Syria’s military pounded rebel bastions in Damascus yesterday while Saudi Arabia demanded an arms embargo on what it called President Bashar al-Assad’s genocidal and illegitimate regime.
Syria is facing a double-edged attack
Attacking Iran, Russia and Lebanon’s Hizbollah for supporting Assad, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said the kingdom could not be silent and called for arms to be supplied to Syrian rebels, now militarily on the back foot.
“Syria is facing a double-edged attack, it is facing genocide by the government and an invasion from outside the government, and . . . a massive flow of weapons to aid and abet that invasion and that genocide. This must end,” he told a news conference with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Jeddah.
“The kingdom calls for issuing an unequivocal international resolution to halt the provision of arms to the Syrian regime and states the illegitimacy of the regime,” Prince Saud said.
In Damascus, Assad’s gunners fired mortars and artillery at Zamalka and Irbin, just east of the government-held city centre, in an assault backed by air strikes, opposition activists said.
Mostly Sunni Muslim rebels who grabbed footholds in Damascus nearly a year ago now say they face a grinding advance by the Syrian military, buoyed by support from Assad’s regional Shi’ite allies, notably Iranian-backed Hezbollah fighters on the ground.
If the insurgents are driven from the capital’s eastern suburbs, they would lose arms supply routes and suffer a severe blow in their drive to end four decades of Assad family rule.
Security in neighbouring Iraq and Lebanon, where the conflict has aggravated Sunni-Shi’ite tensions, has crumbled. Suicide bombers killed eight people north of Baghdad yesterday, a day after 39 people died when 10 car bombs exploded in the capital. Violence has spiralled in Iraq since April.
In Lebanon, clashes between the Lebanese army and gunmen led by a fiercely anti-Hizbollah Sunni cleric engulfed the southern port of Sidon on Sunday. At least 40 people were killed, including 18 soldiers, security sources said.
Sectarian hatred has even flared in Sunni-majority Egypt, where a crowd attacked and killed five Shi’ites on Sunday.
More than 93,000 people have been killed in Syria since peaceful protests erupted in March 2011. Assad’s violent response helped generate what is now a civil war that has driven nearly 1.7 million refugees into neighbouring countries.
Outgunned rebels are looking to Western and Arab nations to help them to reverse Assad’s battlefield gains of the last few weeks. But although the United States announced unspecified military aid this month, it is unclear whether this can shift the balance against the Syrian leader and his allies.