Least of key events in Syria's uprising

(AP) Here's a look Back at some of the key events in the Syrian uprising as the conflict marks its third anniversary:

- March 2011: Protests erupt in Daraa, Syria, over security forces' detention of a group of boys accused of painting anti-government graffiti on the walls of their school. On March 18, security forces open fire on a protest in the southern city, killing four people in what activists regard as the first deaths of the uprising. Demonstrations spread, as does the crackdown by President Bashar Assad's forces.

- June 2011: Police and soldiers in Jisr al-Shughour in northeastern Syria join forces with the protesters they were ordered to shoot, and the uprising claims control of a town for the first time. Elite government troops, tanks and helicopters retake the town within days.

- August 2011: U.S. President Barack Obama calls on Assad to resign and orders Syrian government assets frozen.

- July 2012: A bombing at the Syrian national security building in Damascus during a high-level government crisis meeting kills four top officials, including Assad's brother-in-law and the defense minister.

- Summer 2012: Fighting spreads to Aleppo, Syria's largest city and its former commercial capital. Over time, rebels seize control of about half of the city, but the battle there rages to this day, leaving much of Aleppo in ruins.

An era missing out on school in wartime Syria

By BARBARA SURK
Associated Press.

MAJDAL ANJAR, Lebanon (AP) -- Along with some 20 other Syrian children, 13-year-old Anas braves rain, mud and cold to attend class in a tent pitched along Lebanon's border with Syria, the home of a Syrian refugee family that serves as a classroom for four hours each day.

There are no benches and no blackboard. There are no textbooks and no notebooks. Just sheets of paper and some pencils and crayons that two young refugee women use to teach children like Anas how to read and write, count and draw, sing songs and recite poems.

But even Anas might be considered one of the luckier ones of Syria's long conflict, which reached its third anniversary Saturday. Nearly half of Syria's school-age children - 2.8 million and counting - cannot get an education because of the devastation and violence, UNICEF recently reported. The numbers might even be greater, a tragedy for a country where once nearly all school-age children completed primary school.

"They come every day, these sad parents, begging me to take their children to school," said Etaf Seif Abdel Samad, the principal of a public grade school in Beirut, where Syrian children learn with the Lebanese side by side.

Turkey down Syrian plane it says violated air space

(Reuters) - Turkish armed forces shot down a Syrian plane on Sunday that Ankara said had crossed into its air space in an area where Syrian rebels have been battling President Bashar al-Assad's forces for control of a border crossing.
"A Syrian plane violated our airspace," Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told an election rally in northwest Turkey. "Our F-16s took off and hit this plane. Why? Because if you violate my airspace, our slap after this will be hard."
Syria condemned what it called a "blatant aggression" and said the jet was pursuing rebel fighters inside Syria. It said the pilot had managed to eject before the plane crashed.

Syrian al Qaeda group gives rival Islamists ultimatum

(Reuters) - The head of al Qaeda's wing in Syria has given rival Islamist militants five days to accept mediation to end their infighting or face a war which "will terminate them", according to an audio recording posted on Tuesday.
Abu Mohammed al-Golani, leader of the Nusra Front, called on the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group to agree to arbitration by religious scholars to end more than a year of feuding which has turned violent in some areas in Syria.

Activists say Syrian security forces abduct prominent dissident

Residents inspect a site of an explosion in Atmeh February 23, 2014.

Credit: Reuters/Stringer

(Reuters) - Akram al-Bunni, a prominent leftist writer and former political prisoner, was abducted by Syrian intelligence agents as he left a wedding reception at a Damascus hotel on Saturday, opposition activists said.
They said Bunni, who had previously spent two decades as a political prisoner, was snatched by agents from an intelligence division run by Hafez Makhlouf, a cousin of President Bashar al-Assad.
His brother Anwar al-Bunni, a human rights lawyer who was also a political prisoner for five years, said Akram had riled the authorities by publicly supporting a democratic alternative to the four-decade rule of the Assad family.

