The U.N. says more than 7,500 people have been killed in the year since the uprising began. Activists put the death toll at more than 8,000.

On Wednesday, the U.N. humanitarian chief, Valerie Amos, got the first independent outside look at the Baba Amr district of Homs following a deadly monthlong siege. The military took control of Baba Amr on March 1, but Amos was allowed in only Wednesday.

She said Thursday she was struck by the devastation she saw in the shattered neighborhood. She found it mostly empty after residents fled the fighting. Activists charge that Syrian forces conducted cleanup operations there, including executions and arrests.

Abdo Husameddine, Syria Deputy Oil Minister, Defects

 

[hipeter924]

Depends if Assad goes, if he doesn't expect those defectors to be wiped out. Like Saddam did with his, especially through assassinations.

 

[High_Gravity]

Syria's Homs Under Fire Ahead Of Kofi Annan Mission

AMMAN, March 9 (Reuters) - Syrian tanks fired on opposition districts in Homs on Friday, killing four people, activists said, ahead of a mission by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan to end a year-long conflict edging into civil war.

Opponents of President Bashar al-Assad said they were planning to show their strength in the streets after weekly Muslim prayers, but the tankfire kept many indoors in Homs.

They said nationwide protests would mark the anniversary of Kurdish unrest in northeastern Syria in 2004 that was crushed by security forces with about 30 people killed.

Annan has called for dialogue to reach a political solution, but opposition figures chided him for a proposal they said would only give Assad's forces more time to crush his foes.

Rifts among big powers have blocked any U.N. action to resolve the crisis, with China and Russia firmly opposing any measure that might lead to Libya-style military intervention.

China welcomed the former U.N. chief's mission. "We hope that Mr Annan uses his wisdom and experience to push for all sides in Syria to end their violence and start the process of peace talks," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said.

China, which despatched an envoy to Syria this week, said on Friday it would send an assistant foreign minister to the Middle East and to France to discuss the crisis. Beijing has told other powers not to use humanitarian aid to "intefere" in Syria.

Russia, an old ally of Damascus and its main arms supplier, has defended Assad against critics of his bloody crackdown, twice joining China in vetoing U.N. resolutions on Syria.

"We shall not support any resolution that gives any basis for the use of force against Syria," Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov tweeted late on Thursday.

A Russian diplomat said Assad was battling al Qaeda-backed "terrorists" including at least 15,000 foreign fighters who would seize cities if government troops withdrew.

Syria's Homs Under Fire Ahead Of Kofi Annan Mission

 

[High_Gravity]

Syria Killings: Many Civilians 'Massacred' By Pro-Government Gunmen In Homs, Activists Claim

BEIRUT, March 12 (Reuters) - Dozens of civilians were killed in cold blood in the Syrian city of Homs, opposition activists and Syrian state media said on Monday, although they disputed responsibility for what both sides called a massacre.

The carnage in Homs, as well as a military assault on the northwestern city of Idlib, coincided with a weekend peace mission by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, who left Damascus on Sunday without agreement on a truce or humanitarian access.

"The terrorist armed groups have kidnapped scores of civilians in the city of Homs, central Syria, killed, and mutilated their corpses and filmed them to be shown by media outlets," state news agency SANA said on its website.

Footage posted by opposition activists on YouTube showed men, women and children lying dead in a blood-drenched room.

The Local Coordination Committees of Syria, a grassroots opposition network, said at least 45 women and children had been stabbed and burned in the Homs district of Karm al-Zeitoun.

It said another seven people were slain in the city's Jobar district, which adjoins the former rebel bastion of Baba Amr.


Activists contacted in Homs accused Alawite "shabbiha" militia loyal to President Bashar al-Assad of carrying out the killings under the protection of regular Syrian military forces.

Waleed Fares, an activist in Homs's Khalidiyah district, which is about one km from Karm al-Zeitoun, said that 30 to 40 tanks had arrived in Karm al-Zeitoun on Sunday night.

