DAMASCUS: Despite world outcry over continued civilian killings and global pressure to quit, Syrian President Bashar Assad showed no sign of relenting yesterday when he vowed to crush the 17-month uprising against him as his troops carried out bloodbath in key battleground city Aleppo.
“The Syrian people and their government are determined to purge the country of terrorists and to fight the terrorists without respite,” he was quoted by state news agency SANA as telling visiting senior Iranian envoy Saeed Jalili.
Assad appeared earlier on television for the first time in more than two weeks in his meeting with Jalili.
Tehran also sent its foreign minister to Ankara and a letter to Washington holding them responsible for the fate of 48 kidnapped Iranians.
That followed an unconfirmed report on a rebel group’s Facebook page that three of them had been killed in shelling by regime forces.
The last time footage of Assad was screened was when he received new armed forces chief Gen. Ali Ayyub on July 22, four days after a bombing claimed by the rebel Free Syrian Army killed four top security chiefs.
In Beirut on Monday, Jalili issued a veiled warning to countries backing the rebels.
“Those who believe that, by developing insecurity in the countries of the region by sending arms and exporting terrorism, they are buying security for themselves are wrong,” he told Lebanese Foreign Minister Adnan Mansour, Iran’s official IRNA news agency said.
Following the Damascus talks, Jalili told Iran’s Al-Alam Arabic-language television Tehran was using “all means possible” to secure the release of its 48 citizens abducted by rebels.
In Aleppo, clashes rocked several areas of the city center early yesterday, while the army also shelled rebel-held areas in the east, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The head of the UN observer mission in Syria, Lt Gen. Babacar Gaye, expressed concern for civilians trapped in the city of some 2.7 million people.
Defected ex-Premier Riad Hijab was in Jordan firming up his plans after his shock defection to the opposition, which Washington said showed Assad’s regime was crumbling.
US National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor called Hijab’s defection “just the latest indication that Assad has lost control of Syria and that the momentum is with the opposition forces and the Syrian people.”
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said yesterday that the crisis in Syria must not be allowed to descend into sectarian warfare and she warned against “proxies or terrorist fighters” being sent in to join the conflict. “We have to send very clear expectations about avoiding sectarian warfare. Those who are attempting to exploit the situation by sending in proxies or terrorist fighters must realize that will not be tolerated,” Clinton said at a news conference in Pretoria. She did not elaborate on her reference to “proxies or terrorist fighters” or name any particular country or group.
An Alawite film director was assassinated near his home on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria’s General Cinema Institute said yesterday. “Treacherous hands assassinated” Bassam Mohieddin on Sunday, the institute said in a statement, adding the killing took place in Jdaidet Artuz, scene of recent clashes between troops and rebels.
Rami Abdel Rahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, confirmed the assassination.
Born in 1955 in the coastal city of Tartus, Mohieddin, an Alawite, held an MA in filmmaking and television from the National Academy of Film and Theatre Arts in Sofia, Bulgaria. Rights watchdogs have expressed fears that the Syrian uprising — in which more than 21,000 people have been killed since March 2011 — is becoming increasingly sectarian.
