Fighting Continues Over Eid. The AP reports that fighting continued throughout the country, despite the Muslim religious holiday of Eid al-Adha.
“Syrian warplanes have been bombing the suburbs of Damascus while rebels have fired mortar shells at the capital on the first day of a major Muslim holiday,” wrote Diaa Hadid. “Tuesday’s fighting shows how entrenched both sides in Syria’s civil war have become. Earlier in the fighting, the sides occasionally attempted to observe holiday cease-fires.”
President Bashar al-Assad appeared on state television, praying at a Damascus mosque. Meanwhile, activists reported a bomb blast at a mosque in a rebel-held suburb.
Treat Aid as Urgently as Chemical Weapons, Doctors Say. The charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors without Borders) called on Syria’s warring groups and the international community to make humanitarian aid as urgent a priority as dealing with chemical weapons, AFP reports.
“Influential countries gathered around a table, thrashed out an agreement on chemical weapons and put it into practice. They have shown it can be done, so where are the efforts to repeat this success with the burning question of access for humanitarian aid?” MSF General Director Christopher Stokes said in a statement.
The organization, which conducts extensive operations in Syria, reports that many areas remain entirely under siege, sealed off from life-saving assistance. Access is blocked by the authorities in Damascus or because of intense fighting. In the eastern and western Ghouta suburbs of Damascus, medics are reporting desperate shortages of drugs and cases of malnutrition due to lack of food.
“Syrian people are now presented with the absurd situation of chemical weapons inspectors driving freely through areas in desperate need, while ambulances and food and drug supplies organized by humanitarian organizations are blocked,” said Stokes.
Rebels Urged to Let Inspectors Through to Chemical Sites. Diplomats are calling on rebels to allow access to chemical weapons sites under their control, the New York Times reports. Shifting battle lines have made it difficult for a U.N.-backed disarmament team to reach Syria’s chemical weapons facilities, which are scattered across the country.
“The international community also expects full cooperation from the opposition,” a diplomat told the Times, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “However divided the opposition might be, it would look very bad if the government was seen to be cooperating fully, while inspections were held up because of problems with the opposition.”
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