Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi said on Monday that snipers and gunfire remain in Syrian cities and called for an immediate halt to the shootings, in his first remarks since Arab monitors were deployed. “There are still snipers and gunfire. There must be a total halt to the gunfire,” the League chief said, in the face of mounting criticism of the hard-won observer mission’s failure to stem the persistent bloodshed. Arabi charged that snipers were still deployed on rooftops in protest centres threatening the lives of civilians, even as monitors try to end the Syrian government’s deadly crackdown that has claimed thousands of lives since March.
“We must raise this with the Syrian government because the aim (of sending monitors) is to stop the shooting and protect civilians,” Arabi told a news conference at Arab League headquarters in Cairo. But “it is difficult to say who is firing on whom,” he said. The head of the observer mission, Sudanese General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, is due to send his “first report in the next two days” on the situation in Syria, Arabi said. “An Arab foreign minister has asked that a ministerial meeting be convened to discuss the report,” he added. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, at least three civilians were killed by gunfire in Syria on Monday, two of them in separate shooting incidents in the flashpoint central city of Homs.
The third victim was a farmer who was hit by a stray bullet as security forces opened fire during a raid on a village near Damascus to hunt down suspects wanted by the authorities. Arabi said the Arab League may call for a meeting next week of foreign ministers to evaluate the work of the observers, who arrived in Syria on December 26 and began touring protest hubs the following day.
Syria’s Assad has only ‘few weeks’ left in control: Israel
JERUSALEM: The family of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has only “a few weeks” left in control of the strife-torn country, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak told MPs on Monday. “The Assad family has no more than a few weeks to remain in control in Syria,” Barak told the parliament’s prestigious foreign affairs and defence committee in remarks quoted by the committee spokesman. “There is no possibility in the current situation of evaluating what will happen the day after Bashar’s fall,” he said. Barak also warned that the fall of the Assad family could have implications for the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. “In the north, there may be possible implications from Syria on the Golan Heights and a broader area as the result of the loss of control,” he said on Monday in a separate statement released by his office. According to Barak, the Assad regime was deteriorating as a result of the combination of internal and external pressures. “Even if it is hard to clearly see the exact date when the regime will fall, the trend is clear, and with every day that passes, the regime is getting closer to the end of its rule, and its grip is loosening,” he said.