"We know now that four families have been killed by shabbiha. We have 21 names and we are trying to confirm the names of the rest," he told Reuters via Skype, adding that the victims were all from Syria's Sunni Muslim majority.

"It's quiet now but I have been hearing gunfire all night."

Fares said most of the killings occurred in Karm al-Zeitoun, but some took place in other districts. "The Free Syrian army helped move the bodies to one place. Otherwise the regime forces would have hidden the evidence," he said.

Syrian government restrictions on the media have made it hard to assess conflicting reports by the authorities and their opponents since an uprising against Assad began a year ago.

SANA said the Homs killings "perpetrated by the armed terrorist groups and aired by (satellite TV channels) Al Jazeera and Arabiya ... coincide with today's U.N. Security Council session to call for foreign interference in Syria".

In the southern city of Deraa, scene of sporadic street fighting between Free Syrian Army rebels and Assad's troops, a car bomb killed a schoolgirl and wounded 25 others at a girls' school. An opposition activist said members of the school had taken part in anti-Assad demonstrations.

Syria Killings: Many Civilians 'Massacred' By Pro-Government Gunmen In Homs, Activists Claim

 

[High_Gravity]

Syria Activist: Defectors Kill Soldiers In Ambush

BEIRUT, March 13 (Reuters) - Syrian army defectors killed at least 10 soldiers in an ambush in the northern town of Idlib on Tuesday, a rights activist said, with international efforts to ease the crisis appearing to make little headway.

Fighting was also reported in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor as a year-long uprising against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad increasingly resembled a full-blown civil war.

A special U.N. Security Council meeting on the "Arab Spring" uprisings on Monday showed the five permanent members were no closer to breaking their impasse over Syria, with Russia and China continuing to back a defiant Assad.

With growing numbers of refugees seeking to flee the fighting, advocacy group Human Rights Watch said Syrian forces were laying landmines near the borders with Lebanon and Turkey, along routes used by families to escape the violence.

Idlib province backs onto Turkey and has been a focal point of clashes between government forces and the lightly armed Syrian Free Army (SFA), which has vowed to topple Assad.

"At least 10 Syrian soldiers have been killed by army defectors in the northern town of Idlib," said Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based group that works in conjunction with activists inside Syria.

"They were killed during an early morning ambush on a government checkpoint," he added. Reports from Syria cannot be independently verified as the authorities have repeatedly denied access to rights groups and journalists.

The Syrian National Council (SNC), an umbrella opposition group whose leadership lives abroad, said on Monday it was preparing to arm the anti-government rebels, but the dissident movement remains fragmented and often ineffectual.

SNC representatives were due to meet U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan in Turkey later on Tuesday. Annan held talks with Assad on Saturday and Sunday, but there was no indication his initiative would end the bloodshed.

Syria Activist: Defectors Kill Soldiers In Ambush

 

[High_Gravity]

Syria Video Allegedly Shows Young Boy Shot In Back In Homs

Extremely disturbing footage out of Homs purports to show a young boy shot in the back by a sniper on one of the city's streets.

In the video, the boy tries to pull himself up after being shot in the back. When another teenager tries to pull the boy off the street to safety, the sniper fires again. The boy eventually crawls onto the sidewalk, his back covered in blood. "God is great," one of the cameramen filming the incident cries out in despair.

The harrowing video was posted on YouTube but could not be independently verified.

Dozens of civilians were killed in Homs over the weekend in what both opposition activists and Syrian state media described as a massacre.

Activists attributed the killings to militias loyal to the Assad regime. Opposition groups posted footage on YouTube showing dozens of bodies lying in a room in a Hom's apartment. An opposition network said at least 45 women and children had been stabbed and burned in the Homs district of Karm al-Zeitoun, according to Reuters in the video above.

The government blamed the violence on armed terrorists.

