Tag Archives: Syria

U.N. says Syria ignored most of its requests to deliver aid

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The Syrian government in 2015 ignored most United Nations requests to deliver humanitarian aid to some of the 4.6 million people in hard-to-reach and besieged areas and only 620,000 received help, the U.N. aid chief said on Wednesday.

Stephen O’Brien told the U.N. Security Council that last year the United Nations made 113 requests to the Syrian government for approval of inter-agency aid convoys, but only 10 percent were able to deliver assistance.

Another 10 percent were approved in principle by the Syrian government, but could not proceed due to a lack of final approval, insecurity or no deal on safe passage, while the U.N. put 3 percent on hold due to insecurity.

O’Brien said the remaining 75 percent of requests went unanswered.

“Such inaction is simply unacceptable,” he said. “The impact on the ground is tangible: in 2013, we reached some 2.9 million people through the inter-agency convoy mechanism, but only 620,000 (in 2015).”

“More and more people are slipping out of our reach every day as the conflict intensifies and battle lines tighten,” O’Brien said.

In total, the U.N. said 13.5 million people in Syria need humanitarian aid, up from 1.3 million from 2014.

“Even with the worsening situation and continued access challenges, humanitarian workers in Syria continue to stay and deliver aid often at great personal risk,” O’Brien said.

He said that in 2015 food was delivered to nearly 6 million people a month; health aid to almost 16 million people; water, sanitation and hygiene support to 6.7 million; and basic household items to 4.8 million.

“Let me be clear: the continued suffering of the people in Syria cannot be blamed on humanitarian organizations and staff,” O’Brien said. “It is the failure of both the parties and the international community that have allowed this conflict to continue for far too long.”

Syria U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura hopes to convene talks on Friday on ending the civil war, but those plans appeared in doubt after the opposition said it would not show up unless attacks on civilian areas stopped first.

The civil war was sparked by a Syrian government crackdown on a pro-democracy movement in early 2011. Islamic State militants have used the chaos to seize territory in Syria and Iraq, and some 4.3 million Syrians have fled the country.

The U.N. says at least 250,000 people have been killed.

(Reporting by Michelle Nichols; Editing by Tom Brown)

Syrian opposition demands answers before joining peace talks

BEIRUT/GENEVA/PARIS (Reuters) – Plans to hold the first negotiations to end the civil war in Syria for two years were in doubt on Wednesday after the opposition said it would not show up unless the United Nations responded to demands for a halt to attacks on civilian areas.

The Syrian government has already agreed to join the talks that U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura hopes to convene in an indirect format in Geneva on Friday with the aim of ending the five-year-old war that has killed 250,000 people.

Washington urged Syrian opposition groups to attend.

“Factions of the opposition have an historic opportunity to go to Geneva and propose serious, practical ways to implement a ceasefire, humanitarian access and other confidence-building measures, and they should do so without preconditions,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

Preparations have been beset by difficulties, including a dispute over who should be invited to negotiate with President Bashar al-Assad’s government as it claws back territory with help from Russia and Iran.

Kurds, who control a swathe of northern Syria, were not invited and predicted the talks would fail.

A Saudi-backed opposition council that groups armed and political opponents of Assad broke up a second day of meetings in Riyadh, saying it was waiting for a response from the United Nations to demands before it decided whether to attend.

While it has expressed support for a political solution and talks, the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) says attacks on civilian areas must stop before any negotiations.

In a letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, it also called for the lifting of sieges on blockaded areas among other steps outlined by the U.N. Security Council in a resolution passed last month.

“We are waiting for the response of de Mistura first, and then Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, which is the most important … If it is positive maybe there will be an agreement to go,” Asaad al-Zoubi, an HNC member, told Saudi TV channel Al Ikhbariya.

Diplomacy has so far failed to resolve a conflict that has forced millions from their homes, creating a refugee crisis in neighbouring states and Europe. With the war raging unabated, the latest diplomatic effort has been overshadowed by increased tension between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

KURDS LEFT OUT

The Syrian government, aided by Russian air strikes and allied militia including Iranian forces, is gaining ground against rebels in western Syria, this week capturing the town of Sheikh Maskin near the Jordanian border.

