A top Syrian general close to President Bashar Assad's family has defected and fled to France, AFP reported Friday (July 6th).
French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius confirmed during a news conference in Paris that Gen. Munaf Tlass, a commander in the Republican Guard, has defected and is headed for Paris.
The commander of the Free Syrian Army, Riad al-Asaad, also confirmed the general's defection, telling Al-Jazeera from Turkey, "Our people picked [Tlass] up from the border with Syria".
Tlass, who was a childhood friend of President Assad, is the highest-ranking military officer to abandon the regime. He is the son of former defence minister Mustafa Tlass, a close friend of former Syrian president Hafez Assad.
According to Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, the defection "will be a painful blow to the Syrian regime and its inner circle", AFP quoted him as saying.
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2012-7-7
Dozens of people daily, ranging from a Sheikh to a young man, a boy, a girl, and a woman, are killed every day throughout Syria and in the resistant Deraa, Doma, Banyass, and other cities. As for stopping the food supplies, medicines and water for the rebel cities, feel free to talk so that the checkpoints stopped every car. If they found flour in it, it would be thrown on the ground and they prevent the driver from taking it. Armor became prevalent in a number of different cities and the system is determined to end the demonstrations at any cost. It has introduced to Syria several thousand members of the army of Hassan Nasrallah, the devil, because some members of the Syrian Army refrained from shooting their vulnerable unarmed brothers.