Air strikes kill dozens in Aleppo
BEIRUT: Dozens of people have been killed in air strikes on the northern Syrian city of Aleppo, a monitoring group said on Monday, including at least 29 people in a single neighborhood.
Also on Monday, state news agency SANA said two people were killed when mortars struck central Damascus.
The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said air strikes killed 29 people on Sunday, including women and children, in the southern Al-Ferdous district of Aleppo, a city that was once Syria’s largest and a major commercial hub.
Another 14 people were killed in the Baeedeen neighborhood in “barrel bomb” attacks – strikes in which helicopters drop highly destructive improvised explosives – the group said. A further five died in barrel bomb attacks in the village of Tlajabin, it added.
Western powers have condemned the use of barrel bombs as a war crime, but they continue to fall nearly every day in Aleppo and other parts of Syria.
SANA said two people were killed in Damascus when mortars fired by “terrorists” – its term for rebel fighters – hit the Al-Salihiya neighborhood of the capital and a nearby area.
More than 150,000 people have been killed in Syria’s conflict, which started as a peaceful protest movement against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule in March 2011 and turned into civil war after a government crackdown.
Meanwhile, Syria’s opposition condemned on Monday’s announcement of a June 3 presidential election expected to keep Bashar al-Assad in power despite tens of thousands of deaths in an anti-regime revolt since 2011.
”The Assad regime’s announcement today that a ‘presidential election’ would be held in June should be treated as a farce and be rejected by the international community,” said the office of opposition National Coalition leader Ahmad Jarba.”
With vast parts of Syria completely destroyed by Assad’s air force, army and militias over the last three years, and with a third of Syria’s population displaced internally or in refugee camps in the region, there is no electorate in Syria in a condition to exercise its right to vote,” it said.
Parliament speaker Mohammed al-Lahham earlier announced the election will be held on June 3, while Syrians living outside the country would vote on May 28.Voting would be “free and fair… and under full judicial supervision”, he said.
Assad, who became president after his father Hafez died in 2000 and whose current term ends on July 17, is widely expected to run and win another seven-year mandate despite the conflict.
New election rules require candidates to have lived in Syria for the past decade, effectively preventing key opposition figures in exile from standing for office.
The election will be held more than three years into a war that has killed more than 150,000 people and forced nearly half the population to flee their homes. Syria’s conflict began as a peaceful Arab Spring-inspired movement for democratic reform, but morphed into a civil war after the Assad regime launched a massive crackdown against dissent.
Exiled Coalition member Samir Nashar, who spoke from neighbouring Turkey, described the election as “a mere continuation of (Syria’s) past.”
”For 50 years, from 1963 (when the ruling Baath party came to power) to date, there have been no transparent elections,” Nashar told AFP.”I don’t think that anyone would believe that these elections can really express the will of the Syrian people, considering all this destruction and forced displacement… What elections are we talking about?
What about democracy?”Speaking to AFP via the Internet from rebel-held Daraya, under siege and daily shelling for more than a year, activist Muhannad Abu al-Zein said:
“What sane person can imagine that you can have an election when 80 percent of the country has become a disaster area?”The truth is that… most people see this (announcement) as a joke.