Tag Archives: Civil War

Expansion of U.S. Ground Troops in Syria

Children walk near garbage in al-Jazmati neighbourhood of Aleppo

HANOVER, Germany (Reuters) – President Barack Obama announced on Monday the biggest expansion of U.S. ground troops in Syria since the civil war there began, saying he would dispatch 250 special forces soldiers to help local militia to build on successes against Islamic State.

The new deployment increases U.S. forces in Syria six-fold to about 300. While the total U.S. ground force is still small by comparison to other American deployments, defense experts said it could help shift the momentum in Syria by giving more Syrian fighters on the ground access to U.S. close air support.

Announcing the decision in Germany at the end of a six-day foreign tour, Obama said the move followed on victories over Islamic State that clawed back territory from the hard-line Sunni Islamist group.

“Given the success, I’ve approved the deployment of up to 250 additional U.S. personnel in Syria, including special forces to keep up this momentum,” Obama said in a speech at a trade fair in the northern city of Hanover, the last stop on a trip that has taken him to Saudi Arabia and Britain.

“They’re not going to be leading the fight on the ground, but they will be essential in providing the training and assisting local forces as they continue to drive ISIL back,” he added, using an acronym for Islamic State, also known as ISIS.

The U.S. military has led an air campaign against Islamic State since 2014 in both Iraq and Syria, but the campaign’s effectiveness in Syria has been limited by a lack of allies on the ground in a country where a complex, multi-sided civil war has raged for five years.

Russia launched its own air campaign in Syria last year, which has been more effective because it is closely coordinated with the government of President Bashar al-Assad, who is Moscow’s ally but a foe of the United States.

CLOSE AIR SUPPORT

Washington’s main allies on the ground have been a Kurdish force known as the YPG, who wrested control of much of the Turkish-Syrian border from Islamic State. The alliance is complex because U.S. ally Turkey is deeply hostile to the YPG.

“Presumably these are going to assist our Kurdish YPG friends to widen and deepen their offensive against IS in northeastern Syria,” Tim Ripley, defense analyst and writer for IHS Janes Defence Weekly magazine, said.

“You can provide more advisers to more units, to allow more units to receive close air support,” Ripley said, of the new U.S. deployment. “The more people you have, the more militia groups can have close air support that makes them more effective so they can advance in more areas.”

The Syria Democratic Forces, a U.S.-backed coalition set up in October to unite the Kurdish YPG and some Arab allies, said it welcomed Obama’s announcement but still wanted more help.

“Any support they offer is positive but we hope there will be greater support,” SDF spokesman Talal Silo said. “So far we have been supplied only with ammunition, and we were hoping to be supplied with military hardware …”

Ripley said Washington would still have to take a political decision to help the Kurds despite Turkish objections. Kurdish advances have largely stopped since February, with Turkey strongly objecting to the Kurds taking more territory.

“The real question has to be: are they going to let the Kurdish YPG forces actually go and attack and capture some territory? This is something the Americans have not been happy about because when the YPG forces attack and capture territory, it tends to anger the president of Turkey,” Ripley said.

If the Kurds are given the green light to advance with American air support, the main short-term objective could be sealing off the last stretch of the border that is not held by the Kurds or the government, west of the Euphrates river.

That would deny Islamic State access to the outside world, but would infuriate Turkey which regards the border as the main access route for other Sunni Muslim rebel groups it supports against Assad, and for aid to civilians in rebel areas.

THE RACE FOR RAQQA

U.S. special forces teams providing close air support could ultimately help the Kurds advance on Raqqa, Islamic State’s main Syrian stronghold and de facto capital.

“This places them in another quandary. Do they coordinate their attack on Raqqa with the Syrian army and the Russian air force, who are … advancing on Raqqa? … The question is who’s going to get there first,” Ripley said.

With German Chancellor Angela Merkel sitting in the audience, Obama also urged Europe and NATO allies to do more in the fight against Islamic State, also known as ISIS or ISIL.

The group controls the cities of Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria and a swathe of territory in between, and has proven a potent threat abroad, claiming responsibility for major attacks in Paris in November and Brussels in March.

“Even as European countries make important contributions against ISIL, Europe, including NATO, can still do more,” Obama said ahead of talks later in the day with Merkel and the leaders of Britain, France and Italy.

European countries have mostly contributed only small numbers of aircraft to the U.S.-led mission targeting Islamic State fighters in Iraq and Syria.

