Gen. Robert Mood, head of the United Nations Supervision Mission in Syria, told the Security Council Wednesday (June 20th) that his nearly 300 unarmed monitors are "morally obliged" to stay despite increasing violence in the country.
"We are going nowhere," Mood said after the closed meeting concluded.
Also on Wednesday, violence across the country killed at least 58 people, more than a third of them government troops, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
The Red Cross said Wednesday it will try to evacuate hundreds of civilians trapped by fierce fighting near the city of Homs. Last week the Observatory said that more than 1,000 families are stuck in the region and noted that dozens of people who were wounded needed urgent medical care.
"Electricity has been cut off for four days" in the Old City of Homs and "there's no more flour to bake bread. There really is nothing to eat," activist Abu Bilal told AFP.
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READER COMMENTS
صقر
2012-6-21
Why can't the Council include elders of the Syrian people, who have been known by the Syrian people for decades, and who are trusted by the Syrians, because the nation was plagued by the infiltrators, the hateful and the colonial supporters? Salahuddin was acknowledged and recommended by Nour Elddin and the people as a good man. At least give us the resumes of all of them!
علي نشوان نورالدين
2012-6-21
The forces of the regime face a lot of strikes in their ranks as a result of the surprising clashes. Why did the Syrian army stand beside the Syrian regime and is silent for all their crimes? That is because they have interests with the regime that they do not want to erase them; they fight for their interests and not only for their regime because their interests are continued as long as the regime continues. I do not think, one day, that the Syrian army with its great history will stand in front of his people for the sake of one person but unfortunately that is what happened. A lot of the civilians were suffering from the continued repression against them. They are not satisfied with killing only but with kidnapping, torturing, and burying the citizens alive. All these for the sake of one person. All this bloodshed is for the survival of the regime. What made Bashar increase his repressive operations is the lack of taking decisions against him and that will make him increase his tyranny. I think I will wait for the horrible end of all those who shared in killing the Syrian people soon. The Syrians will not forgive anyone who stands against them and if anyone who belongs to the former regime wants to prove the opposite, he has to join the ranks of the civilians and advocate them rather than to be a reason to make him commit a crime that will haunt him throughout his life. I hope to God that these crimes of the regime will come to an end and will erase the Syrian regime from existence in order for the Syrian people to enjoy their rights in life.
عقيل احمد
2012-6-21
The Syrian army is in a bad time and many officers and Syrian soldiers have been divided because they disagree with the violations of Al-Assad with the Syrian army and they call themselves the Syrian free army who works hardly in order to eliminate all that put the life of civilians at risk. The Syrian people has been defending them and standing in front of the tyrants. Their number increases and they become fronts that carry out many operations that led to many loses in the ranks of the Syrian forces of the Syrian regime. Their resistance caused the decline of El-Assad forces in most of the governorates and their withdrawal; that were through professional attacks that both of them are trained in the same trainings; they know the tactics being used against them.
Doha
2012-6-21
I am not wishing that the Syrian people will come to the time that they do not find their daily bread. The Syrian regime has destroyed Syria and they meant to do that in order to make them suffer strongly and reform them. As the courageous people standing against this tyrant will also stand in front of any problem that could happen in the future.
نواف علي حازم
2012-6-21
Seda is worse than Ghalioun and both of them are bad. The problem is that the council is penetrated by Iran, Hezballah and the regime, therefore the council is hopeless.Only loosers remain within its ranks, while honorable ones like Almaleh have quit. I request a complete refurbish of the council that will includes its members. They should represent the revolutionaries, and therefor, the later should designate them. Activists and honorable people who support the Syrian revolution should be part of the council.
عامر ابراهيم
2012-6-21
Russia will continue committing the same mistakes and failures in dealing with the Arab revolutions, to the extent that they did not succeed with all their policies and efforts to support the stay of Bashar. Rather, they provided him with arms to make the Syrian people hate him more and more after falling in the swamps of crime and losing the respect of the Syrian people. Russian arms and the bullets are the tools through which Bashar commits his crimes and massacres today. Are there any worse moral and human disintegrations than the Russian stance, which gave precedence to the sales of arms to the blood of an unarmed people? They are like the one who gives the knife to the butcher to slaughter the victim.