Russian air strikes that began on Sept. 30 have tilted the war Assad’s way after major setbacks earlier in 2015 brought rebels close to coastal areas that form the heartland of Assad’s Alawite sect and are of great importance to the state he leads.

While the Saudi-backed HNC includes powerful rebel factions fighting Assad in western Syria, Russia has been demanding wider participation to include Syrian Kurds who control wide areas of northern and northeastern Syria.

The Syrian Kurdish PYD party, which is affiliated with the Kurdish YPG militia, was however excluded from the invitation list in line with the wishes of Turkey, a major sponsor of the rebellion which views the PYD as a terrorist group.

The PYD’s representative in France, Khaled Eissa, who had been on a list of possible delegates proposed by Russia, blamed regional and international powers, in particular Turkey, for blocking the Kurds and forecast the talks would fail.

“You can’t neglect a force that controls an area three times the size of Lebanon,” he said. “We will not respect any decision taken without our participation.”

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said the PYD could join the talks at a later stage.

Haytham Manna, a prominent opposition figure allied to the PYD and invited to the talks, told Reuters he would not attend if his allies were not there.

Manna is co-leader of an opposition group called the Syrian Democratic Council (SDC), which includes the PYD and was formed in December in Kurdish-controlled Hasaka province.

Ilham Ahmed, a Kurdish politician who co-chairs the SDC, heaped criticism on de Mistura.

“We hold him responsible – not America or Russia – him and the United Nations. He was tasked with forming the delegations in a balanced way and in a way that represents all the elements of Syrian society,” she told Reuters.

“When the whole of northern Syria is excluded from these negotiations, it means they are the ones dividing Syria. They are always accusing the Kurds of dividing Syria, but they are the ones dividing Syria.”

(Additional reporting by Mariam Karouny and John Davison, John Irish, and Omar Fahmy in Cairo; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Giles Elgood/Mark Heinrich)

U.N. invites warring parties to Syria talks this week

AMMAN/BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations invited Syria’s government and opposition to peace talks in Geneva on Friday, but Saudi-backed opponents of President Bashar al-Assad have yet to decide whether to drop their objections to taking part.

The U.N. Special Envoy for Syria, Staffan de Mistura, sent out invitations to the delayed talks on Tuesday, without saying who had been invited or how many groups might participate.

Earlier, the opposition had cast doubt on whether it would go to Geneva, accusing the United States of adopting unacceptable Iranian and Russian ideas on solving the conflict.

A decision by the opposition’s recently formed High Negotiations Committee (HNC) on whether to accept the invitation is due to be taken at a meeting in Riyadh.

“There is consensus in the High Committee on being positive in our decision,” spokesman Salim al-Muslat told the Arabic news channel Arabiya al-Hadath. However, he added that the final decision would not be made at the meeting until Wednesday.

A Western diplomat said the Geneva talks could not be convened if the HNC were to stay away, and de Mistura would have to find a face-saving way to avoid the complete collapse of the process, perhaps by announcing a further delay.

The main Syrian Kurdish party said it had not been invited, a move some interpreted as intended to keep Turkey, which regards Syria’s Kurdish fighters as terrorists, engaged in the process.

De Mistura has said the Geneva meeting will first seek a ceasefire and later work toward a political settlement. The talks are expected to last for six months, with diplomats shuttling between rival delegations in separate rooms.

The Syrian government, which is clawing back territory from the rebels with the help of Russian air strikes and other allies including Iranian fighters, has already said it will attend.

The HNC has however repeatedly said the government and its allies must halt bombardments and lift blockades of besieged areas before it will join talks.

Opposition official Asaad al-Zoubi, who is due to head the HNC delegation, told Reuters that without the implementation of goodwill steps including the release of detainees “there will be no negotiations”.

Reflecting opposition misgivings about the process, he told Al-Hadath that U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry had tabled Iranian and Russian ideas about Syria at a recent meeting with opposition leader Riad Hijab.

“It was not comfortable for us for America … to adopt what came in the Iranian and Russian initiatives,” Zoubi said.

The U.S. Special Envoy for Syria, Michael Ratney, urged the opposition to attend.

“Our advice to the Syrian opposition is to take advantage of this opportunity to put the intentions of the regime to the test and to expose in front of international public opinion which are the parties serious in reaching a political settlement in Syria and which are not,” he said.