Obama pledged to wind down wars in the Middle East when he was first elected in 2008. But in the latter part of his presidency he has found it necessary to keep troops in Afghanistan, return them to Iraq and send them to Syria, where the five-year civil war has killed at least 250,000 people.

Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, briefing reporters before Obama spoke, said U.S. forces “are not being sent there on a combat mission”.

In Iraq, Islamic State has been forced back since December when it lost Ramadi, capital of the western province of Anbar. In Syria, jihadist fighters have been pushed from the strategic city of Palmyra by Russian-backed Syrian government forces.

TALKS IN MELTDOWN, TRUCE IN TATTERS

But Washington’s lack of allies on the ground has meant its role in Syria has been circumscribed. The sudden entry of Moscow into the conflict last year has tipped the balance of power in favor of Assad, against a range of rebel groups supported by Turkey, other Arab states and the West.

Washington and Moscow sponsored a ceasefire between most of the main warring parties since February, which allowed the first peace talks involving Assad’s government and many of his foes to begin last month. However, those talks appear close to collapse, with the main opposition delegation having suspended its participation last week, and the ceasefire is largely in tatters. Islamic State is excluded from the ceasefire.

Fighting has increased in recent days near Aleppo, once Syria’s largest city, now split between rebel and government zones. A monitoring group said 60 people had been killed there in three days of intense fighting, including civilians killed by rebel shelling and government air strikes.

The Syrian government’s negotiator at the Geneva talks said a bomb hit a hospital near a Shi’ite shrine near Damascus, killing many innocent people and proving the government’s enemies were terrorists.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton and Andreas Rinke in Hanover, Jeff Mason and Kevin Drawbaugh in Washington, Michelle Martin in Berlin and Peter Graff in London; writing by Noah Barkin and Peter Graff, editing by Peter Millership)

Syrian peace talks limp on to next week without opposition

Syrian Peace Talks

By John Davison and Stephanie Nebehay

BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – The U.N. special envoy for Syria has vowed to take fragile peace talks into next week despite a walkout by the main armed opposition, a breakdown in a truce and signs that both sides are gearing up to escalate the five-year-old civil war.

Staffan de Mistura, who dismissed the opposition’s departure as “diplomatic posturing”, expected the delegation to return to the negotiating table. The opposition declared a “pause” this week because of a surge in fighting and too little movement from the government side on freeing detainees or allowing in aid.

Asked whether talks would carry on, de Mistura said on Thursday night: “We cannot let this drop. We have to renew the ceasefire, we have to accelerate humanitarian aid and we are going to ask the countries which are the co-sponsors to meet.”

The talks at U.N. headquarters in Geneva aim to halt a conflict that has allowed for the rise of the Islamic State group, sucked in regional and major powers and created the world’s worst refugee crisis.

In an interview with French-language Radio Television Suisse (RTS), de Mistura said 400,000 people had been killed in the war, far higher than the previous U.N. toll which has varied from 250,000 to 300,000.

The war was tilted in Assad’s favor late last year by Russia’s intervention, supported on the ground by members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps who have been bolstered recently by the arrival of members of Iran’s regular army.

WASHINGTON CONCERNED BY RUSSIAN MOVES

The White House has expressed concern that Russia has repositioned artillery near the disputed city of Aleppo.

The Russian military moves have sharpened divisions in Washington over whether President Vladimir Putin genuinely backs the U.N.-led initiative to end the war or is using the talks to mask renewed military support for Assad.

“The regime is so reliant on external support that it is inconceivable that its allies don’t have the leverage to change its approach,” Britain’s envoy to the Syria peace talks, Gareth Bayley, said on Friday.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that the decision by the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) to quit Geneva was not a loss for anyone except the HNC itself.

“If they want to ensure their participation (in the peace talks) only by putting ultimatums, with which others must agree, it’s their problem,” Lavrov said, adding:

“For God’s sake, we shouldn’t be running after them, we must work with those who think not about their career, not about how to please their sponsors abroad, but with those who are ready to think about the destiny of their country.”

The head of the Syrian delegation, Bashar Ja’afari, confirmed he met de Mistura to discuss humanitarian issues on Friday and would be meeting with him again on Monday.

Moscow and Washington sponsored the fragile cessation of hostilities that went into effect on Feb. 27 to allow talks to take place but has been left in tatters by increased fighting in the past week.