"The terrorist armed groups have kidnapped scores of civilians in the city of Homs, central Syria, killed, and mutilated their corpses and filmed them to be shown by media outlets," state news agency SANA said on its website, according to a Reuters translation.

Syria Video Allegedly Shows Young Boy Shot In Back In Homs (WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT)

 

[Katzndogz]

Who was the genius who thought it was a good idea to overthrow the government and no one would get hurt?

 

[High_Gravity]

Who was the genius who thought it was a good idea to overthrow the government and no one would get hurt?

You might want to ask some Syrians that question, things must be pretty shitty there if it came to this.

 

[High_Gravity]

Syria Tortures Detainees, Group Says

BEIRUT (AP) -- Syrian security forces routinely torture people detained during the country's year-old uprising against authoritarian President Bashar Assad, Amnesty International said in a report released Wednesday.

The London-based group said detainees are beaten with sticks, cords and rifle butts and sometimes suspended inside tires for further beatings. Others are sexually assaulted or killed.

Since protesters first took to the streets in Syria one year ago to call for political reform, security forces have cracked down hard, deploying snipers, troops and pro-government thugs to quash all signs of dissent.

As the protest have spread and some in the opposition have taken up arms to protect themselves and attack government troops, Syria's uprising has evolved into one of the bloodiest of the Arab Spring. The U.N. says more than 7,500 have been killed, most of them peaceful demonstrators.

Amnesty based its report on interviews in mid-February with dozens of Syrians who had fled to neighboring Jordan. Twenty-five said they had been tortured or ill-treated, the group said.

Torture appears to be part of a strategy to punish and intimidate dissidents, the group said. It calls on the International Criminal Court in the Hague to investigate charges of crimes against humanity against Syrian officials.

"Torture and other ill-treatment in Syria form part of a widespread and systematic attack against the civilian population, carried out in an organized manner and as part of state policy and therefore amount to crimes against humanity," it said.

The group said it has documented 276 cases of death in detention since the uprising's start. But given the large number of people who have been detained, it says the number of those killed is likely much higher.

Syria Tortures Detainees, Group Says

 

[hipeter924]

Assad is following the lead of his father, expect the death toll to rise above 10,000.

 

[High_Gravity]

Assad is following the lead of his father, expect the death toll to rise above 10,000.

The Syrian rebels aren't getting any real support while Assad has the full backing of China, Russia and Iran, Assad has the upper hand and should put down this rebellion.

 

[High_Gravity]

Syria's Armed Opposition No Threat To Regime, Says U.S., Which Plans To Provide Nonlethal Aid to Civilians

WASHINGTON -- On the one-year anniversary of the uprisings in Syria, U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that the armed resistance is not able to mount a credible military threat to the regime of Bashar al-Assad, senior U.S. intelligence officials told The Huffington Post.

The powerful, Russian-armed Syrian army remains firmly in control behind the Assad regime, senior intelligence officials say.

That assessment underlies the Obama administration's reluctance to become more actively involved in the uprising against Assad that began on March 15, 2011. After a year of sporadic and inconclusive violence against the regime, the White House has flatly ruled out providing arms to the opposition and instead is focusing on coordinating international pressure against the Assad regime and providing humanitarian relief.

The White House has authorized providing medical supplies and nonlethal equipment to civilian Syrian groups that would transport the supplies, according to a source close to the administration's deliberations on Syria.

But the failure of the armed opposition to take advantage of defections from the Syrian armed forces or coordinate its actions into a meaningful security challenge of the regime appears to leave the United States and other critics of the regime without a long-term strategy for ousting Assad. By contrast, in Libya last year, a relatively well-organized and armed opposition eventually drew Western military support, and the country's strongman, Muammar Gaddafi was overthrown and killed last fall.

Syria ranked high on the agenda when President Barack Obama met Wednesday with British Prime Minister David Cameron. "Right now we are focused on getting humanitarian aid to those in need," Obama said after the White House meetings. International economic, political and diplomatic pressure is becoming stronger, Obama said, vowing, "Assad will leave power. It's not a question of if, but when."

