Syrian Air Raid On Kurdish Village Kills 11 Civilians - Acti

[Aslan]

AMMAN, April 15 (Reuters) - Eleven civilians were killed when a Syrian warplane bombed a Kurdish village in the oil-producing province of Hasaka in northeastern Syria on Sunday, Kurdish activists said.

The raid, which killed mostly women and children, is the biggest loss of Kurdish life from loyalist attacks since the start of the two-year uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, they said.

The circumstances of the attack on the impoverished village of Haddad, 60 km (40 miles) northeast of the city of Qamishli, are not clear, but it appears that a rebel force specialising in raiding oil wells had deployed on a hill near the village, the Kurdish sources said.

A statement by the Kurdish National Council said the attack was a "serious escalation by the regime" following a series of raids on rural areas near Qamishli, where fighting between rebel brigades and President Bashar al-Assad's military has intensified in the last week.

The Kurdish National Council is an umbrella grouping of the main Kurdish parties in Syria, excluding the Syrian branch of the militant Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which effectively has allied with Assad.

With his forces overstretched, Assad has sought to keep Hasaka from joining the revolt by handing the PKK control over parts of the province.

Distrust between Syria's Sunni Arab majority and the country's Kurds, who are also Sunni, have been deepening during the two-year, Arab Sunni led uprising against Assad, with Arab figures in the opposition suspicious that the Kurds may carve out an autonomous province in the east, and Kurdish politicians accusing the opposition of disregarding Kurdish rights and seeking to secure the oil-producing northeast, which accounts for a large proportion of Syria's oil production.

Oil output stood before the revolt at a modest 300,000 barrels per day.

In January this year the PKK fought hardline Islamist rebel fighters in the Syrian town of Ras al-Ain on the border with Turkey. But the situation eased after the intervention of senior opposition figures. The rebels however have resumed attacks on army positions in areas of the Qamishli countryside in recent weeks.

In 2004 Assad put down an uprising by Syria's Kurds, who comprise an estimated 10 percent of the population. But the community, wary of the rise of militant Islamists in the revolt, have not joined the armed movement against Assad.

Assad's newfound support for the PKK, after years of persecuting the group, has also caused fissures in the Kurdish community.



Air raid kills 15 in Kurd area of Syria’s Aleppo: NGO

BEIRUT (AFP)
Nine children were among at least 15 people killed in an air strike on a mainly Kurdish district of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Saturday, a watchdog said.

“The number of people killed in an air strike on the western edges of Sheikh Maksoud has risen to 15 … Among them were nine children aged under 18 years and three women,” said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

It was not immediately clear if any of the casualties were fighters from the Democratic Union Party (PYD), Syria’s branch of Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the Britain-based Observatory said.

After the strike, Kurdish fighters killed five soldiers in an attack on an army checkpoint, the watchdog added.

Up until now, Syria’s Kurds have been split over their country’s anti-regime uprising, with most trying to maintain neutrality.

Amateur video distributed by the Syrian Revolution General Commission, an activist network, showed burnt bodies lying in rubble, reportedly filmed after the strike.

The video shows a woman screaming as she picks up the body of a young girl from the ground.

Elsewhere in Syria, the air force targeted Al-Hajar al-Aswad in southern Damascus and Qadam in the southwest, said the watchdog, which relies on a broad network of doctors, lawyers and activists for its reports.

Al-Hajar al-Aswad was also struck by mortar rounds and rockets, activists in the capital said.

Warplanes also raided Yabrud near Damascus and Qusayr in the central province of Homs, as tanks shelled rebel enclaves in Homs city.

In Damascus, mortar rounds hit Baramkeh in the heart of the capital, said the Observatory, as rebels pressed their campaign to break into the regime’s key bastion.

Saturday’s violence came a day after at least 94 people were killed across the country — 32 civilians, 36 rebels fighters and 26 soldiers — according to an Observatory count.

The UN says more than 70,000 people have been killed in Syria’s two-year conflict, which broke out after the army unleashed a brutal crackdown against dissent, turning the uprising into a bloody insurgency.

[Anthea]

This is really sick, civilians do not stand a chance against Syrian war planes