In Aleppo, government air strikes in different parts of the city killed at least 10 people and wounded dozens more on Friday, with the death toll expected to rise due to serious injuries, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Further southwest in Hama province, warplanes targeted rebel-held areas in the strategic Ghab plain that borders Latakia province, Assad’s coastal heartland.

Insurgents announced a new battle in Latakia earlier this week which they said was in response to ceasefire violations by the government side, launching fierce assaults there. Fighting raged in the area on Friday, said the British-based Observatory, which monitors the conflict with a network of sources on the ground.

ASSAD MAIN ISSUE

Endorsed by the U.N. Security Council, the Geneva peace talks marked the most serious effort yet to resolve the war, but failed to make progress on political issues, with no sign of compromise over the question of Assad’s future.

Government negotiators say Assad’s presidency is non-negotiable. Underlining confidence in Damascus, a top Assad aide reiterated its view that local truce agreements and “destroying terrorism” were the way toward a political solution.

The opposition wants a political transition without Assad, and says the government has failed to make goodwill measures such as releasing detainees and allowing enough aid into opposition-held areas besieged by the military.

The HNC, which is backed by Western nations and key Arab states, had this week urged more military support for rebels after declaring the truce was over and said talks would not re-start until the government stopped committing “massacres”.

All the main HNC members had left Geneva by Friday, leaving a handful of experts and a point of contact behind.

With violence escalating, peace talks might not resume for at least a year if they are abandoned, one senior Western diplomat said.

Syria is now a patchwork of areas controlled by the government, an array of rebel groups, Islamic State, and the well-organized Kurdish YPG militia.

On Friday, rare clashes between YPG fighters and government-allied forces and militiamen took place for nearly a third day, the Observatory said, in fighting which a Syrian Kurdish official said had killed 26 combatants. Kurdish and government forces have mostly avoided confrontation in the past.

(Additional reporting by John Irish in Geneva; writing by Peter Millership; editing by Peter Graff)

Lebanese military gets U.S., British aid for defending border with Syria

US Helicopters in Lebanon

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon’s armed forces acquired three U.S. helicopters worth $26 million on Thursday to help in efforts to stop Syria’s civil war spilling over its border, along with almost $29 million of British aid as EU countries also step up their support.

The Lebanese armed forces have now received a total of nine Huey II multi-mission helicopters from the United States as part of $1.3 billion in security assistance given since 2004, U.S. interim Ambassador Richard H. Jones said.

“We have no plans to slow down or alter that level of support,” Jones said at Beirut’s military air base.

Fighting between Islamic State and al Qaeda-linked Nusra Front militants often overlaps Lebanon’s mountainous northern border with Syria, where a civil war is now in its fifth year.

Fighters briefly overran the northern Lebanese town of Arsal in 2014 before withdrawing to the hills after clashes with the army. Fighting in the border area killed at least 32 Nusra and Islamic State fighters this week.

The helicopters will improve the army’s ability to quickly reinforce “remote areas of tension along the border in support of the army’s fight against terrorists”, Jones said.

Lebanon has a weak government and a number of nations support its armed forces, concerned that regional conflict and a power struggle between Iran and Saudi Arabia could again destabilise a country which emerged from its own civil war 26 years ago.

On a visit to Lebanon on Thursday, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond announced a further $22 million for border guard training through to 2019 and $6.5 million for general training of 5,000 Lebanese troops. “Lebanon is an important part of the front line against terrorism,” Hammond said.

“We are delighted by the way the UK support is being translated into strengthened border security and is enabling the armed forces to take the fight to Daesh and keep Lebanon safe from the incursions of Daesh,” he said, referring to Islamic State.

EU foreign policy head Federica Mogherini, who visited Lebanon last week, said that Lebanon’s security was important for Europe’s safety too and the EU was willing to expand its support for the Lebanese armed forces.

In February Saudi Arabia suspended a $3 billion aid package for the Lebanese army in what an official called a response to Beirut’s failure to condemn attacks on Saudi diplomatic missions in Iran.

Lebanon’s Iranian-backed group Hezbollah is also a significant military presence in the country, with extensive combat experience. It fought Israel in an inconclusive 2006 war and is supporting President Bashar al-Assad’s forces in Syria.