Cameron agreed on the nonmilitary approach. "What we want is the quickest way to stop the killing -- that is, through transition, rather than through revolution or civil war," he said at a White House news conference.

White House officials reiterated this week that sending arms to the opposition has been ruled out. "We believe it could heighten and prolong the violence in Syria," said White House spokesman Jay Carney.

Brutal onslaughts by the Syrian military against mostly unarmed civilians have captured the world's attention, most recently the shelling by artillery and tanks of urban neighborhoods in Homs and Idlib.

Clearly, Syrian civilians are being bludgeoned by the Assad regime. More than 8,000 Syrians have died in assaults by Syrian forces, according to the United Nations. Some 200,000 Syrians have been forced from their homes and an additional 30,000 Syrians have fled across the borders into Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey, the United Nations reported.

A senior U.S. intelligence official told The Huffington Post that the Free Syrian Army and other rebel groups are able to mount only sporadic hit-and-run attacks and anti-regime demonstrations in a handful of mostly urban neighborhoods and isolated villages.

Other intelligence officials have said despite the appearance of an increasingly broad-based armed resistance, the rebels have been unable to coordinate their attacks or work in concert with Syrian civilian opposition groups outside the country. The intelligence officials spoke on condition that they not be identified by name or agency.

Reports suggesting widespread attacks by armed Syrian rebels are exaggerated, these officials said.

Reuters reported Wednesday, for instance, that fighting "raged unabated across Syria in recent days." Reports from Syrian opposition groups and others do show fighting on Wednesday in seven of Syria's 14 provinces, suggesting a thriving nationwide insurgency.

A closer examination, however, shows a different picture. The violence reported in the province of Hama, for instance, consisted of shelling by Syrian forces on Tuesday in three neighborhoods in the provincial capital, Hama. The provinces of Aleppo and Daraa were listed as sites of fighting; one person was killed in each provinces, the opposition groups reported. In Raqqah province in northern Syria, one person died in a skirmish.

Syria's Armed Opposition No Threat To Regime, Says U.S., Which Plans To Provide Nonlethal Aid to Civilians

 

[High_Gravity]

Syria Uprising: On First Anniversary, Army Controls Idlib, Rallies Planned

BEIRUT, March 15 (Reuters) - Syria marked the first anniversary on Thursday of an increasingly bloody uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, with recent army gains unlikely to quell the revolt and no diplomatic solution in sight.

Official media announced government forces had cleared "armed terrorists" from the northwestern city of Idlib and said supporters of Assad would hold rallies across Syria.

But opponents of Assad's regime show no sign of backing down and there were reports of continuing clashes in areas around Idlib, as well as close to the central city of Homs, which has been pummeled by the army in recent weeks.

Amid dire warnings that Syria is sinking into a protracted civil war, the U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan has demanded further clarification from Damascus over its response to proposals aimed at ending the violence.

He is due to report back to a divided U.N. Security Council on Friday. Russia and China remain behind a defiant Assad while exasperated Western powers push for regime change.

The United Nations estimates that more than 8,000 people, mostly civilians, have died in the fighting. Some 230,000 Syrians have been displaced from their homes, including 30,000 who have fled abroad, raising the prospect of a refugee crisis.

Turkey said 1,000 refugees had crossed into Turkey from Syria in the last 24 hours, bringing the total of registered Syrian refugees in Turkey to some 14,000.

An official said: "We expect this to continue as long as the operation goes on in Idlib."

Britain's Guardian newspaper has published what it believes to be genuine emails sent and received by Assad and his wife between June and February.

The emails appeared to show that Assad had taken advice from Iran on countering the uprising, that he had branded some of his promised reforms as "rubbish", and that his wife had placed orders for expensive overseas goods as the violence escalated.

Syria Uprising: On First Anniversary, Army Controls Idlib, Rallies Planned