The Organization of Islamic Cooperation suspended Syria on Thursday, saying the Muslim world can no longer accept a government that “massacres its people”, further isolating the embattled regime.
The move by the world’s biggest Muslim grouping came after dozens of people, including women and children, were reported killed in an airstrike on a rebel bastion in northern Syria, while a bomb attack and a firefight rocked Damascus. UN investigators also said Syrian forces had committed crimes against humanity, including the Houla massacre in May that shocked the world, during an escalating conflict that has killed thousands and sent many more fleeing. Violence continues to rage in many parts of the country, including the northern battleground of Aleppo, with bitterly divided world powers in deadlock over how to end a conflict that could threaten the entire region. The UN Security Council meets to formally end its observer mission in Syria, as UN chief Ban Ki-moon struggles to persuade Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi to become the new international envoy on the conflict.
An emergency OIC summit in the Saudi city of Makkah said it had agreed to suspend Syria because of “deep concern at the massacres and inhuman acts suffered by the Syrian people”. OIC chief Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu said the decision sent “a strong message from the Muslim world to the Syrian regime” of President Bashar al-Assad. “This world can no longer accept a regime that massacres its people using planes, tanks and heavy artillery.”
The United States and the opposition Syrian National Council welcomed the move. “Today’s action underscores the Assad regime’s increasing international isolation and the widespread support for the Syrian people and their struggle for a democratic state that represents their aspirations and respects their human rights,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said. A damning report by the UN Commission of Inquiry said government forces and their militia allies committed crimes against humanity including murder and torture, while the rebels had also carried out war crimes, but on a lesser scale.