(Reporting by Lisa Barrington and Issam Abdallah; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Differences in Islam play role in refugee crisis, says UK ex-foreign minister

LONDON (Reuters) – Civil wars crippling many Muslim states and fueling a global refugee crisis are driven in part by major struggles within Islam that cannot be ignored, former British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said on Wednesday.

This “implosion” in about two dozen Muslim-majority countries has forced people from their homes in “unheard-of” numbers, Miliband, now head of the New York-based humanitarian group International Rescue Committee, said in a speech.

Miliband spoke at the international affairs think-tank Chatham House in London, where he will take part in a major conference on Thursday that aims to raise billions of dollars from donors to respond to the Syrian crisis.

“More people are fleeing conflict, they’re fleeing conflict significantly in Muslim-majority countries, so the implosion in the Islamic world, in Afghanistan, in the Middle East, is driving it,” he said.

Venturing into what he called “tricky territory”, he added it would be dishonest not to report that his organization’s work was increasingly focused on crises in Muslim-majority countries.

“It seems to me there are big questions, big debates happening within Islam about the reconciliation of Islam to modernity, to democracy, of different segments within the Islamic tradition,” he said.

“To pretend that that’s not part of the story wouldn’t be right,” he added, without elaborating.

In several war-torn countries, militant Sunni literalists such as the Taliban and Islamic State are battling other Muslims who want the faith more adapted to the modern world or belong to a minority sect such as Shi’ism.

Miliband added his analysis did not apply to the whole of the Muslim world, citing Indonesia, the most populous Muslim-majority country, and Bangladesh as two examples of countries that did not fit into the narrative.

“It’s not right to pretend that all Muslim-majority countries are undergoing this implosion,” he said. “But I think if you look at the story in South Asia over the last 30 years and the story in the Middle East over the last 20 years, then that’s part of the story.”

Miliband said the Syrian crisis was a long-term issue, with large numbers of refugees likely to be living in Lebanon, Jordan, Turkey and other countries for many years, and this called for a change in the scale and nature of the response.

Refugees were increasingly living in urban areas, he said, where the fact they are not separate from the general population creates new demands very different from those of refugee camps.

Dozens of heads of state and government are due to attend the London pledging conference.

The United Nations estimates that $7.73 billion is needed to meet Syrian humanitarian needs this year, with an additional $1.2 billion required by countries in the region.

(Reporting by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Tom Heneghan)

More aid reaches trapped Syrians, doubts cast on peace talks

NEAR MADAYA, Syria/BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) – A second batch of aid reached a besieged Syrian town and two trapped villages on Thursday and the United Nations accused rival factions of committing war crimes by causing civilians to starve to death.

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the war, said aid trucks had entered the town of Madaya near the border with Lebanon, and the villages of Kefraya and al-Foua in Idlib province in the northwest. Syrian state media said six trucks had gone into Madaya.

For months, tens of thousands have been blockaded by government troops in Madaya and surrounded by rebel forces in the two villages.

“According to the ICRC team that entered Madaya, the people were very happy, even crying when they realized that wheat flour is on the way,” Dominik Stillhart, International Committee of the Red Cross director of operations, said in New York.

Aid officials hoped to bring in more supplies, with fuel deliveries set for Sunday, according to Stillhart.

“We hope … this effort will continue,” said Yacoub El Hillo, the U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator in Syria, who accompanied the convoy.

A senior U.N. human rights official said the use of starvation as a weapon was a war crime.

“Starving civilians is a war crime under international humanitarian law and of course any such act deserves to be condemned, whether it’s in Madaya or Idlib,” said U.N. Human Rights High Commissioner Zeid bin Ra’ad.

“Should there be prosecutions? Of course. At the very least there should be accountability for these crimes.”

“ATROCIOUS ACTS”

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Syria’s warring parties, particularly the government, were committing “atrocious acts” and “unconscionable abuses” against civilians.

“Let me be clear: the use of starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime,” Ban told reporters.

The siege of Madaya, where people have reportedly died of starvation, has become a focal issue for Syrian opposition groups who want all such blockades lifted before they enter negotiations with the government planned for Jan. 25.

A prominent member of the political opposition to President Bashar al-Assad told Reuters that date was unrealistic, reiterating opposition demands for the lifting of sieges, a ceasefire and the release of detainees before negotiations.

“I personally do not think Jan. 25 is a realistic date for when it will be possible to remove all obstacles facing the negotiations,” George Sabra told Reuters.

