Syria Direct: News Update 8-26-2013

* Inspectors wait for safe passage to Ghota after regime and rebels point fingers at each other in early morning sniper fire at the U.N. team that was deliberately shot multiple times by unidentified gunmen in the buffer zone area.

* “Our national security confronts terror groups and armies based on the same radical ideologies as al-Zawahiri and is financed from the same sources,” Bashar Assad tells Russian newspaper Izvestia.

* Coalition charges Iranian government with blaming others for crimes perpetrated by Assad and his regime. Zaman al-Wasil reports FSA Chief Salim Idris is on his way to London with goal of obtaining substantial American and UK military support for rebels.

* Syrian Media Minister, Omran al-Zo’bi tells SANA : “Any military operation led by USA will not be a holiday trip and will end dangerously burning the entire Middle East.”

* Syrian Kurds demonstrate in Irbil asking Kurdistan government to assist their brethren inside Syria and not to encourage a mass exodus out of the country reports al-Sumaria TV.