LOST LEGITIMACY

The United States has supported the opposition to Assad, who it says has lost legitimacy and must leave power. But the opposition has been increasingly critical of U.S. policy. Hijab said earlier this month the United States had backtracked on its position over Syria, softening its stance to accommodate Russia.

Diplomacy has repeatedly failed to resolve the conflict that has killed 250,000 people and forced millions from their homes, spawning a refugee crisis in neighboring states and Europe. De Mistura is the third international envoy for Syria. His two predecessors – Kofi Annan and Lakhdar Brahimi – both quit.

Preparations for the talks have been beset by problems including a dispute over who should represent the opposition.

Russia has tried to expand the opposition delegation to include a powerful Kurdish faction that controls wide areas of northern Syria. The Sunni Arab opposition say the Kurdish PYD party should be part of the government delegation.

Turkey said it would not attend if the PYD was invited.

The PYD, which is fighting Islamic State and has enjoyed military support from the United States, is a terrorist group and has no place with the opposition at the negotiating table, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said.

PYD leader Saleh Muslim, who earlier told Reuters he expected his party to be asked to Geneva, said he not received an invitation and was not aware that any Kurdish representatives had been asked to come.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier it would be impossible to reach a peace agreement in Syria without inviting Kurds to join the negotiating process.

The Syrian Kurds say the autonomous government they have established in the northeast is a decentralized model for how to resolve the war that has splintered the country.

The Syrian government and its allies have made significant gains against rebels in western Syria in recent weeks.

On Monday they captured the rebel-held town of Sheikh Maskin in southern Syria near the border with Jordan. It was the first significant gain for Damascus in that area since the start of the Russian intervention on Sept. 30.

In recent weeks government forces and their allies have also captured two strategic towns in the northwestern province of Latakia, where they are trying to seal the border to cut insurgent supply lines to Turkey.

(Additional reporting by Lisa Barrington in Beirut, Vladimir Soldatkin and Andrew Osborn in Moscow, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Nick Tattersall in Turkey; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Giles Elgood and David Stamp)

Syrian al Qaeda affiliate ‘much more dangerous’ than ISIS, new report says

While the United States continues its military campaign against the Islamic State, a new report charges that a different terrorist organization poses a greater long-term threat to the country.

Jabhat al Nusra, a Syrian al Qaeda affiliate, “is much more dangerous to the U.S. than the ISIS model in the long run,” according to a report released Friday by the Institute for the Study of War and the American Enterprise Institute.

“Any strategy that leaves Jabhat al Nusra in place will fail to secure the American homeland,” the report cautions.

The report offers a scathing critique of the United States’ anti-terrorism efforts in Iraq and Syria, saying the military campaign “largely ignores” Jabhat al Nusra, a group that “will almost certainly cause the current strategy in Syria to fail.”

It also argues the challenges facing the United States have been oversimplified, and warns a “collapse of world order” could allow the Islamic State and al Qaeda to grow stronger.

The report’s authors argue the United States must choose a new strategy, writing “passivity abroad will facilitate the continued collapse of the international order, including the global economy on which American prosperity and the American way of life depend.”

According to the report, Jabhat al Nusra differs from the Islamic State in its ideologies and practices. While the Islamic States seizing cities and imposes its will on civilians, brutally mistreating anyone who dissents, Jabhat al Nusra has taken a friendlier approach. It has aligned with several groups that oppose Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, a key point of contention in the nation’s ongoing civil war, and provided those groups with “advanced military capabilities.”

In doing so, the report says Jabhat al Nusra “has established an expansive network of partnerships with local opposition groups that have grown either dependent on or fiercely loyal to the organization.” The institutes charge the front has become so engaged with the opposition, it’s now “poised to benefit the most” from the downfall of the Islamic State and Assad’s removal.

“The likeliest outcome of the current strategy in Syria, if it succeeds, is the de facto establishment and ultimate declaration of a Jabhat al Nusra emirate in Syria that has the backing of a wide range of non-al Qaeda fighting forces and population groups,” the report states. Such an emirate would be a key component of al Qaeda’s global terror network, providing manpower and resources to other affiliates while “exporting violence into the heart of the West.”

