Interventionists Planning Chemical Attack On Damascus While Death Toll Reaches 150,000 In Syria
By Countercurrents
02 April, 2014
Countercurrents.org
Reports in media including KUNA said:
Interventionists are planning to launch attacks using chemical weapons in Jobar area, Damascus, and to accuse the Syrian government of it, Syria's Permanent Representative to the UN Bashar Al-Jaafari said April 1, 2014.
The information was tracked in a phone call between suspected interventionists monitored by government authorities.
Al-Jaafari has sent two identical letters on March 25, 2014 to UN Secretary General and President of the Security Council about the two vital issues.
Citing the diplomat Syrian news agency (SANA) said:
The Syrian authorities monitored a landline phone call between two terrorists in Jobar area in Damascus suburb, during which one of the terrorists said a third terrorist referred to as Abu Nader is secretly distributing gas masks among his associates to protect them from toxic gas.
These terrorists would then accuse the Syrian government of the attack.
The Syrian diplomat’s letter has been posted on the UN website.
The Syrian security services, Jaafari said, also intercepted another communication between militants one of whom was called Abu Jihad. During that conversation, the latter indicated that toxic gas would be used and “asked those who are working with him to supply protective masks.”
Back in March, Jaafari informed the Security Council that a person named Haytham Salahuddin Qassab “transported chemical substances from Turkey on behalf of the terrorist organization known as Ahrar al-Sham.” He allegedly purchased the chemical agents from Turkey’s Dharwa Import and Export Company.
The substances reportedly included white phosphorous and isopropyl hydroxylamine. It was alleged, Jaafari said, that militants planned to use them to produce white smoke in certain areas and later claim that Syrian planes had bombed them.
“However, the primary reason for requesting those substances was to use them as chemical weapons,” the Syrian diplomat warned.
Syria’s UN Ambassador said: Militants had earlier followed a similar scenario in the chemical attacks in Allepo and in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta, when they blamed Assad’s forces for the deadly incidents.
150,000 dead
At least 150,000 people have been killed in Syria's three-year-old interventionist war, a third of them civilians, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
The UK-based SOHR, which monitors violence in Syria through a network of activists and medical or security sources, said the real toll was likely to be significantly higher at about 220,000 deaths.
The last UN figures, released in July 2013, put the death toll at at least 100,000 but it said in January it would stop updating the toll as conditions on the ground made it impossible to make accurate estimates.
The Observatory said it had registered the deaths of 150,344 people since 18 March 2011, when Assad's security forces first fired on protesters calling for reform.
The SOHR said nearly 38,000 interventionists have been killed, including fighters from the Nusra Front, al-Qaida's affiliate in Syria, and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (Isis), an al-Qaida splinter group that includes many foreign fighters.
More than 58,000 pro-Assad fighters were killed, including regular security forces and Syrian pro-government militia, as well as 364 fighters from the Lebanese Shia militia Hezbollah and 605 other foreign Shia Muslims.
In addition to the fatalities, the Observatory said 18,000 people were missing after being detained by security forces while another 8,000 people had been kidnapped or detained by the interventionists.
Interventionists kill Armenians
Russia strongly condemned the brutal acts perpetrated by armed terrorist groups in Syria, affirming the UN Security Council has to discuss the massacre against the Armenians in Kassab, Lattakia countryside and give an initial evaluation to this act.
On a videotape broadcast on You Tube on Kassab events, the Russian Foreign Ministry said "Even though that video tape didn't show execution of Armenians in Kassab, but the killing of Syrian soldiers at the hands of gunmen, this doesn't make the crime less brutal.
Meanwhile, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov called for a Security Council urgent meeting to discuss the crimes committed by the armed terrorist groups against the residents of Kassab city in Lattakia countryside, near the border with Turkey.
Armed terrorist groups launched last week an assault against Kassab city in northern Syria under the cover and support of Turkey’s Erdogan government, which has facilitated the entry of the gunmen into Lattakia northern countryside.
Arming the terrorists continue
Russian defense minister Sergey Shoygu said Western and Gulf countries continue to provide weapons to terrorist groups in Syria, and that the situation in Syria is still tense because of that.
In a statement following a meeting of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Tajikistan on April 1, 2014, Shoygu said that there are fighters, who have fought in Libya, infiltrating Syria and supporting oppositions in Tunisia, Algeria and Egypt, adding that these issues should not be over looked by the SCO.
He warned that any foreign military interference in Syria would lead to catastrophic results on the whole region, citing the negative impacts of the interference in Libya.
He stressed that the SCO should pay attention to the developments in the Middle East and North Africa, adding that if these challenges were not dealt with, then they would affect other neighboring countries.
The Russian defense ministry fully supports the Chinese initiative on forming a counter-terrorism center affiliated to the SCO, Shoygu said.
Latakia position recaptured
Syrian troops recaptured a key position in coastal Latakia province, a regime bastion as interventionists press a campaign in the region.
"Syrian army units have full control of Observatory 45 in the north of Latakia province and are continuing to pursue terrorist groups," the state broadcaster said, citing the military.
Observatory 45 is a strategic hilltop that overlooks several areas inhabited by residents from the Alawite community.
Live TV report from near the hilltop and broadcast pictures of dead bodies it said were "terrorists," many of them non-Syrians.
Last week the rebels seized the hill as part of an offensive launched March 21 in Latakia province, which had been relatively untouched by the widespread violence elsewhere in the country.
The interventionists including jihadists from the Al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front have also captured the Armenian town of Kasab and the nearby Kasab border crossing with Turkey, as well as the village of Samra, giving them access to the Mediterranean for the first time.
After a series of interventionists’ losses in Damascus province, they have shifted their focus to Latakia.
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