President Bashar al-Assad made a rare public appearance on Wednesday, vowing to defeat a “conspiracy” against Syria a day after he blamed foreign interests for stoking months of deadly violence.
“Without a doubt we will defeat the conspiracy, which is nearing its end and will also be the end for (the conspirators) and their plans,” Assad told tens of thousands of cheering supporters in the capital’s central Omayyad Square.
Casually dressed in a jacket and open-necked shirt, a confident-looking Assad stood at the edge of the throng, security guards in front of him, and said: “I came here to draw from your strength. Thanks to you, I have never felt weak.
“Whoever wants to talk should come down into the street,” said Assad, as he thanked his backers, many of whom were holding up his portrait or waving Syrian flags, for “supporting the institutions of the state and the army.”
The United Nations estimated last month that more than 5,000 people had been killed in the crackdown on anti-regime protests that erupted in March, and many of them have been gunned down during peaceful street protests.
Damascus accuses “armed terrorist gangs” of fomenting the bloodshed.
In a speech on Tuesday, his first public appearance in months, Assad vowed to crush “terrorism” with an iron fist.
“Regional and international parties who are trying to destabilise Syria can no longer falsify the facts and events,” the embattled leader said in the nearly two-hour speech.
That prompted opposition movements to accuse him of pushing the country toward civil war and world powers to accuse him of trying to shift the blame for the 10 months of bloodletting in the protests against his regime.
Amid the finger-pointing, activists said four civilians were killed on Wednesday near the central city of Hama and that loyalist troops were clashing with deserters. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said regime forces used live ammunition and tear gas to disperse students demonstrating in Daraya, in Damascus province.
An Arab League observer said he has quit the mission, accusing the regime of committing a series of war crimes against its people and of duping his colleagues.
“I withdrew from the Arab observers mission because I found myself serving the regime, and not part of an independent observer group,” Anwar Malek told the Doha-based news channel Al-Jazeera.
The Syrian regime is playing “dirty,” charged the Algerian observer. “It even began killing its supporters to convince the Arab observers that it is carrying out its duties and to gain their sympathy.”
“The mission was a farce and the observers have been fooled. The regime orchestrated it and fabricated most of what we saw to stop the Arab League from taking action against the regime,” Malek said.
“What I saw was a humanitarian disaster. The regime isn’t committing one war crime but a series of crimes against its people,” he said. “Children are killed and they are starved and terrorised.”