A total of 45 trucks carrying food and medical supplies were due to be delivered to Madaya, and 18 to al-Foua and Kefraya on Thursday, aid officials said.

The Syrian Observatory said it had recorded 27 deaths in Madaya from malnutrition and lack of medical supplies, and at least 13 deaths in al-Foua and Kefraya due to lack of medical supplies.

The population of Madaya is estimated at 40,000, while about 20,000 live in al-Foua and Kefraya.

“The scenes we witnessed in Madaya were truly heartbreaking,” said Marianne Gasser, the most senior official with the International Committee of the Red Cross in Syria.

“The conditions are some of the worst that I have witnessed in my five years in the country. This cannot go on,” she said.

PEACE TALKS

The talks planned for Jan. 25 in Geneva are part of a peace process endorsed by the U.N. Security Council last month in a rare display of international agreement on Syria, where the war has killed 250,000 people.

U.N. Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said after meeting representatives of the United States, Russia and other powers on Wednesday that Jan. 25 was still the intended date.

Russia said Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry would meet in Zurich on Wednesday, five days before the talks date.

But even with the backing of the United States and Russia, which support opposite sides in the conflict, the peace process faces formidable obstacles.

“The meeting is due in a bit more than 10 days, but before then de Mistura will present in New York what he has achieved,” said a senior Western diplomat.

“But he still has to define how to press ahead with this mechanism which to me is not looking good because all sides are not agreed on the parameters.”

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Jan. 25 remained the plan “but it is human beings who are negotiating on both sides” and changes regarding the date could still arise.

Fighting is raging between government forces backed by the Russian air force and Iranian forces on one hand, and rebels including groups that have received military support from states including Saudi Arabia and the United States.

Rebel groups that back the idea of a political settlement have rejected any negotiations before goodwill measures from Damascus including a ceasefire.

Sabra, the opposition politician, said: “There are still towns under siege. There are still Russian attacks on villages, schools and hospitals. There is no sign of goodwill.”

There are about 15 siege locations in Syria, where 450,000 people are trapped, the United Nations says.

The Syrian government has said it is ready to take part in the talks, but wants to see who is on the opposition negotiating team and a list of armed groups that will be classified as terrorists as part of the peace process.

Underscoring the complications on that issue, Russia condemned as terrorists two rebel groups that are represented in a newly-formed opposition council tasked with overseeing the negotiations.

“We do not see Ahrar al-Sham or Jaysh al-Islam as part of the opposition delegation because they are terrorist organizations,” the RIA news agency quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov as saying.

(Reporting by Kinda Makieh near Madaya, Tom Perry, Mariam Karouny and Lisa Barrington in Beirut, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Jack Stubbs and Vladimir Soldatkin in Moscow, John Irish in Paris, Tom Finn in Doha, Francois Murphy in Vienna and Michelle Nichols in New York; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Syrian Opposition Agrees to Meet Government for Peace Talks

Syrian opposition forces have agreed to meet with the government for peace talks next month.

A wide variety of critics of President Bashar al-Assad, consisting of both political opponents and rebel forces, had spent the past two days in the Saudi Arabian city of Riyadh trying to develop a unified vision as to how they could politically put an end to the country’s ongoing civil war.

On Friday, the Syrian Coalition released a statement saying the group was successful.

Its members said they’re seeking a new, pluralistic democracy built upon equality, transparency, accountability and law. The coalition said in the statement that it will form a committee that will pick the delegates to attend the meeting with Assad, but neither the president nor those in his current regime could participate in the transition process “or any future political settlement.”

The coalition said it wants equal rights in Syria, and wants to craft a regime “that represents all sectors of the Syrian society, with women playing an important role and with no discrimination against people, regardless of their religious, denominational or ethnic backgrounds.”

Reuters reported the peace talks will take place in the first 10 days of January.

Syria has been in turmoil since 2011, when Assad’s opponents began a rebellion that developed into a civil war. The BBC reported Friday that at least 250,000 people have died and about 11 million additional people have been driven from their homes as a result of the ongoing conflict.

Cyclone Chapala Dumps One Year of Rain Plus on War Torn Yemen

Yemen, a country that gets an average of 4 inches of rain per year has received that and more in just this one day as Cyclone Chapala crashed it’s way onto its coast. Some news reports in Yemen are reporting up to 48 inches of flooding rains. Thousands are fleeing something that they have never seen before!  This tropical storm is the first on record to make landfall in the impoverished Arab country.

