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Syria Direct: News Update 1-29-15

After regime blocks flour delivery, Suwayda residents revolt Residents of […]


29 January 2015

After regime blocks flour delivery, Suwayda residents revolt

Residents of the town of Shahba reopened the Suwayda-Damascus highway Wednesday after blocking the road earlier in the day following confrontations with regime security forces, reported pro-opposition media campaign Gathering of the Free People of Suwayda.

Regime forces detained a truck carrying flour that was headed to Shahba, under the pretext that the driver didn’t have proper papers and that the car was not registered in his name. In response, residents of Shahba cut off the Damascus-Suwayda road and discharged their firearms, without information available on the presence or number of casualties on either side, reported the Suwayda LCC.

In related news, pro-opposition Siraj Press wrote on Wednesday that they received leaked minutes from a high-level meeting among security officials in Damascus discussing the increasingly tense situation in Suwayda, especially local young men refusing to sign up for mandatory military service.

“Implement the policy of starvation and deprivation with them [the people of Suwayda] so that they learn that the state is sovereign and so that they remain subservient,” one of the officers was quoted as saying.

The veracity of the leaked minutes could not be confirmed.

Car bomb near Jordan border

A car bomb detonated in a rebel-controlled town near the Jordanian border on Wednesday, killing at least 11 people and injuring 10 others, reported the pro-opposition Smart News Agency.

“The car entered Muzireeb after arriving from a regime-controlled part of Daraa city,” Abu Aws, a correspondent with the pro-opposition news agency Syria Mubasher, told Syria Direct on Thursday.

Governance of Daraa city, the nearby provincial capital, is split between regime and opposition forces.

The blast occurred at a central intersection in the border town and killed more than 15 people, said Abu Aws.

No one has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The car bomb comes in the wake of the opposition’s capture of the regime military base of Liwa 82 and the nearby strategic town of Sheikh Miskeen in Daraa province earlier this week.

Syndicating A car bomb detonates in Daraa on Wednesday. Photo courtesy of @sho2025sho.

UN cannot get aid to 40% of Syrians

Humanitarian organizations have difficulty reaching 40 percent of needy Syrians in the country, the UN Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator told the UN Security Council on Wednesday, even as the Syrian government insists that it is doing everything in its power to facilitate the distribution of aid.

Last month, the UN was not able to deliver aid either to A-Raqqa or Deir e-Zor province, both of which are controlled by the Islamic State, because of the Islamist group’s presence, said Kyung-wha Kang.

In addition, the UN only received 48 percent of its requested funds last year, she added.

For its part, the Syrian government said that the humanitarian situation cannot be improved without first focusing on the “terrorist organizations” at the root of the conflict, the regime told the UNSC, according to official state news SANA.

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