Arab ministers meeting on Syria postponed

The Arab League has postponed a meeting of Arab foreign ministers scheduled for Sunday to discuss the Syria crisis and to select a replacement for Kofi Annan, the United Nations-Arab League envoy, an Arab League official said.

"They have postponed it," the official said in reference to the meeting that had been due to take place in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. The official did not give a new date for the meeting or any reason for the delay.

10 civilians executed in Homs

Meanwhile, the opposition Syrian National Council and activist groups charged on Sunday that pro-government militia summarily executed 10 civilians during a round-up in the flashpoint central city of Homs.

"Militiamen detained nearly 350 people from the Shamas district, assembled them in a courtyard and executed 10 of them," activist group, the Syrian Revolution General Council, said.

"The fate of the nearly 340 others is unknown and we fear greatly that they have met the same fate as the 10 martyrs," the group added.

The opposition SNC issued a similar statement.

"Ten young men were executed in the Shamas neighbourhood of Homs city after the army and pro-regime gunmen stormed the area and rounded up 350 young people," it said.

"The army called from the mosques surrounding the district for all the young men to come out into the streets with their hands behind their heads," it said.

Rebel spokesman Kassem Saadeddine issued a statement overnight warning of an impending massacre in the Shamas neighbourhood.

"The Joint Command of the Free Syrian Army in Syria warns of a massacre by the criminal regime in the Shamas neighbourhood of Homs, the capital of the glorious Syrian Revolution," the rebel colonel said.

Saadeddine accused "the Iranian regime and its gangs on Syrian territory" of playing a role in the massacre and threatened to strike back at "the heart of the Syrian and Iranian regimes."

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that many residents of Shamas had fled in the face of persistent shelling by the army and clashes between troops and rebels.

It said that pro-government forces had carried out a round-up in the neighbourhood but it made no mention of any executions.

Syrian journalists killed in Damascus

Two Syrian journalists have been killed in the capital, according to reports on Sunday from Syrian state news agency Sana and an Arab satellite station.

Sana said its reporter, Ali Abbas, was killed at his residence in the Jdaidet Artouz area. The report blamed an "armed terrorist group" — the regime's catch-all term for its opponents — and gave no further details.

Al-Arabiya television said on its website that Bara'a Yusuf al-Bushi, a Syrian national and army defector who provided information to the station and several international news organizations, was killed in a bomb attack while covering a story in al-Tal, a suburb on the northern edge of Damascus.

Both reporters were killed Saturday, according to the news reports. 

On Saturday, Damascus saw two bombings that brought chaos to some of the capital's most exclusive areas in a symbolic blow to Assad.

One blast — from a device planted under a tree — was set off by remote control as a vehicle carrying soldiers passed by in the Marjeh district. The explosion, which caused no casualties, was about 100 yards (meters) from the Four Seasons, one of the top luxury hotels in Damascus.

After the blast, gunmen opened fire on civilians "to provoke panic," Sana reported.

At the same time, the second explosion went off near Tishrin Stadium, less than a half mile (kilometer) away, it added.

Just hours later, Sana said that a bus was attacked in a Damascus suburb, killing six passengers traveling from the central province of Hama.

The news agency said security agents were pursuing the attackers in all incidents, referring to them as "terrorists" — the term authorities routinely use for rebels trying to topple Assad's regime.

Explosions in the capital have become increasingly common as Syria's civil war escalates. On Aug. 18, rebels carried out the deadliest bombing on a regime security building that killed four members of Assad's inner circle.

Meanwhile, Syrian activists reported that clashes continued in some of the capital's suburbs, the central Homs province, the northern town of Aleppo and the southern restive town of Daraa. There were no immediate reports of casualties, according to the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.



 

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