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Attackers target Syrian natural gas infrastructure

Attacks on natural gas facilities in Syria caused a substantial loss in daily energy supplies, a petroleum ministry official said. The official in the Syrian Petroleum Ministry told the Syrian Arab News Agency terrorists attacked a natural gas pipeline that links Homs, a city in western Syria, to Deir Ezzor province, in the east. SANA said Sunday the attack cut off the supply of 194 million cubic feet of natural gas per day. A separate attack on a natural gas field in Palmyra, in central Syria, led to the loss of 70 million cubic feet of natural gas per day. The ministry source said the government restricted the use of electricity to cope with the natural gas shortage. SANA reported work was under way to repair damage from the attacks “as soon as possible.” Last week, city officials in Homs said terrorists attacked […]

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Disillusionment Grows Among Syrian Opposition as Fighting Drags On

In a terrace cafe within earshot of army artillery, a 28-year-old graduate student wept as she confessed that she had stopped planning antigovernment protests and delivering medical supplies to rebel-held towns. Khaled, 33, a former protester who fled Damascus after being tortured and fired from his bank post, quit his job in Turkey with the exile opposition, disillusioned and saying that he wished the uprising “had never happened.” In the Syrian city of Homs, a rebel fighter, Abu Firas, 30, recently put down the gun his wife had sold her jewelry to buy, disgusted with his commanders, who, he said, focus on enriching themselves. Now he finds himself trapped under government shelling, broke and hopeless. “The ones who fight now are from the side of the regime or the side of the thieves,” he said in a recent interview via Skype. “I was stupid and naïve,” […]

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Insight: After Assad, Syria democrats learn to fear Qaeda

When he was agitating for revolution, urging fellow Syrians to rise up against President Bashar al-Assad, Abdullah dreaded the midnight knock at the door from the secret police. Now that the uprising has succeeded in his home town near Aleppo, pro-democracy activists are living in fear again – and this time those who brand them "traitor" don’t bother to knock. Two years ago, after Abdullah broke off his studies to run social media campaigns against Assad, he was held and tortured by security men. This http://newspko.wpengine.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=72699&action=edit#category-allsummer, it happened again – only now it was Islamist gunmen loyal to al Qaeda who smashed into his family’s house, broke everything in their way and took him off to a cell where, once more, he was blindfolded and beaten. "The sad thing is that those who were doing this were not Assad’s police," Abdullah told Reuters from Turkey, where […]

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Syria peace talks set for January 22 in Geneva: U.N.

GENEVA (Reuters) – An international peace conference aimed at ending Syria’s civil war will be held on January 22, the first face-to-face talks between the government of President Bashar al-Assad and rebels seeking to overthrow him, the United Nations said on Monday. The United Nations is hoping for a peaceful transition in Syria, building on an agreement between world powers reached in June last year. The deal calls for the warring sides to set up a transitional governing body with full executive powers, including over military and security entities, but leaves open the fate of Assad. "We will go to Geneva with a mission of hope," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement. The announcement came as Syria mediator Lakhdar Brahimi met senior U.S. and Russian officials in Geneva in his latest effort to get negotiations on track to end a war, now in its third year, that […]

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Syrian officials say terrorists damaged refinery in Homs

The mayor of Homs, Syria, Talal Barazi, said work crews were repairing the city’s oil refinery, damaged in what was described as an attack by terrorists. Barazi said the city was providing all necessary resources to help in the repairs, the official Syrian Arab News Agency reported Sunday. Akram Sultan, directory of the refinery, said terrorists attacked the facility during the weekend, crippling its ability to deliver crude oil to the Syrian market. SANA reported one worker was injured in the attack. In another attack, rebel forces, including those aligned with al-Qaida, captured the Omar oil field in eastern Syria, The New York Times reported Satuday. The report didn’t indicate if the field’s production infrastructure was damaged in the attack. Syria relies on oil and natural gas revenue to help pay off its government debt but its long-running civil war and western economic […]

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Ahead of Syria Talks, Local Truces Falter

