Syria Direct: News Update 12-19-2013
* The Syrian army destroyed a fleet of small boats Thursday […]
19 December 2013
* The Syrian army destroyed a fleet of small boats Thursday used by rebel groups on Lake Kissin in western Homs province, killing a number of rebels, official news agency SANA reported.
* Clashes continued Wednesday in the town of Adra, pitting the Islamic State in Iraq and a-Sham and Jabhat a-Nusra against government troops supported by Hezbollah, the Syrian Observatory for Human rights reported. ISIS beheaded three men in the Damascus suburb, referring to them as nusairis, a derogatory sectarian term used to describe Alawites.
A Druze fighter in Adra. Photo courtesy of @AjAlTamimi.
* The Syrian National Coalition accused the Syrian government Wednesday of seizing the contents of the United Nations’ airlift of aid from Iraq into northeastern Syria’s Al-Hasakeh province. Regime troops distributed the aid only in areas held by the government or by the Kurdish Democratic Union Party in the northern Hasakeh province city of Qamishli, the SNC said.
* Fayez Sara, a member of the SNC’s political committee, denied rumors circulating on social media Wednesday that the SNC had signaled it would allow President Bashar al-Assad to remain president in a transitional government. “There is no way al-Assad can be a part of the transitional governing committee according to the principles agreed upon at Geneva,” he said.
* The United Nations General Assembly condemned the Syrian government for “widespread and systematic gross violations” of human rights Wednesday, “strongly condemning the large-scale use of chemical weapons on 21 August 2013 in the Ghouta area of Damascus.”
