ICRC: Syrian conflict will last for months

The Lebanese army Beirut – George Shahin The Lebanese army was forced to take further security measures as violence escalated in the Syrian cities and villages neighbouring Lebanese borders. Joint security forces strengthened their positions deploying tanks and armoured vehicles, especially after the clashes that took place between the army and a group of armed Syrians which was running away from the Syrian regime forces.
Military sources told Arabstoday that seven men opened fire against the Lebanese army and were subsequently delivered to the Permanent Military Court on charges of resisting officials. Others were released after the authorities confiscated their weapons.
The Red Cross declared on Monday that four Syrians who had just entered Lebanon were being transferred to the North hospital.
At least 12 people were killed in Syria on Tuesday as government forces started to target citizens across the country, opposition activists said.
The majority of killings took place in Hama, Homs, Daraa, Idlib and Damascus, said the opposition Syrian Network for Human Rights.
Meanwhile, the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has called for humanitarian corridors to be opened in Syria, Al-Arabiya reported on Tuesday.
"Humanitarian aid corridors must immediately be opened," Erdogan told a parliamentary meeting of his AKP party, urging the international community to pressure Damascus to allow the delivery of relief supplies to civilians.
Meanwhile, Syrian forces are carrying out mass arrests and summary executions in Baba Amr, the former rebel stronghold in the city of Homs, according to a growing body of evidence coming from the besieged Syrian city.
The accounts of atrocities coincide with the regime's continued refusal to allow the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to enter Baba Amr, which was captured by the army last week, the Daily Telegraph newspaper reported on Tuesday.
President Bashar Al-Assad's regime has broken an earlier assurance that the ICRC would be allowed in, suggesting that his army is trying to cover up the aftermath of the fighting.
A resident of Homs, who identified himself as Abu Abdo, told the Telegraph how his 17-year-old cousin was caught up in a bloody reprisal attack in Baba Amr, which was carried out by the government troops and militiamen from Assad's Alawite sect.
"They laid the men on the ground. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and their faces pressed to the floor," said Abu Abdo.
"The soldiers began jumping and dancing across the bodies of those still alive and hit them on the back with their rifle butts." As they beat their victims, the militiamen, known as the "Shabiha", were laughing and jeering.
Abu Abdo's cousin remembered them saying: "Do you think you will get your freedom now, terrorist?" After torturing their captives, the soldiers and militiamen started to execute them.
"They used bayonets on the ends of their guns to stab the men in the back. One grabbed a prisoner by the hair and slit his throat," said Abu Abdo.
After four men were killed that way, one of the militiamen reacted to the frenzied brutality.
"He grabbed the shoulder of the others, and told them to stop," said Abu Abdo. The man is believed to have said, "If we are going to kill them, then let's shoot them." The men retreated and Abu Abdo's cousin was able to escape.
Meanwhile, a Syrian woman told the BBC that security forces slit the throat of her 12-year-old son last Friday after the rebels had retreated from Baba Amr.
She claimed 35 other men and boys had been detained and killed in the same attack.
Syrian regime forces bombed on Tuesday a bridge used by refugees fleeing to Lebanon from the central province of Homs, cutting off a key escape route to evacuate the wounded, a monitoring group said.
"Regime forces on Tuesday bombarded a bridge near Qusayr, in Homs province, which is used by refugees and the wounded fleeing to Lebanon," Rami Abdel Rahman, of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP.
Meanwhile, US Senator John McCain has called for air strikes against Assad. A survey conducted on The Guardian reported that 83.1 per cent of the interviewees supported McCain's call;  however, the International Crisis Group's latest report put forward persuasive counter arguments to the proposal. The report read as follows: "Frustrated and lacking a viable political option, Western officials and analysts have toyed with a series of often half-baked ideas, from initiating direct military attacks to establishing safe havens, humanitarian corridors or so called no-kill zones. All these would require some form of outside military intervention by regime foes that would more than likely intensify involvement by its allies. Even if they were to provoke the regime's collapse, that in itself would do nothing to resolve the manifold problems bequeathed by the conflict: security services and their civilian proxies increasingly gone rogue; deepening communal tensions; and a highly fragmented opposition".
Matthew Russell Lee, specialist UN blogger for Inner City, was quoted by The Guardian as saying that diplomats at the UN were still discussing a new draft resolution on Syria.
Meanwhile, China said it will send another envoy to Syria in a bid to convince the Assad regime of the need for a cease-fire, and to emphasise that it remains against outside intervention. The Foreign Ministry said Monday that former ambassador to Syria Li Huaqing would visit Damascus on Tuesday and Wednesday.
That announcement followed the release Sunday of a Chinese proposal calling for an immediate cease-fire in Syria and talks by all parties but standing firm against any intervention by outside forces.
China has being roundly criticised by the US and others for joining Russia in vetoing a UN resolution on ending Syria's ongoing violence. That plan similarly called for an end to hostilities, but Beijing feared it would open the door to intervention against President Bashar Al-Assad's authoritarian government, as it had in Libya.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is to try for a fifth consecutive day to get relief aid into the shattered Baba Amr district of the central Syrian city of Homs.
After a siege and bombardment lasting nearly a month, security forces moved into the area on Thursday following the withdrawal of armed rebels.
The government has since denied the Red Cross access, citing security concerns.
There are reports of violence across the country, with activists saying at least 60 people were killed on Sunday.
The Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC), a group that organises and documents protests, said 17 people died in Homs, including six who were allegedly summarily executed in a field on the edge of Baba Amr.
Another 18 people were killed in the nearby city of Hama on Sunday, 12 in the suburbs of Damascus and five in the northern province of Idlib, it added.
Fears that thousands of civilians in the Baba Amr neighbourhood are suffering from severe cold and hunger have been mounting since government forces seized the district from rebels last week. Before its capture, the district was under siege for weeks and near constant shelling killed hundreds of people, activists said.
Meanwhile, more than a thousand Syrian refugees have poured across the border into Lebanon to flee Syrian forces, among them families with small children carrying only plastic bags filled with their belongings.
The UN refugee agency said Monday as many as 2,000 Syrians had crossed into Lebanon in the last two days.
The UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, Kofi Annan, will visit Damascus this week in what will be his first visit since being appointed to the post, according to a report.
Arab League Secretary General Nabil Al-Arabi told reporters at the group's Cairo headquarters that Annan would visit Syria on March 10, Reuters reported.
"Kofi Annan told me that Syria will receive him on March 10 and that he would arrive in Cairo on March 7," Al-Arabi said.
Russia's foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, is to meet Arab leaders in Cairo on Saturday.
"Considering the urgency of the Syria issue, when collective approaches for a settlement need to be found, we view this as a valuable and important format," Lavrov said while meeting his Jordanian counterpart.
The Chinese foreign ministry has issued a statement calling for an immediate ceasefire and dialogue between all parties. It will also send another envoy, former ambassador to Syria Li Huaqing, to Damascus.
Both Russia and China have also backed international calls for humanitarian aid to be allowed in to Syria, but they also insist that must not be used as a pretext for external intervention.
But the opposition, backed by the Arab League and the West, says it is too late and Assad must go as the first step in a transition process.