The report calls al Qaeda and the Islamic State “existential threats” to Europe and the United States, and concludes that while the groups don’t currently have the ability to topple the West, they — along with broader turmoil in the world — threaten the way of life in those nations.

The report argues there are several public misconceptions about national security in the United States, namely that the Islamic State is the nation’s only enemy. The situation is far more complex, the report argues, and stretches far beyond the borders of the Middle East.

Groups such as the Islamic State and Al Qaeda are benefitting from events such as North Korea’s nuclear testing, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and Europe’s ongoing migrant crisis, the report’s authors wrote, calling them “symptoms of a collapsing world order” that exacerbate the threat.

Conflicting policies of Iran, Russia and China have also helped fuel the collapse, the report says.

“The collapse of world order creates the vacuums that allow … organizations such as al Qaeda and ISIS to amass resources to plan and conduct attacks on scales that could overwhelm any defenses the United States might raise,” the report states. “Even a marginal increase in such attacks could provoke Western societies to impose severe controls on the freedoms and civil liberties of their populations that would damage the very ideals that must most be defended.”

Leading Iraqi Shi’ite says Islamic State is shrugging off U.S. air strikes

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Flush with cash and weapons, Islamic State is attracting huge numbers of foreign fighters to Iraq and Syria and withstanding U.S.-led air strikes that are failing to hit the right targets, a powerful Iraqi Shi’ite paramilitary leader told Reuters in an interview.

Hadi al-Amiri also said Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was alive and in Iraq, despite reports that he had been wounded.

“Many of its leadership have been killed but one should know that Daesh (IS) is still strong,” said Amiri, leader of the Badr Organization whose armed wing has been fighting alongside Iraqi security forces to recapture territory seized by IS.

“Their attacks are still daring and swift and their morale is high. They still have money and weapons.”

Amiri delivered a damning assessment of the air strikes that the United States and its allies have been conducting against Islamic State for almost 18 months.

He said these had failed to dislodge IS because they failed to target its vital structure. Diplomats say the United States has been held back partly by the difficulty of avoiding civilian casualties.

“Today Daesh is a state, it has command centers, their locations are known, their logistics are known,” Amiri said. “Its leadership is known, its military convoys are known, its training camps are known. Until now we have not seen effective air strikes.”

He said the ultra-hardline insurgents had secured sophisticated U.S.-made anti-tank weapons including TOW missiles through Gulf Arab states. And he ridiculed the idea that Western powers could ensure arms only reached moderate rebel groups.

“They (rebels) did not capture these missiles, they were supplied by America, Saudi Arabia and Gulf states under the pretext of arming the moderate opposition in Syria. Who is the moderate opposition? Ahrar al-Sham? Jaish al-Islam? Nusra or Daesh?” he asked, reeling off the names of competing Islamist factions.

“All of them are terrorists,” he said. “Any moderate factions in Syria are weak. Even if they are supplied with weapons, Daesh seizes them.”

Military aid from states including Saudi Arabia has been supplied to Syrian rebels fighting under the banner of the Free Syrian Army in western Syria, and some of these groups have received military training from the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency. The training has included how to use TOW missiles, supplied via Turkey and Jordan.

GOVERNMENT FIGHTBACK

Shi’ite paramilitaries like Amiri’s have played a vital role in helping Iraqi security forces recover lost territory from IS, which seized a string of major cities in 2014. When the militants declared that year that they had established an Islamic caliphate across parts of Iraq and Syria, he left a senior government post and rushed to the frontlines.

Since then, the government forces and their paramilitary allies have regained control of key cities — Tikrit, Ramadi and Baiji — with the support of the U.S.-led air strikes.

But he said there were more obstacles ahead before they could launch a battle to recapture Mosul, the country’s second city and the biggest under Islamic State control. Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi and his predecessor have long pledged to “liberate” Mosul but their plans have been repeatedly delayed.

“There are preparatory operations to retake Mosul but other operations have a priority. We want to go to Mosul with the reassurance that Baghdad is safe and all the provinces in the north and the south are safe. This is the main reason that delayed us advancing toward Mosul,” Amiri said.

