Breaking News -- Middle East
| Report: Syria arms missiles with chemical warheads Today's Zaman The Syrian regime, which has endured nine months of civil unrest spurred by the Arab Spring as it swept across the Middle East, has armed its medium-range missile arsenal with chemical warheads. According to a report published by the Sabah daily Sunday, Damascus armed 600 one-ton chemical warheads to use in the event of a foreign military intervention. Furthermore, President Bashar al-Assad ordered the deployment of 21 missile launchers along its border with Turkey. Syria’s medium-range missiles that can be equipped with chemical warheads have a range of up to 1,300 kilometers and would include the southern and central provinces of Turkey. According to the daily, the Syrian military keeps its stockpile of chemical warheads in secret facilities in and around the capital city of Damascus. In mid-November, President Assad held a special meeting with top commanders of the Syrian army and argued over how to respond to a possible military intervention by the international community. Additionally, Russia, which stood by the Assad regime’s defiance of international pressure on Damascus, sent 3 million gas masks to the troubled country. Most of those masks will be distributed to the regime’s loyalists, the families of soldiers and Baath supporters. The distribution of the masks is set to be completed by the end of December, according to the daily. Syria is believed to have had a chemical weapons arsenal for more than three decades. Following heavy defeats against Israel in conventional warfare, international defense sources believe that following the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Hafez al-Assad, the former general of the Syrian Air Force, decided to bolster Syria’s strategic position through the development of ballistic missiles to counter Israel’s superiority in conventional warfare. The unchallenged superiority Israeli air forces led Syrian generals to push for other means to protect the regime. From then on, Syria has launched clandestine efforts to develop chemical warheads with ballistic missile delivery systems. http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=265384 'Iran will definitely strike Turkey if attacked' Jerusalem Post An Iranian security official said that Iran would "definitely" strike NATO positions in Turkey if it were attacked, according to a Monday report by the Turkish daily Hurriyet. “We are closely monitoring the relations with Turkey in the National Security Commission of the parliament. Iran has warned Turkey before that the deployment of the system will have grave consequences." said Hossein Ibrahimi, vice-chairman of the Iranian parliament’s national security and foreign policy commission. Ibrahimi also referenced a similar threat made at the end of November by Amir Ali Hajizadeh, head of the Revolutionary Guards' aerospace division. "General Hajizadeh’s remarks are entirely true and when we are attacked, it is our natural right to defend ourselves,” Hurriyet quoted Ibrahimi as saying. Tehran has made clear its displeasure at Turkey's September decision to deploy a NATO missile early warning system, which Iran sees as a US ploy to protect Israel from any counter-attack should the Jewish state target Iran's nuclear facilities. Once-warm relations between Iran and Turkey have been strained this year due to the missile shield and Ankara's outspoken criticism of Syrian President Bashar Assad's violent crackdown on popular unrest. Turkey and Iran, the Middle East's two major non-Arab Muslim states, are vying for influence in the post-Arab Spring region and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's military adviser accused Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan of setting its foreign policy to please Washington. Reuters contributed to this report http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=249081 Syrian protests trigger new deadly clashes BBC At least 24 people have been killed in renewed anti-government protests across Syria, activists say. Eleven of the deaths were in and around the city of Homs, while five were in the suburbs of Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Another activist group, the Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC), put Friday's death toll at 35. The UN estimates more than 4,000 people have died in the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad since March. A number of pro-government demonstrations have also been reported across the country, including in the capital Damascus. Demonstrators regularly take to the streets following Friday prayers. The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said two of those killed in the central city of Homs were boys, aged 10 and 12. Homs has emerged as the epicentre of the uprising. "The earth was shaking," one Homs resident told the Associated Press, saying explosions and gunfire erupted in the early morning. "Armoured personnel carriers drove through the streets and opened fire randomly with heavy machine-guns." The Observatory also said that four people had died in the nearby city of Hama, two in Deraa, where the uprising began eight months ago, and two in the north-western province of Idlib. The LCC said 18 people had been killed in Homs, five in Idlib, four in Hama, two in Deraa and six in the suburbs of Damascus, including three in Kafarbatnah. Activists in Deraa said telephone and internet lines had been cut. Syria severely restricts access to foreign media so reports of unrest cannot be verified. Turkey warning The violence comes a day after a major oil pipeline serving the Homs region was blown up. Activists accused Mr Assad's government of deliberately destroying the pipeline, while state-run media blamed "an armed terrorist group". Opposition groups accuse the government of stoking up fears of religious extremism and terrorism to rally support behind Mr Assad. In a rare interview on Wednesday, Mr Assad told ABC News he had never ordered the military to kill or be brutal in its crackdown on protests, saying only a "crazy person" would kill his own people. Mr Assad also challenged the "false allegations" on which much of the media - and the UN Human Rights Commission - had based their conclusions about what was happening in Syria. On Friday, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon defended the reliability of its information on the death toll and alleged human rights abuses. "All the credible information is that more than 4,000 people have been killed by the government forces. The High Commissioner for Human Rights has made it already clear through all the various sources, very credible sources," he told reporters in Kenya. Meanwhile, Turkey's foreign minister warned that it would act to protect itself if the Syrian government crackdown threatened regional security and unleashed a tide of refugees on its southern border. "Turkey has no desire to interfere in anyone's internal affairs. But if a risk to regional security arises, then we do not have the luxury of standing by and looking on," Ahmet Davutoglu said. "If a government that is fighting its own people and creating refugees, is putting not only their own security at risk but also that of Turkey, then we have a responsibility and the authority to say to them: 'Enough!'" The Turkish government also moved to suspend a 2008 free-trade agreement with Syria, which will lead to the imposition of taxes of up to 30% on some Syrian goods. Turkey and the Arab League have joined the US and EU in imposing economic sanctions on Syria to press Mr Assad to halt the crackdown. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-16116011 |
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