Syria’s government said on Wednesday it has “cleansed terrorists” out of Al-Haffe, a Sunni enclave feared to be the site of a new massacre, as Russia accused the United States of arming rebels.
The rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) said its fighters pulled out of Al-Haffe in a tactical move to spare civilians of the beleaguered northwestern village following an eight-day bombardment by regime forces.
As the conflict spiralled to vicious new heights, Turkey reported that 2,500 Syrians had fled across its border in the past 48 hours, saying the numbers had increased amid fresh attacks even targeting UN observers. Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Washington of giving arms to the rebels after his US counterpart Hillary Clinton charged that Moscow was supplying President Bashar al-Assad’s regime with attack helicopters.
On the ground, Syrian state media said government forces overran Al-Haffe, a day after a team of UN observers came under fire trying to reach the village after the UN and opposition activists expressed fears of a massacre. “Security and calm were restored in the area of Al-Haffe which was cleansed after armed terrorist groups assaulted citizens and vandalised and burned a number of public and private properties,” SANA said.
“The authorities pursued the remaining terrorists in the villages surrounding Al-Haffe” where they “killed and arrested a number of them,” SANA said, adding that regime forces also sustained casualties in the clashes. The FSA said its fighters “withdrew from Al-Haffe and the entire region at dawn in order to spare the lives of residents undergoing extremely violent shelling.”
“The town and villages of Al-Haffe were subjected to aerial, tank and rocket bombardment, as well as a suffocating siege by regime forces and thugs,” the FSA said. Its fighters retreated “to avoid falling into the regime’s civil war trap.”
Three people were killed and dozens wounded in clashes in Al-Haffe on Tuesday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which says more than 14,100 people have died in the country’s 15-month conflict. Expressing surprise at an assessment by the UN peacekeeping chief that a sharp escalation in violence had changed the nature of the 15-month conflict, Syria said UN officials should remain “neutral, objective and precise”.
“Talk of civil war in Syria is not consistent with reality… what is happening in Syria is a war against armed terrorist groups,” the foreign ministry said.
It urged regional powers and the international community to “stop any military or financial support for terrorist groups” operating in Syria and called on the United Nations to take a “decisive stand against the crimes committed by armed groups.”
— ‘US supplying arms to rebels’ —
The Syrian government, which is dominated by Assad’s Alawite offshoot of Islam, has refused to acknowledge an uprising that erupted in March 2011 inspired by the Arab Spring.
It consistently refers to the FSA and other armed groups as “terrorists” and has accused Washington and its regional allies of complicity in their operations.
Russia presses Iran ahead of nuclear talks
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov flew into Iran on Wednesday for a brief visit to discuss upcoming international talks over Tehran’s disputed nuclear programme.
The trip preceded a new round of negotiations between Iran and the major powers that is to be held in Moscow next Monday and Tuesday. In a joint news conference after meeting his Iranian counterpart, Ali Akbar Salehi, Lavrov revealed little of what they talked about.
“The Iranian side is interested in coming up with solutions which would contribute to the settlement of the nuclear issue,” he said, speaking through an official interpreter.
He reiterated Russia’s opposition to unilateral sanctions imposed by Western countries that are hurting Iran’s oil export-dependent economy. Salehi said he was “optimistic” about the prospects of the Moscow negotiations, despite two unproductive rounds in Istanbul and Baghdad earlier this year.
“The direction taken by the two sides to resolve the issue is the right one,” he said. “The issue is complicated and one has to have patience to make progress.”
He added: “In this process, it can slow down at times, then accelerate. But we are optimistic about the final result.”
Lavrov was also to meet Iran’s lead negotiator, Saeed Jalili, before flying out, according to Iranian officials.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Tuesday that the Iranians “are under tremendous pressure from the Russians and the Chinese to come to Moscow prepared to respond” to proposals by the world powers to alleviate the showdown over Tehran’s nuclear activities.
She said: “The Russians have made it very clear that they expect the Iranians to advance the discussion in Moscow. Not just to come, listen and leave. We will know once it happens.”
Moscow is the most sympathetic to Tehran among the six powers negotiating with it in the talks, although it has sided with the West in expressing fears that Iran could be pursuing the development of a nuclear weapons capability, which has raised the spectre of military strikes by the US or Israel.
The so-called P5+1 group of nations — comprising UN Security Council permanent members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany — offered a package of proposals to Iran in the last round, in Baghdad in May.