The country has been plunged into chaos this year by a conflict between Houthi rebels and forces loyal to deposed President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi. A Saudi-led coalition in March began bombing the Houthis, who are aligned with Iran.

Yemen is already dealing with one of the largest humanitarian crises in the world, according to the United Nations. The widespread fighting has killed thousands of people, many of them civilians, and left millions more desperately short of food, water and medical supplies.

Now the Yemeni people are faced with 85 mph winds, incredible flash flooding, rock and mud slides and very little help.  According to news reports at least 6000 have fled to upper ground to escape the escalating flooding.  

According to news reports, Abdul-Jamil Mohammed, deputy director of the Environmental Protection Authority on the island of Socotra, a Yemeni island where Chapala has already passed reported strong winds, heavy rain and big waves overnight into Monday.

At least three people were killed and over 200 injured.  

Mohammed said the storm damaged some homes and uprooted trees in Hadibo, the capital of Socotra. Contact has been lost with the northeastern part of the island since Sunday night, and floods have covered the roads leading there, he said.

“Our problem is we have no one to help us here,” he said, explaining the island has one hospital and four ambulances. A shortage of fuel has already caused great trouble for the island.

While numerous tropical systems have formed in the Arabian Sea, it is uncommon for a storm the strength of Chapala to occur so far south and west. Chapala was the equivalent of a low-end Category 4 hurricane as it passed by Socotra.

Ukrainian President Removed From Power

The former President of the Ukraine is on the run after being removed from power and charged with mass murder in connection with the deaths of protesters.

Victor Yanukovich was removed by the country’s Parliament over the weekend and immediately went into hiding while declaring he was still the nation’s leader and experiencing a coup d’état.

The parliament called for a new Presidential election on May 25th and appointed an interim president who immediately issued an arrest warrant for Yanukovich for mass murder.  In the weeks leading to the Yanukovich’s removal, the government had been stepping up violent actions against protesters including more than two dozen deaths.

Prosecutors say the killings came at the order of Yanukovich who ordered all the protest camps destroyed and crowd forcibly removed from downtown Kiev.

The removal of Yanukovich is drawing the ire of Russian leaders who have lost a key ally in the region.  The new government, and the leaders of the opposition who lead the protests, have been calling for the Ukraine to join the European Union.  The protests began when Yanukovich withdrew from a tentative agreement with the EU in favor of close ties with Russia.

Ukraine Moves Closer To Civil War

Civil war in the Ukraine continues to grow likely after another short-lived truce between the country’s President and opposition leaders fell apart Thursday morning. 

At least 100 protesters are dead and over 500 injured when police and military troops attacked protest camps in the capital city of Kiev.  The deaths come after a hastily called cease-fire by government leaders after worldwide outcry over the killings of 28 protesters on Tuesday.

Ukrainian government officials say 25 police or military members have been injured or killed during the protests since Tuesday.

Hospital officials say that obviously professional and highly skilled snipers killed many of the protesters.  They say the wounds were directly to the heart, head or at the base of the neck where there was no chance to save their lives.

Officials with the European Union are beginning to pressure Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych to call for early elections as a way to placate the opposition leadership and protesters.  Russia, a close ally of Yanukovych, immediately denounced EU nations for the call, saying they are trying to force the country to align with western interests.

Top Syrian Rebel Commander Killed

The rebels attempting to overthrow the government of Bashir al-Assad took a major hit over the weekend with the death of a major rebel commander.

Abdul Qadir al-Saleh, the leader of the Liwa al-Tawlid, died overnight from wounds sustained in an air strike on a rebel held air base in Aleppo province on Thursday. The group is one of the major rebel forces in Syria with around 10,000 fighters. The group was the leaders of the rebels who took the city of Aleppo from government troops.

The brigade’s intelligence and financial chief died in the same attack.

“As an individual, he was very, very important, certainly in the Aleppo area, but increasingly as an individual that many in Syria felt represented the revolution,” IHS Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre Charles Lister told the AFP news agency. “He came from a humble background, was outwardly religious but was very open… and he maintained extremely good relations with almost all groups of all different natures.”

Observers say it’s likely the rebel group will rally after the death of their leader to launch a major counter-offensive against government forces.