“We have a decision not to enter the city of Mosul. We will surround it from outside and leave its people and its tribes to take part while we conduct the siege.”

SECTARIAN SPLIT

Amiri said Sunni-Shi’ite tensions galvanized by the war in Iraq and neighboring Syria were swelling the ranks of Islamic State.

The bombing of a Shi’ite shrine housing the tombs of two imams in the Iraqi city of Samarra in 2006 was the trigger for the worst sectarian carnage to engulf Iraq in the past decade, and now the Syria conflict has splintered the Middle East along the faultline dividing the two main denominations of Islam.

Syria has become a battlefield in a proxy war between President Bashar al-Assad’s main ally, Shi’ite Iran, backed by Russia, and his Sunni enemies in Turkey and Gulf Arab states, supported by the West.

“There is no terrorist organization with the ability to recruit and organize youths like Daesh does. We should know our enemy accurately and precisely to be able to defeat them,” Amiri said.

“Daesh has no problem recruiting. Foreign fighters are still flocking in huge numbers to Iraq and Syria via Turkey,” he added. He accused Saudi Arabia of being the breeding ground of the ultra-hardline Wahhabi ideology embraced by IS and other al Qaeda-affiliated groups.

“Where does this fundamentalist, extremist Islamist ideology, come from? Where was it nurtured? Its origin is Saudi Arabia,” he said, adding “we need to combat this (Daesh) ideology before we dry out its funding.”

Amiri’s Badr fighters fought on Iran’s side in the 1980-88 war against Iraq’s Sunni dictator, Saddam Hussein. The militia came to dominate much of southern Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 that toppled Saddam, and during the sectarian fighting that followed.

“I fought Saddam Hussein for more than 20 years. If I knew the alternative to Saddam was al Qaeda, Nusra or Daesh, I would have fought with Saddam against them,” he said.

“Saddam executed more than 16 family members … but there is nothing worse than these extremist groups. They are a real danger to the whole world.”

(Writing by Samia Nakhoul and Stephen Kalin; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

Islamic State bombing kills at least two dozen in Syria’s Homs

BEIRUT (Reuters) – A bomb attack claimed by Islamic State in the Syrian government-controlled city of Homs killed at least 24 people on Tuesday.

The governor of Homs said the first of two explosions was caused by a car bomb which targeted a security checkpoint. A suicide bomber then set off an explosive belt, state media reported.

“We know we are targets for terrorists, especially now the (Syrian) army is advancing and local reconciliation agreements are being implemented,” the governor told Reuters by phone.

Seventeen people are still in hospital, one of whom is in a critical condition, the governor said.

Syrian state TV earlier reported 22 people had died and more than 100 people had been injured.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group put the death toll at 29. It said those killed in the explosions, which took place in a mostly Alawite district, included 15 members of government forces and pro-government militiamen.

Syria’s nearly five-year-old civil war pits President Bashar al-Assad, a member of the minority Alawite sect, against mainly Sunni Muslim rebels and jihadi fighters.

Islamic State said in a statement its attack had killed at least 30 people.

The Syrian army and allied forces have been battling Islamic State in areas to the east and southeast of Homs city. They recently took back several villages including Maheen 50 miles southeast of the city.

(Reporting by Omar Fahmy in Cairo, Kinda Makieh in Damascus and Lisa Barrington in Beirut; Editing by Tom Perry and Dominic Evans)

U.N. seeks Syrian peace talks this week, opposition threatens boycott

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – The United Nations said on Monday it would issue invitations for marathon Syrian peace talks to begin this week, but opposition groups signaled they would stay away unless the government and its Russian allies halt air strikes and lift sieges on towns.

The first talks in two years to end the Syrian civil war were meant to begin on Monday but have been held up in part by a dispute over who should represent the opposition to President Bashar al-Assad. U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura said he was still working on his list, and expected to issue the invitations on Tuesday for talks to start on Friday.

The aim would be six months of talks, first seeking a ceasefire, later working toward a political settlement to a war that has killed more than 250,000 people, driven more than 10 million from their homes and drawn in global powers.

The ceasefire would cover the whole country except parts held by Islamic State militants and al Qaeda’s Syrian branch, the Nusra Front, de Mistura told a news conference in Geneva.

