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Weakened by years of war, Syria's government appears ready for the country's de facto partition, defending strategically important areas and leaving much of the country to rebels and jihadists, experts and diplomats say. The strategy was in evidence last week with the army's retreat from the ancient central city of Palmyra after an advance by the Islamic State group (ISIS or IS)... Syria's regime labels all those fighting to oust President Bashar al-Assad "terrorists," and has pointed to the emergence of ISIS and Al-Nusra as evidence that opponents of the regime are extremists. Since the uprising against Assad began in...

BEIRUT -- Carrying their rifles and small bags of belongings, hundreds of exhausted Syrian rebels withdrew Wednesday from their last remaining strongholds in the heart of Homs, surrendering to President Bashar Assad a bloodstained city that was once the centre of the revolt against him. For Assad, it is a powerful victory ahead of presidential elections. For the rebels, the dramatic exit after two years of enduring grueling assaults and siege captures their sense of abandonment amid world reluctance to help shift the balance of power on the ground. "We ate grass and leaves until there was nothing left for...

The household cleaning agent chlorine, in heavy concentration is purchased by Iran and and fitted with detonators, to provide President Bashar Assad with a vehicle for cheating on his undertaking to surrender Syria’s chemical arsenal under the year-old US-Russian chemical disarmament accord. And Assad is indeed getting away with using chlorine bombs, with crippling effect, especially on children, every few days. On April 7, Israel Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon offered chapter and verse to prove that the Syrian army had perpetrated a chemical attack on civilians in he town of Harasta on March 27, causing scores of serious injuries and...

HOMS, Syria (Reuters) - Syria evacuated 83 civilians on Friday who had lived under government siege in the devastated city of Homs for a year and a half, the first concrete result of talks launched two weeks ago to try to end the country's civil war.

More than 100 civilians have been killed in a new “massacre” in Syria, a watchdog said Thursday, according to AFP. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the deaths came on Tuesday, when the army swept through farmlands north of Homs city, where it said around 1,000 people had sought refuge from fighting in the central Syria metropolis. “The Syrian regime carried out a new massacre on Tuesday claiming 106 victims, including women and children,” the Britain-based watchdog, which relies on a network of activists and medics on the ground, told AFP. Witnesses said several members of the same family...

The Syrian crisis unbelievably took another turn for the worse Saturday, Dec. 29: After making no headway with Bashar Assad in Damascus, the UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi was told in no uncertain terms by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow: “There is no possibility of persuading Syrian ruler Bashar Assad to leave Syria.” As they spoke, a record 400 people died in hostilities in the country. The burnt remains of hundreds of people slaughtered by the army were discovered in a Homs district. And Syrian opposition leaders have repeatedly preconditioned their acceptance of the Russian invitation to talks...

SNIPPET: "Social media is no longer simply a fun way to share updates on the harmless idiosyncrasies of our lives. It can undermine national security, and there ought to be a more robust discussion between the Bay Area technology world and Washington on what to do about it. Cyber-terrorism, especially the potential for electronic tampering with U.S. industrial or military installations, is a paramount national security threat that Washington is working to forestall. We're all working to protect our accounts from hackers. But the cyber-threat getting far less public attention involves the social media networks we use every day and the...

Syria Live Blog 6 Seven people have died in Homs after they inhaled a "poisonous gas" used by government forces in a rebel-held neighbourhood, activists said.Activists also told Al Jazeera on Sunday night that scores of others were affected in al-Bayyada neighbourhood. Side effects reported include nausea, relaxed muscles, blurred vision, and breathing difficulties.Residents said they did not know the nature of the gas used."The situation is very difficult. We do not have enough facemasks. We don't know what this gas is but medics are saying it's something similar to Sarin gas," Raji Rahmet Rabbou, an activist in Homs, told...

A NUN who has been superior at a Syrian monastery for the past 18 years has warned that media coverage of ongoing violence in that country has been “partial and untrue”. It is “a fake”, Mother Agnes Mariam said, which “hides atrocities committed in the name of liberty and democracy”. Superior of the Melkite Greek Catholic monastery of St James the Mutilated in Qara, in Syria’s diocese of Homs, which is in full communion with Rome, she left Ireland yesterday after a three-day visit during which she met representatives of the Irish Catholic Bishops’ Conference in Maynooth. She told The...

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's troops are currently pounding Aleppo after Free Syrian Army (FSA) forces launched an offensive attack. Days earlier, regime forces were cracking down on a FSA guerilla attack in the heart of the capital, Damascus. In Homs, clashes between both forces are ongoing. Yet there is still no sign that Assad is even considering stepping down. It has become clear that there's no going back for the Syrian people, as they are now convinced that Assad had no intention of reform. Consequently, the rebellion is spreading, defections within the regime's army are increasing and opposition forces have...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://frontpagemag.com - Ethnic Cleansing of Syrian ChristiansPosted By Frank Crimi On March 29, 2012 @ 12:20 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 4 Comments Syrian President Basher Assad isn’t the only target of Syrian rebels as Syria’s Orthodox Christian Church reports “ongoing ethnic cleansing of Christians” by al-Qaeda-linked Islamist militant groups in the embattled Syrian city of Homs.The report from the Vatican news agency Fides says Brigade Faruq, which has links with elements of al-Qaeda in Iraq and Islamist mercenaries from Libya, has expelled 90 percent of Christians living in Homs, nearly 50,000 people.Reportedly, the armed Islamists...

