Fighting Rages for Town in Syria Chemical Weapons Row
إقرأ هذا الخبر بالعربية
Syrian troops attacked rebel positions outside Khan al-Assal on Wednesday as they seek to recapture the northern town at the center of rival chemical weapons accusations, a watchdog said.
Fierce fighting erupted on the outskirts of the town, which the rebels seized on Monday of last week inflicting heavy losses on the army, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The army lost 150 soldiers over two days, 50 of them summarily executed after their capture in an act condemned by the mainstream opposition leadership.
The government has been keen to recapture the town, the last to fall out of its control in the western half of Aleppo province.
The town was the scene of what both the government and the opposition say was a chemical weapons attack that killed 30 people on March 19.
The Syrian government says the rebels carried it out, and its ally Moscow says it has concrete proof.
The opposition says President Bashar Assad's regime was behind it and Washington has said it has seen no firm evidence of rebel responsibility.
The Damascus government has pressed for Khan al-Assal to be the primary focus of a planned UN inquiry into a total of 13 allegations of chemical weapons use during the 28-month conflict.
The rebels' capture of the town last week came as two UN envoys visited Damascus to thrash out the ground rules for U.N. weapons inspectors. They came away with an agreement but UN chief Ban Ki-moon has said he is still reviewing the details.
31 July 2013, 15:08
14
Conventions de Genève? Kesako? Personne ne les respecte dans ce foutu pays... Sans foi ni loi.
31 July 2013, 16:51
34
The Baath party is worse than the Nazis... At least the Nazis did not kill their own children and destroyed their own cities and villages... They did the same thing to us in Lebanon. They destroyed our coutry and took us 100 years back. The time they hang this bastard Bachar upside down is the time when I will be popping champagne...
31 July 2013, 22:28
01
i suggest u wait for popping the champagne, cause once he is gone, then the champagne will be illegal according to the salafist that are trying to take over the country.and if they succeed in syria, guess what we are next. something to think about, and like i always say in my comment, i am with no political party in Lebanon , because they work for their interests and other countries but never for Lebanon. they never changed anything to the better in the last 30 years if anything they made it worse. and all of them holding on to their positions and if not passing it on from grandfather to father to son. it s a mafia clic and they called it the government. they are all corrupt. everyone of them .
peace
31 July 2013, 17:09
02
Nobody is more excited about the re-capture, city by city, town by town, by the falling "ASSad" regime than GabbyMarch14 et al as this proves that this falling regime is rapidly falling and there is no stopping that. To date, GabbyMarch14 has... well... umm... duh... incorrectly? predicted the fall of the regime just a little over 7,492 times, a record that GabbyMarch14's et als are trying hard to beat! But hey, Dr. Arreet 7akeh, the man who is always wrong yet does not waver (3omro ma wayvar hal mkhashkhash and his Drs. Arteena Satleh) promised us that the "ASSad" regime MIGHT fall AGAIN in 2013, i.e. there are less than 5 months left before we discover the Grand Doc of Bull's new prediction that the regime's fall shall be PROBABLE in 2014!!! You go, hopeless hopefuls, and keep dem prediction streaming.
31 July 2013, 22:23
01
what u don t realize is that its not about him anymore, these soldiers have seen the other side what htey are doing to them , like eating hearts , executing prisoners. so in this case he is the lesser of two evils, i don t like him but with the choices left , i rather him , cause at least ppl lived with each other no matter what religion they came from. the new guys want to turn it into a sharia country . the rebelion has been hijacked and no onbe can refute that, even the fsa has come out and said that .
peace
31 July 2013, 23:43
10
natasha, they never succeeded in Egypt, so I am not concerned about that...
01 August 2013, 02:08
00
New avatar, same western look. Still it does not match your HA image.
01 August 2013, 03:00
00
min-canada,
The article was very very interesting and informative. It is interesting to read the analysis of goals, capabilities, targets, etc.
I am not in a position to judge its accuracy but it looks like a well written analysis. Thanks for sharing.