De Mistura, whose two predecessors quit in apparent frustration after holding failed peace conferences of their own, acknowledged the going would be difficult. Delegations would meet in separate rooms in “proximity talks”, with diplomats shuttling between them. Threats to pull out should be expected.

“Don’t be surprised: there will be a lot of posturing, a lot of walk-outs or walk-ins because a bomb has fallen or someone has done an attack…. You should neither be depressed nor impressed, but it’s likely to happen,” he said. “The important thing is to keep momentum.”

The spokesman for one of the rebel groups in the opposition High Negotiating Committee (HNC) said it was impossible for the opposition to attend as long as rebel territory is being pounded by air strikes and besieged towns are being starved.

“It is impossible to give up any of our demands. If we attend, it’s as if we are selling our martyrs,” said Abu Ghiath al-Shami, spokesman for Alwiyat Seif al-Sham, one of the groups fighting against Assad’s forces in the southwest.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said he expected clarity within a day or two over who would attend, and expressed support for de Mistura’s decision to take time to draw up the list.

“We don’t want to decide and have it crumble on day one. It’s worth taking a day or two, or three, or whatever,” Kerry said during a visit to Laos.

The outcome was up to the Syrian parties, he added: “They have to be serious. If they are not serious, war will continue. Up to them. You can lead a horse to water; you can’t make it drink.”

RUSSIAN INTERVENTION

Years of high-level diplomacy have so far yielded no progress toward ending or even curbing the fighting. Since the last peace conference was held in early 2014, Islamic State fighters have declared a caliphate across much of Syria and Iraq, and the war has drawn in world powers.

The United States has led air strikes against the militants since 2014, and Russia launched a separate air campaign nearly four months ago against enemies of its ally Assad.

Russian firepower has helped the Syrian military and its allies achieve military gains, including a major push in the northwest of the country in recent days, with rebels acknowledging a turn in momentum.

The rise of Islamic State and Russia’s entry into the war have given new impetus to diplomacy, leading to a Dec. 18 U.N. Security Council resolution, backed by Washington and Moscow, that called for peace talks.

But world powers remain at odds over who should be invited. Russia says opposition figures it calls terrorists must be excluded, and wants to include groups like the Kurds who control wide areas of northern Syria. Regional heavyweight Turkey opposes inviting the Kurds.

The main Sunni Arab opposition groups, who are supported by Arab governments and the West, say they will not attend unless they can choose their own delegation. Spokesman Salim al-Muslat said the opposition HNC would discuss its position on Tuesday.

The HNC, formed in Saudi Arabia last month and grouping armed and political opponents of Assad, has repeatedly said talks cannot begin until air strikes are halted, government sieges of rebel-held territory lifted and detainees freed, steps outlined in the U.N. resolution.

“Unfortunately, it is not possible to sit and talk to anyone without the suffering being lifted first,” Muslat said on Arabic news channel Arabiya al-Hadath.

SUICIDE BOMBING

The peace conference, if it takes place, will be the third since the war began and the first convened by de Mistura, a veteran diplomat with dual Swedish and Italian nationality.

All previous diplomatic efforts foundered over the future role of Assad, with the opposition refusing to back off its demand that he leave power and the president refusing to go.

A suicide bomber driving a fuel tank truck blew himself up at a checkpoint run by the Islamist rebel group Ahrar al-Sham in the northern city of Aleppo on Monday, killing at least 23 people, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group said.

Rebel forces lost the town of Rabiya in Latakia province over the weekend, their second major setback near the Turkish border in northwestern Syria in recent weeks as the government and Russia seek to cut rebel supply lines to Turkey.

“It’s a major pullback for us, but it is not over. We have 17 martyrs and 30 wounded. And none of the injuries are from bullets: it is all due to shrapnel from missiles, proof of how we are struggling to fend off Russian air strikes,” Firas Pasa, a leader of an ethnic Turkmen rebel group told Reuters in Gaziantep, Turkey, near the border.

“If the West wants us to defeat Syrian government forces then we urgently need anti-aircraft capabilities,” he said.

A member of Ahrar al-Sham, Abu Baraa al-Lathkani, said the rebels had abandoned the strategy of trying to hold territory and were shifting to guerrilla tactics.

