100 Reported Dead in Aleppo Air Strikes

The Los Angeles Times reports that 100 people were killed in this week’s air raids on Aleppo, as fighting escalates in Syria’s largest city after months of stalemate.

“The allegations of mass casualties in Aleppo come as Syria’s United Nations representative, Bashar Jaafari, accused ‘terrorist groups’ of committing “barbaric massacres” and using civilians as human shields in the city of Adra, north of Damascus, which has been the site of intense clashes between government and opposition forces,” writes Patrick McDonnell.

“Syrian authorities have frequently accused ‘terrorists,’ the government’s term for rebels, of committing massacres and holding civilians hostage in battle zones in a bid to prevent military bombardment. In the industrial town of Adra, Syrian authorities have charged that opposition forces have committed mass executions of civilians deemed loyal to the government.

“Bloody battles also were reported Tuesday in other areas of Syria, including suburban Damascus, central Homs province and southern Daraa. The fierce combat suggests that both sides are seeking to gain ground to improve their respective bargaining positions before U.N.-brokered negotiations scheduled to begin Jan. 22 in the Swiss city of Montreux.”

Alawites Wounded in Lebanon Spillover

Loveday Morris of the Washington Post files a chilling report from the Lebanese city of Tripoli, where violence against Syrian Alawites – a minority Shiite sect – is spilling over.

“One man was dragged from his taxi. Eight others were ordered off a bus on their way home from work. The victims were shot in the legs by masked gunmen, a brutal tactic that officials say has been used on dozens of members of Tripoli’s minority Alawite community in recent months,” she writes.

“The intimidation campaign is the latest spillover from neighboring Syria’s long-running civil war, which has been re-created in microcosm in this impoverished port city, Lebanon’s ­second-largest. Alawite residents of the Jabal Mohsen neighborhood who back Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a fellow Alawite, have frequently clashed with Sunni residents of nearby Bab al-Tabbaneh, who support the Syrian rebels.”

Syria-British Tensions Rise Over a Doctor’s Mysterious Death

Alan Cowell of the New York Times reports on the death of Abbas Khan, a 32-year-old British surgeon said to have died this week in a Syrian prison after being arrested while treating patients in Aleppo field hospitals in 2012.

“The response was blunt from the British government, which supports the opposition seeking to topple Assad. Hugh Robertson, a minister in the Foreign Office, told the BBC that the surgeon’s death as described by his family would be extremely suspicious and ‘in effect’ a murder. In an earlier statement, the Foreign Office had said that if the surgeon had died in the custody of the Syrian authorities, ‘responsibility for Dr. Khan’s death lies with them, and we will be pressing for answers about what happened,’” Cowell reports.

“According to the BBC, the physician had been held at the headquarters of Syria’s national security agency, and his mother, Fatima Khan, had secured a promise of his release after having spent four months in Damascus.”

Delays Feared for Removal of Chemical Weapons

The BBC’s Anna Holligan reports from The Hague on the imminent transport of Assad’s chemical weapons stockpile from Damascus to the port city of Tartus. The first phase of the removal is supposed to be completed by Dec. 31.

“All of the key elements are in place to remove Syria’s most dangerous chemical stockpiles, but the process of getting them out of the country may be delayed beyond the original Dec. 31 deadline,” she reports in an informative video primer. “The world chemical watchdog’s director general has been updating members of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.”

You can watch the piece here.

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Buzzfeed: The New Power On the Ground in Syria

Foreign Policy: U.S. Weighing Closer Ties with Hardline Islamists in Syria

WSJ: Syrian Rebels Take War to Home of Assad’s Allies

AFP: Syria Alliance Rejects Talks With U.S. Officials

Gulf News: More Than 10,000 Foreign Fighters in Syria