The Syrian army has recaptured most of the northern rebel stronghold of Idlib near the Turkish border, pushing hundreds of military defectors out of a major base they had held for months even as pockets of resistance kept up their fight Tuesday. Members of the rebel Free Syrian Army gather in a mountainous area of the restive Idlib province in northwestern Syria. The three-day operation to capture the city followed closely after a similar offensive to dislodge the opposition from another key piece of territory it had controlled, the Baba Amr district in central Homs. The two victories gave President...

Despite reports of high-level defections of government and military officials, U.S. intelligence sees no signs of significant deterioration of support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad by his inner circle, senior U.S. intelligence officials said Friday. Read also: U.N. envoy to meet with Syria's president The officials, who would speak only on the condition that their names not be used, said that to date, the defections have been of lower-level officials and those in the military. None of those defections, including the group of military officers who are reported to have defected this week, are close enough to al-Assad to truly...

The United Nations humanitarian chief, Lady Amos, said she was shocked by the devastation she witnessed on a visit to Baba Amr, the suburb of the Syrian city of Homs that has suffered a month-long siege. -excerpt- She said: "The devastation there is significant. Part of Homs is completely destroyed and I am concerned to know what has happened to the people who live in that part of the city." -excerpt- The visit by Amos came as Syrian Arab Red Crescent aid workers entered Baba Amr to find it empty of its residents.

It was a star-filled night in Chechnya's besieged capital of Grozny. The snow crunched under my feet as I walked with the Chechen rebel commander away from the warmth of our safe house. When we entered a bombed-out neighborhood 15 minutes away, I put the battery in my Iridium satellite phone and waited for the glowing screen to signal that I had locked on to the satellites. I made my call. It was short. Then the commander made a call; he quickly hung up and handed me back the phone. "Enough," he said, motioning for me to remove the battery....

QUSAYR, Syria -- This city of 35,000 is largely empty. Seven miles from the Lebanese border, it is the last rebel stronghold in this part of Syria. Residents and rebel fighters spoke in hushed tones about the shelling they expect to begin any day. Those who have decided to stay are resigned to their fate. The Syrian military holds positions in some neighborhoods in the city, and tanks were said to be taking up positions surrounding Qusayr in preparation for a final assault... Fatma said the army had entered the city three times before, and that the assault on Qusayr...

So the Syrian government, has been unable to break the back of a populist uprising using snipers, RPGs, tanks and aircraft has turned to lobbing massive 240 mm mortars into the city of Homs, killing dozens. This sounds like an old fashioned leave no one alive siege. In case there were any doubts, this shows that the Syrian dictatorship of Bashar al Assad is at war with his own people. Syrian troops are firing Soviet-made M240 breech loading mortars into the city. These fire the largest mortar rounds in the world, according to the Christian Science Monitor. To put things...

A wounded British photographer who had been trapped in the besieged Syrian city of Homs was spirited safely into Lebanon on Tuesday in a risky journey that killed 13 rebels who helped him escape the relentless shelling and gunfire. -excerpt- Conroy crossed the border into neighboring Lebanon after leaving Homs on Sunday evening, according to the global activist group Avaaz, which said it organized the evacuation with local activists. The group said 35 Syrians volunteered to help get the journalists out and 13 were killed in the operation.

Syrian government forces killed more than 60 people on Tuesday in assaults on villages and an artillery barrage in the restive city of Homs, activists said, and the Red Cross called for daily ceasefires to let in urgently needed aid. Activists said at least 30 people died in the bombardment of the Baba Amro, neighbourhood of Homs city, and at least 33 were killed when forces trying to crush opposition to President Bashar al-Assad stormed villages in northern Idlib province. In Damascus, security forces opened fire on demonstrators overnight, wounding at least four, activists said. Violence has hit the capital...

-excerpt- Valérie Pécresse, the French government spokeswoman, identified the dead as Marie Colvin, an American reporter working for The Sunday Times of London, and Rémi Ochlik, a French photographer. -excerpt- Video footage posted on social networking sites showed what seemed to be two bodies lying face down in rubble inside a building identified in news reports as a makeshift media center in a beleaguered neighborhood of Homs, where rebels have been under sustained fire for almost three weeks. Three other Western journalists were injured in the attack, activists said. According to his Web site, Mr. Ochlik, in his late twenties,...