The Syrian military, its morale running high, is planning the next phase of its offensive in northern Syria. The coming target is Idlib, a rebel stronghold, said a military source.

(Additional reporting by Lisa Barrington and Tom Perry in Beirut, Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman, David Brunnstrom in Vientiane, Humeyra Pamuk in Turkey and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)

With days to go, rival camps bicker over teams for Syria peace talks

DAVOS/GENEVA (Reuters) – Syrian peace talks will go ahead in Geneva, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry insisted on Thursday, but with just days to go, rival camps bickered about who should be invited to take part.

Kerry conceded that the timetable may slip from a planned Jan. 25 start but there would be no fundamental delay, he said, and U.N. Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura would send out invitations on Sunday.

“What will happen is on Monday, there will be some discussions (in Geneva), but I would say that by Tuesday and Wednesday people will be able to get there. We just see this is as logistical,” Kerry told journalists at a roundtable discussion in Davos.

“We are just kind of lining pieces up a little bit here. So we’ll see where we are.”

With no military solution in sight after almost five years of war and over 250,000 deaths, Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov agreed on Wednesday that the talks should go ahead despite no apparent agreement on who should represent the opposition.

Kerry said initial talks would be “proximity talks”, not a face-to-face meeting of participants in the same room.

“You are not going to have a situation where they are sitting down at the table staring at each other or shouting at each other; you are going to have to build some process here, and that’s what will begin,” Kerry said.

“The government of Syria will be wherever it is Mr. Staffan decides they will be and the … (opposition) will be wherever he decides. And if he has some other people he wants to talk to and meet with he will.”

Countries backing the talks, including the United States and Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran and Turkey, are still at odds over which fighting groups should be branded “terrorists”, a discussion that is expected to continue even as De Mistura shuttles between the rival delegations in Geneva.

Russia and Iran, which support President Bashar al-Assad, have rejected attempts by Saudi Arabia, which like the United States and European powers opposes him, to organize the opposition’s delegation for the talks.

Russia wants the opposition negotiating team expanded to include other figures that could be deemed closer to its own thinking as well as the main Syrian Kurdish party, the PYD, and the affiliated YPG militia. But the opposition has said it will boycott the Geneva negotiations if Russia insists on such a shake-up.

ONE-SIDED TALKS?

Among Russia’s objections is the inclusion of Mohamad Alloush as chief negotiator for the opposition.

He is a member of the politburo of Jaysh al-Islam (Islam Army), a major rebel faction which Russia considers a terrorist group, and – diplomats say – is a close relative of Zahran Alloush, killed in a Russian air strike last month.

But many of Assad’s foes view Jaysh al-Islam as a legitimate part of the opposition.

Alloush insisted the Syrian government must halt attacks on civilians and end blockades before the talks can go ahead.

“The session will not take place until the measures are implemented … While no measures are taken, the chances are zero,” he told Reuters.

“We don’t want to go to Geneva … for photos.”

A Russian diplomat said that if the Alloush delegation boycotted the Geneva talks, the Syrian government would simply negotiate with an alternative opposition delegation favored by Russia. The last day to start the talks was Friday, Jan. 29, the diplomat said.

A Western diplomat dismissed the Russian comments and said that without the opposition there would be no talks to speak of while Alloush said some of Russia’s choices for an opposition delegation, such as the PYD, should sit with the government.

“How can talks happen with just one side?,” Alloush said.

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, accused Russia of jeopardizing the talks by insisting on the inclusion of “terrorist groups” such as the YPG.

“Some circles, including Russia, they want to spoil the opposition side, putting some other elements in the opposition side like the YPG, which has been collaborating with the regime and attacking the moderate opposition,” he said.

Iran’s foreign minister has said that 10 opposition delegates were members of al Qaeda – one of three groups he said must be barred.

A senior French diplomat said there must be a credible framework in place before the talks can take place and if more time was needed, the U.N. should consider it.

“What we don’t want is to repeat the previous experience of Geneva 2,” the diplomat said, referring to negotiations in 2014 that failed after just a few days.

