Syria arrests opposition figures on way to Riyadh

DAMASCUS: Syrian authorities on Wednesday arrested two prominent members of the country’s domestic opposition as they traveled to Riyadh to meet other regime opponents, a colleague told AFP.

Ahmad Al-Asrawi and Munir Al-Bitar, two members of the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, were stopped at Syria’s border with Lebanon, said the body’s secretary general, Yahya Aziz.
Both Asrawi and Bitar were headed to Saudi Arabia to join fellow members of the opposition’s “supreme committee for negotiations,” Aziz told AFP.
The “supreme committee” is a 33-member group formed earlier this month at a landmark meeting of Syria’s opposition in Riyadh.
The committee is set to choose at least part of an opposition delegation for peace talks with the government next month.
In a statement published online, the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change (NCCDC) said the arrest contradicted “international efforts to reach a just political solution” to the conflict in Syria.
It demanded that Asrawi and Bitar be released and said Syrian authorities “were responsible for their safety.”
The arrest comes less than a week after Syrian Army claimed responsibility for the killing of fighter chief Zahran Alloush.
Alloush was the head of Jaish Al-Islam, the most powerful fighter faction in the Damascus province.
Jaish Al-Islam, too, had taken part in the opposition meeting in Riyadh.
Meanwhile, The Syrian Army said its troops entered a fighter-held town in the southern province of Daraa on Wednesday in an assault which fighters say was aided by the heaviest Russian aerial bombing campaign so far in the south.
Troops were in Sheikh Maskin’s main square and had taken over the eastern and northern neighborhoods of the town that lies on a major supply route from Syria’s capital Damascus to the city of Daraa, the army said in a statement.
A source confirmed that troops had entered the outskirts of the town but said fierce clashes continued.