Syrian rebel, friend of al Qaeda leader, killed by rival Islamists

(Reuters) By Mariam Karouny - A Syrian rebel commander who fought alongside al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden and was close to its current chief, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was killed by a suicide attack on Sunday, intensifying infighting between rival Islamist fighters.
The Observatory for Human Rights in Syria said Abu Khaled al-Soury, also known as Abu Omair al-Shamy, a commander of the Salafi group Ahrar al-Sham was killed along with six comrades by al Qaeda splinter group the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). It said al-Soury had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Al-Soury's death will fuel the infighting among jihadis fighting President Bashar al-Assad, a violent rivalry that has killed hundreds of fighters in recent months, rebels said.

Air raids in central Syria kill 26: activists

Damaged buildings are pictured in the besieged area of Homs February 22, 2014.

Credit: Reuters/Thaer Al Khalidiya

(Reuters) - Air raids on rebel-held towns across Syria killed 26 people on Monday, activists said, two days after the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution demanding an end to indiscriminate shelling and aerial attacks.
Syria's almost three-year-old conflict has raged on despite peace talks that began in Geneva last month and the passage of the U.N. resolution, a rare moment of unity between the West and Russia, President Bashar al-Assad's strongest backer.
Two women and 10 children were among the dead in government air raids on the town of al-Neshabieh, in the eastern outskirts of Damascus, near a railway marking the frontline between Islamist fighters and Assad's forces backed by Lebanese Hezbollah militants, and in the province of Homs to the north.
"Two simultaneous raids hit Neshabieh first. People were pulling the bodies of a women and her two children from one house when the planes came back and hit the crowed, killing another nine," activist Abu Sakr told Reuters from the area.

Brahimi: Syria peace talks slow but 'still at it'

 

GENEVA (AP) -- Syrian government anger over a U.S. decision to resume aid to the opposition prompted the U.N. mediator to cut short Tuesday's peace talks, but he said no one was to blame for the impasse and that the negotiations would continue.

A deal to allow humanitarian aid into Homs remained stalled, with the Syrian delegation demanding assurances the U.S. aid will not go to "armed and terrorist groups" in the besieged city.

U.N.-Arab League mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said he was relieved that the government and opposition said they will remain in the daily talks through Friday, as planned.

"Nobody's walking out. Nobody's running away," he told reporters. "We have not actually made a breakthrough, but we are still at it, and this is enough as far as I'm concerned."

Tuesday's talks were the fifth day of negotiations regarding the civil war, focusing on opposition calls for the formation of a transition government in Syria and help for Homs.

Assad future blocks progress in Syria peace talks

By ZEINA KARAM
Associated Press

GENEVA (AP) -- The key issue of a transitional government to replace President Bashar Assad blocked any progress Monday in Syrian peace talks, described by one delegate as "a dialogue of the deaf."

The chief U.N. mediator expressed frustration over inflammatory public remarks by the two sides as he sought to identify some less-contentious issues in hopes of achieving any progress at all at the bargaining table.

But even the most modest attempts at confidence-building measures faltered - including humanitarian aid convoys to besieged parts of the central city of Homs and the release of detainees. Veteran mediator Lakhdar Brahimi somberly declared at the end of the day that he had little to report.

"There are no miracles here," Brahimi said, adding that both sides nevertheless appeared to have the will to continue the discussions. Asked how he planned to bridge the enormous gap between the two sides, the veteran diplomat quipped: "Ideas, I'll take them with great pleasure."

Morocco, Algeria trade accusations over Syrians

By PAUL SCHEMM
Associated Press

RABAT, Morocco (AP) -- Morocco and Algeria, North Africa's two most powerful countries and biggest rivals, are accusing each other of mistreating Syrian refugees.

Morocco's Interior Ministry issued an official statement Tuesday protesting what it said was the rise in expulsion of Syrian refugees onto Moroccan territory by Algeria.

The statement said that between Sunday and Tuesday some 77 Syrians, including 18 women and 43 children had been expelled. The statement follows up on similar accusations in Moroccan media over the past week.

The spokesman for Algeria's Foreign Ministry, Amar Belani, said Thursday that the stories of expulsions were complete lies by the Moroccan "pseudo-media that specializes in nauseating bubbling of the anti-Algerian media swamp."