“The Security Council is clear. U.N. Special Envoy De Mistura must work with the opposition groups constituted in Riyadh. It doesn’t seem desirable to me that there is a third force,” the French diplomat said.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris; Editing by Richard Balmforth)

Islamic State presses attack to capture more land in eastern Syria

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Islamic State captured ground from Syrian government forces near the eastern city of Deir al-Zor on Monday, a group monitoring the war said, pressing a three-day assault which state media says has killed 300 people.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said there was still no word on the fate of over 400 people it reported kidnapped when IS began to attack government-held areas of the city on Saturday. State media has made no mention of the abductions.

Deir al-Zor is the main city in a province of the same name. The province links Islamic State’s de facto capital in the Syrian city of Raqqa with territory controlled by the militant group in neighboring Iraq.

Islamic State, in control of most of Deir al-Zor province, has laid siege since March to remaining government-held areas in the city of Deir al-Zor.

This is the third day of IS attacks on the towns of Ayyash and Begayliya, which lie to the northwest of Deir al-Zor city on the approach from Raqqa.

IS has now taken control of areas in the south and west of Begayliya, and has seized the Saeqa military camp near the town of Ayyash, the Observatory said.

A Syrian official source told Reuters the Syrian army repelled the attacks but IS is continuing the offensive.

Speaking to Al Mayadeen television news early on Monday, Deir al-Zor’s governor said the security situation in Begayliya was “excellent”.

Syria’s state news agency SANA said on Sunday that at least 300 people, including women and children, had been killed during the attacks in Deir al-Zor.

The Observatory says around 400 people said to have been kidnapped have been taken to countryside to the west of the city, closer to Raqqa.

The United Nations has warned that around 200,000 besieged residents in Deir al-Zor face severe food shortages and sharply deteriorating conditions.

The Syrian government has dropped some basic commodities into the city in recent weeks, and Russia said on Friday it had dropped 22 tonnes of aid to the besieged part of the city.

The Syrian foreign ministry said on Monday it had written to the United Nations condemning the attack. Lebanon’s Hezbollah, which is fighting alongside President Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria, also condemned the attacks by IS in a statement on Monday.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Mariam Karouny; Editing by Tom Perry and Dominic Evans)

UN says five starve in Madaya, dozens more at risk

GENEVA (Reuters) – Five people have starved to death in the last week in the Syrian town of Madaya, where a single biscuit sells for $15 and baby milk costs $313 per kilo, despite two emergency United Nations aid deliveries to the besieged town, a UN report said.

Local relief workers have reported 32 deaths of starvation in the past month, and last week two convoys of aid supplies were delivered to the 42,000 people living under a months-long blockade.

Dozens more people need immediate specialized medical care outside Madaya if they are to survive, but aid workers from the U.N. and Syrian Arab Red Crescent have managed to evacuate only 10 people, the report said.

“Since 11 January, despite the assistance provided, five people reportedly died of severe and acute malnutrition in Madaya,” said the U.N. humanitarian report, published late on Sunday.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday Syria’s warring parties, particularly President Bashar al-Assad’s government, were committing “atrocious acts” and he condemned the use of starvation as a weapon of war in the nearly five-year-old conflict.

The United Nations says there are some 450,000 people trapped in around 15 sieges across Syria, including in areas controlled by the government, Islamic State militants and other insurgent groups.

The U.N. made seven requests in 2015 to bring an aid convoy to the town, and got permission to deliver aid for 20,000 people in October, the report said. After several more requests, the Syrian government allowed a life-saving aid delivery on Jan. 11 and another on Jan. 14.

About 50 people left the town on Jan. 11, the report said.

The U.N. has asked Syria to allow the evacuation of a number of others needing immediate care, it said.

Syrian government forces and their allies have surrounded Madaya and neighboring Bqine since July 2015 and imposed increasingly strict conditions on freedom of movement.

The U.N. said the humanitarian workers who entered the town last week heard that landmines had been laid since late September to stop people leaving, but many civilians continued to try to search for food on the outskirts, and some had lost limbs in landmine explosions.

The controls on movement also meant many children had been separated from their parents, leading to symptoms of trauma and behavioral disorders.

Chairs and desks in schools are being used as firewood and there have been unconfirmed reports of women being harassed at military checkpoints and of gender-based violence, the U.N. said.

(Reporting by Tom Miles; Editing by Dominic Evans)