احمد سعدالله
2012-6-21
The most horrible, inhuman and immoral stances are those of Russia, Iran and China. The Russian stance in particular cripples the international efforts to take the necessary measures to stop the crimes of Bashar al-Asad and punish him. Russia did not stop with this, but it tried hard to keep this regime through insisting on solving the crisis through what is called dialogue and negotiation, ignoring all the crimes and massacres that were committed. It even saw that any amendment to its project submitted to the UN Security Council regarding Syria invalidates its project and insists on toppling Bashar, declaring that it only seeks to protect Bashar and keep him president, even at the expense of the blood and souls of the Syrian people. Russia was not satisfied with this immoral and inhuman stance, which reflects the meanest levels of political and diplomatic intelligence as well as balance in the stances, because they bet on a president and a regime that would fall sooner or later, exactly as they bet before on Gadhafi and tried to support him in every possible way and took a hostile stance towards the revolution and the Libyan people. But the result was that it lost the respect and trust of the Libyans as well as its interests in the new Libya. This proves that the Russian policies are stupid, but they insist on repeating the same mistakes and losing their self-respect and the respect of the Arab peoples and interests under the new Arab regimes. Russia refuses to acknowledge that there is a revolution that stormed the Arab states. This revolution will remove many of the regimes that allied with Russia and protected its interests. Logically speaking, Russia needs some intelligence and diplomacy to extend bridges and communication channels with the new Arab reality.
احمد الحداد
2012-6-20
The mullah regime in Iran is still sending its proxy militias from Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon to Syria in order to support the criminal gangs of the deposed Al-Asad in killing the great Syrian people who decided to fight for their freedom. All the money of the mullahs in Iraq are soiled with the blood of the poor Iranians and the free Syrians and they will not lengthen the life of these gangs, but God willing, it will very soon will accelerate the fall of this regime of the deposed president.
محمد جمال
2012-6-20
The Arabs, Assyrians, and Kurds are brothers and children of this land. The current Syrian revolution will be an example and it will be also perfect and ideal, because it will bring to justice all those who are involved in the crimes against the Syrians. To all those who try to lie and tarnish the pure image of the clean Syrian revolution, I say, Syria will not witness any civil war, beauce, despite their poverty and lack of information, Syrians are naturally cultured, good and peaceful people; but their bad luck provided them with a ruling family fond of lying, deception and blood (are there human families with these attributes?). There is no relationship between the crimes of this family and the Alawi sect, rather this sect is one of their victims. The revolution will succeed and the people would live happily.
فاروق صابر
2012-6-20
The main characteristic of this regime is extreme cruelty and considering killing the people an easy issue, or what is called by the opposition as “the criminal nature of the regime”. This cruelty is always combined with a punitive and spiteful tendency. The second characteristic, which clearly appears, is the arrogance and despising of the others. This means that the regime will never be ready to make concessions under pressure no matter how small it is, even if it was in its favor. If the regime was forced to make a concession, it will spitefully look to the other party that forced it to make it, waiting for a suitable chance to revoke this concession after attacking the other party severely, because it thinks that forced it. Order, as seen by the regime, will not be maintained without raising the level of suppression to a degree that the opposition cannot endure. This means genocide in some areas or something to this effect. If this genocide is accompanied by the silence of the international community, or its willingnes to be satisfied with the condemnation and imposition of useless sanctions, the regime will consider this as green light to do whatever it wishes. Of course, we cannot blame the regime because actually this is a good explanation. Therefore, once the regime makes sure that it has crushed the revolution and made the people return to their homes, prisons and exiles, it will move to the sectarian mobilization even if all the parties of the opposition abroad condemned this a thousand times, because this is part of the policy of the regime. Any Arab, western, Muslim or atheist analyst who tries to ignore the role of the sectarianism, will be away from the Syrian reality. The reality says that the regime has succeeded in exploiting this issue, which made a significant portion of the street support it in addition to all the military, political, and cultural Alawi elites as well as the other minorities largely. They even fight fiercely to defend the regime.