With the first peace talks between the Syrian regime and opposition now set for January, a series of failed government efforts to forge regional truces underscores the deep mistrust between them. In most cases, what the government calls national reconciliation efforts are backed by the threat of force. Syrian troops have laid siege to many of the areas where the regime has tried to negotiate with rebels, according to government and military officials, opposition members, mediators and residents. Particularly around the capital Damascus and the city of Homs to the north, President Bashar al-Assad’s regime has put pressure on civilians and community leaders in rebel-held areas, banking on them to force local fighters to either surrender and accept amnesty or flee. But in one sprawling Homs neighborhood of more than 400,000 known as Waer, where reconciliation talks have faltered, some consider surrender as tantamount to suicide. In another […]

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Young Palestinian Refugees Join Jihadists Fighting in Syria

;Inside Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp, disaffected and unemployed youth are increasingly joining radical Islamist groups fighting in Syria, saying it gives their lives a sense of purpose. The growing hold of the jihadists is evident on the street at the camp’s entrance, lined with flags of al Qaeda-linked groups that operate in Lebanon or Syria. Homes on Tawareq Street are pockmarked by bullets and rocket-propelled grenades—scars of recent fighting between Islamist militants and the Lebanese army. The camp’s ties to jihadist groups fighting in Syria came into sharp relief on Tuesday. The head of the group that claimed responsibility for the bombing that killed 25 people outside Iran’s Embassy in Beirut lived in the camp for a time and the brigade operated openly there. The group linked the bombing to the conflict in Syria. The youth of Ain el-Hilweh, Lebanon’s most radicalized camp, have largely […]

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Beirut Bombs Strike at Iran as Assad’s Ally

BEIRUT, Lebanon — A double bombing struck the Iranian Embassy compound in Beirut on Tuesday, in the deadliest assault on Iran’s interests since it emerged as the most forceful backer of the Syrian government against an armed insurgency. The frontal attack struck a symbol of the country’s powerful influence in Lebanon and neighboring Syria. The Abdullah Azzam Brigades, an offshoot of Al Qaeda that operates in Lebanon, claimed responsibility for the bombings, which killed at least 23 people, including an Iranian diplomat. Syria, Iran and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant organization, pointed fingers at Israel and Saudi Arabia, and officials said it was unclear who had carried out the attack. Regardless, it was quickly seen as retaliation against Iran and Hezbollah, Iran’s ally, for supporting the Syrian government. The double bombing highlighted the risks and costs that Iran faces over Syria, which some analysts have called Iran’s Vietnam. Others say […]

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Syrian troops capture key town near Lebanon border

AP Photo DAMASCUS, Syria (AP) — Syrian government troops captured a key town near the Lebanese border from rebels on Tuesday, days after launching a broad offensive in the mountainous western region, state media, activists and the army said. The attack on Qara began Friday morning in what appeared to be an operation aimed at cutting off rebel supply lines to Lebanon. The Qara route is particularly important to rebels entrenched in suburbs around Damascus, and also lies on the main north-south highway linking the capital to government strongholds along the Mediterranean coast. State TV reported troops were “in full control,” while the army said in a statement it had captured the town Tuesday morning and that “large numbers of terrorists who took positions in the city were wiped out.” The Syrian government refers to all armed opposition fighters as terrorists. “This achievement aims to strengthen control of supply […]

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Russia invites Syrian opposition to Moscow for talks: FM

MOSCOW, Nov. 18 (Xinhua) — Russia has invited Syrian opposition groups to travel to Moscow for talks aimed at bridging their differences on the planned Geneva peace conference, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Monday. Leaders of the Istanbul-based Syrian National Coalition (SNC) ” did not refuse to come to Moscow, and they are studying our proposal,” Lavrov told a news briefing. He confirmed that Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov held talks with the SNC leaders in Istanbul last week. Russia’s mediation is to help the Syrian opposition to form a single delegation to the talks, which the United States and Russia are trying to convene in Geneva by the end of the year, Lavrov said. The proposed meeting is to “consolidate positive trends,” which included negotiations which have begun between the SNC, one of Kurdish groups and the so-called “internal opposition,” about finding common approaches to the peace […]

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