83 Dead in Aerial Bombardments on Aleppo
The Local Coordination Committee (LCC), an opposition group, told CNN that 83 died in weekend aerial bombardments of Aleppo, as rebel and government fighters escalate their fighting there after months of stalemate.
“Helicopters dropped barrel bombs on 12 neighborhoods in the city, where people have strongly backed rebels opposing the government of President Bashar al-Assad,” the network reports. “The LCC said 135 people died in total in the conflict on Sunday.”
(Meanwhile, Beirut’s Daily Star newspaper has the toll as 76 dead, 28 of them children.)
Syria’s Battle for Bread
Lyse Doucet reports for the BBC on civilians’ struggle to both find and afford bread, whose prices “have risen more than 500 percent in some areas,” according to the International Rescue Committee.
“Four out of five Syrians say their greatest worry is that food will run out. In many embattled cities and towns, shortage of fuel, flour and electricity means bakeries and bread can be almost impossible to find,” Doucet writes.
“And in parts of rural Damascus besieged by government forces and in areas in the north cut off by rebel fighters, bread is a symbol of hardship. ‘We haven’t eaten a piece of bread in nine months,’ was the anguished cry of many Syrians we met as they fled the southern Damascus suburb of Moadamiya during a partial evacuation in late October.”
Prominent Shiite Cleric Backs Fighting in Syria
The AP reports that leading Shiite Muslim cleric Grand Ayatollah Kazim al-Haeri, who is based in Iran, “has issued the first public religious edict permitting Shiites to fight in Syria’s civil war alongside President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.”
The fatwa comes as “thousands of Shiite fighters mostly from Iraq and Lebanon play a major role in the battles. The call likely will increase the sectarian tones of the war, which pits overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim rebels against members of Assad’s Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam. The situation has worsened with the influx of thousands of Shiite and Sunni foreign fighters.”
U.N. Makes Record Aid Appeal
The BBC reports that the U.N. has asked for $6.5 billion in humanitarian aid for Syria, its biggest-ever appeal, responding to an International Rescue Committee report that says starvation is threatening the country’s remaining population.
“Some $2.3 billion are destined for civilians inside Syria, while $4.2 billion would go to Syrian refugees in neighboring countries,” the network says, adding that “the latest call exceeds the U.N.’s record appeal for $4.4 billion in June, of which only 60 percent has been funded so far.”
“We’re facing a terrifying situation here where, by the end of 2014, substantially more of the population of Syria could be displaced or in need of humanitarian help than not,” said U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees Antonio Guterres. “This goes beyond anything we have seen in many, many years, and makes the need for a political solution all the much greater.”
Moonwalking in Syria
Doyle McManus has an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times that says U.S. policy in Syria has become so “feeble” that it has been reduced to relying on the newly formed rebel alliance the Islamic Front.
“That wasn’t where the administration hoped to be. When President Obama first got interested in Syria back in 2011, his hope was that a popular uprising just needed a little moral support from the outside world to topple the brutal regime of Bashar Assad,” he writes.
“When that didn’t work, Obama offered modest, mostly non-military aid to moderate groups in the Syrian opposition, enough to raise their hopes but not enough to ensure success on the battlefield. And when Assad used chemical weapons against civilian neighborhoods, Obama threatened military action — only to back off, again dashing the hopes of pro-U.S. factions in the opposition.”
Suggested Reads from Our Editorial Team:
Reuters: Syria Uses Red Tape , Threats to Control U.N. Aid Agencies
NY Times: Far Right Makes Gains in Eastern Europe as Syrians Arrive
Daily Beast: Syria’s Saudi Jihadist Problem
Reuters: Italy to Provide Port for Chemical Weapons Transfer
Al Jazeera: Syrian Fighter Defects to Qaeda-Linked Group
Washington Post: Refuge: 18 Stories From the Syrian Exodus