Talks resume to evacuate civilians in Syrian city

By ALBERT AJI and BASSEM MROUE
Associated Press

DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) -- A United Nations official is negotiating with rebel fighters in besieged neighborhoods of a central Syrian city to allow the evacuation of civilians, the provincial governor and an activist said Tuesday.

Talal Barrazi, the governor of Homs province, said in a statement that policewomen, paramedics and members of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent are ready to arrange the evacuation from the city of Homs and "we are waiting for the U.N.'s response."

The comments come two days after a tentative agreement was reached at peace talks in Geneva between the Syrian government and its opponents for the evacuation of women and children trapped in Homs before aid convoys enter. U.N.-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who is mediating the Swiss talks, said security problems are delaying the evacuation.

The old city of Homs has been under siege for nearly two years.

Aid convoy stalled as Syrian government demands assurances

Damaged buildings line a street in the besieged area of Homs January 27, 2014.

Credit: Reuters/Yazan Homsy

(Reuters) - The fate of a U.N. aid convoy for thousands of Syrians besieged in the city of Homs hung in the balance on Tuesday as the Syrian government demanded assurances the supplies would not end up in the hands of "terrorists".
Damascus describes all armed opponents of President Bashar al-Assad's government as terrorists.
Efforts to get food and medical aid into Homs have become a test case on whether peace talks in Switzerland can produce any practical results almost three years into the Syrian conflict.
The United Nations said it was ready to deliver relief supplies to about 2,500 people trapped inside rebel-held parts of Homs, devastated by months of shelling and fighting. But the government said it first wanted to know who would get the aid.
"We are still waiting for assurances that these convoys will not go to armed groups, to terrorist groups inside the city. We want them to go to the women and children," Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad told reporters.

Insight: At Syrian peace table, embittered enemies face off

 Syria's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem awaits the peace talks in Montreux January 22, 2014.
Credit: REUTERS/Arnd Wiegmann
(Reuters) - When Syria's political foes met across a negotiating table for the first time in nearly three years of conflict, the top priority was to keep them from walking out.
Diplomats had talked up the importance of getting the two sides in the same room in Geneva, but at one point things were so bad that it looked like that room might be the departure lounge at the city's airport.
But meet in the conference chamber they did, cajoled by officials who arranged the agenda to allow each delegation something it could live with. None of the diplomats Reuters spoke to for this article wanted to contemplate the consequences of failure.
"If this conference fails then the situation will explode regionally," said one diplomatic source, like others speaking on condition of anonymity because of the delicate negotiations.
U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi began by focusing on a deal on humanitarian access to the besieged and starving city of Homs before steering the talks towards the highly contentious question of a political settlement of a war that has killed 130,000 and forced millions to flee their homes.

Iraq says Syria war spillover hinders oilfields, pipelines

(Reuters) - Spillover attacks from the civil war in Syria have hindered development of Iraq's gas and oil reserves and a major pipeline to the Mediterranean has been blown up dozens of times, Iraq's top energy official said on Tuesday.
Violence in Iraq climbed back to its highest level in five years in 2013, with nearly 9,000 people killed, most of them civilians, according to the United Nations.
"The ongoing conflict in Syria has resulted in an increasing number of terrorists using vast desert areas between Syria and Iraq to establish bases from which they have carried out attacks against the civilian population and economic targets and infrastructure," Deputy Prime Minister for Energy Hussain al-Shahristani said.
"Attacking the energy sector has been among their top priorities to deprive the country of its main revenue source," he said.

U.S. accuses Syrian government of harming talks by denying aid

(Reuters) - The Syrian government is poisoning the atmosphere of peace negotiations with the opposition by denying delivery of vital aid supplies to civilians, including in the besieged Old City of Homs, a U.S. State Department spokesman said on Tuesday.
He called for the government of President Bashar al-Assad to approve immediately the full list of proposed convoy movements requested by the United Nations to the Old City of Homs, Mouadamiyah, Douma, Yarmouk, Mleiha, and Barzeh.
Damascus had made no significant steps to provide access to besieged areas and ease the delivery of even a small amount of relief to those suffering, Edgar Vasquez, a U.S. State Department spokesman, said in Geneva.