Thread: Syria News and Editorials

Fucking hell I am getting confused. Syrian State TV announced the assassinations, do you think they really wanted to give all those rebels a big morale booster?

What is your source?

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

What is your source?

ABC radio , I'll chase it up and see

Thursday 19 July 2012

Damascus residents contacted by the Guardian said there had been no audible blast or visible damage at the site.

Other Syrian sources suggested – without offering any evidence – that the three security chiefs might have been killed by the regime to forestall a possible coup or remove potential replacements for Assad.

Syria crisis enters new phase of uncertainty | World news | guardian.co.uk

Originally Posted by Mid

so the building where the explosion was supposed to have taken place bares no visible signs of damage and it's not the first time the murder of the FM is supposed to have taken place .

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

Fucking hell I am getting confused. Syrian State TV announced the assassinations, do you think they really wanted to give all those rebels a big morale booster?

Older claims said those persons had been poisoned. The government denied it then but used the latest fighting to announce their dead. They had to some time.

Killing several people in a conference room will not necessarily show from the outside, especially from above.

I have no idea which version may be true.

Originally Posted by Mid

Thursday 19 July 2012

Damascus residents contacted by the Guardian said there had been no audible blast or visible damage at the site.

Other Syrian sources suggested – without offering any evidence – that the three security chiefs might have been killed by the regime to forestall a possible coup or remove potential replacements for Assad.

Syria crisis enters new phase of uncertainty | World news | guardian.co.uk

Sounds like a load of bollocks to me, unless you think the Russians did it. Then again, even the normally rabid Fisk is sat by the pool writing completely meaningless rubbish after yesterday.

Robert Fisk: Assad is going ... but the streets of Damascus will be awash with blood first




Syria's President Bashar al-Assad (C) stands with leaders of the army, including Fahad Jassim al-Freij (front L) and Daoud Rajha (front R)





Thursday July 19 2012
Be the first to comment

THEY have gone for the jugular now. The brother-in-law of the President, the Defence Minister, a massive bomb close to – or in – the headquarters of the military apparatus run by the President's own brother. Assassinations take time to plan, but this was on an epic scale, to match the bloodbath across Syria.
Bashar al-Assad's own sister, Bushra, one of the pillars of the Baath party, loses her husband in a massive explosion in the very centre of Damascus. No wonder the Russians talk about the "decisive battle".
It won't be a replay of Stalingrad, but the tentacles of the rebellion have now moved towards the heart. And, of course, there are massacres to come. Why else would thousands of Syria's citizens flee to the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp yesterday, to seek protection from the most betrayed citizens of the Arab world?
And there is hatred enough to maintain this savage strike at the Syrian government. Eight months ago, during one of the massive pro-regime demonstrations in the Rawda district, I walked past the very intelligence-security establishment which was bombed yesterday.
At the time, a Syrian friend of mine looked at it bleakly. The torture goes on below ground, he said. "You don't even want to know what happens there." But whoever emerged from there would be happy to kill his tormentors, let alone the chief torturers.
The people's anger will embrace a duke or two. It was typical that, in their desperation to fill the vacuum left by yesterday's assassinations, the regime chose a nonentity, Fahd Jassim al-Furayj, to fill the job of Defence Minister – a man who comes from Hama, the centre of every major uprising against Syria's rulers.
We have a habit, we Westerners, of always looking at the Middle East through our own cartography – the Middle East is "east" of "us", isn't it? – but tip the map on end and you realise how close Syria is to Chechen Muslim irredentists. No wonder Moscow fears the rebellion in Syria.
And old Hafez al-Assad, father of Bashar – he used to worry in his last years that a rebellion in Syria would take the form of the terrible conflict which he followed daily on television: the break-up of "secular" Yugoslavia, whose sectarian divisions were then remarkably similar to Syria's today.
And weirdly, although the throat-cutting, the militia massacres of civilians and the slaughter of children parallel the 1990s war in Syria's Algerian ally, the appalling scenes from Syria do now begin to reflect the barbarism of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia.
What can Bashar do now? Another Syrian friend put an interesting question to me the other day. Suppose the Alawite Shia President Bashar decides to flee, he said. "He will be driven to the airport by an Alawite colonel. Will the colonel let him go? I doubt it."
So two gloomy predictions. Yes, Bashar may still hang on longer than we think. And he won't leave; his brother Maher, who runs the so-called 4th Brigade, may be a different matter. But tanks in the streets of Damascus, the oldest inhabited city in the world, and the shooting can be heard from the presidential palace; these are unprecedented days. Why, a few times yesterday, even Syrian television was forced to tell the truth. The verdict? Going, but not yet gone.
© Independent News Service

Nice try pretending to be pious but I am afraid the rebels are not going to stop fighting just because Ramadhan starts. If they miss a few days or even weeks, they are allowed to make the time up later.

Hundreds flee Damascus as military gives residents 48 hours to get out

Agence France-Presse
Jul 20, 2012


Hundreds of Damascus residents fled from clashes and army shelling of several districts of the embattled Syrian capital Thursday, a rights watchdog reported, as the military gave them two days to get out.

The military said residents have 48 hours to leave areas where clashes are taking place between security forces and rebels, a security source told AFP.

"These extremely violent clashes should continue in the next 48 hours to cleanse Damascus of terrorists by the time Ramadan begins" on Friday, the source said, referring to the Muslim holy fasting month.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog said "hundreds of people" fled several areas.
In the western district of Mazzeh, hundreds of people were on the move, "fearing a large-scale operation by regime troops," the Observatory said.
Residents also fled the southern district of Tadamon and the Palestinian refugee camp Yarmuk for an unknown destination, it added.
The latest developments come a day after a bombing in Damascus killed three top officials, including the defence minister and President Bashar Al Assad's brother-in-law, in a severe blow to the very heart of the regime.
"The army has so far exercised restraint in its operations, but after the attack, it has decided to use all the weapons in its possession to finish the terrorists off," the security source said.
The source also said that "the army has told residents to stay away from combat zones, as the terrorists are trying to use residents as human shields."
yesterday, at least 214 people were killed, including 124 civilians, across Syria. That included 38 in Damascus on the fourth day of unprecedented clashes in the city between rebels and troops, the Observatory said.
The toll did not include the three top regime officials.
"From today onwards, we turn a new page... and Syrians now believe they are at a turning point," the official Al Thawra newspaper said today.
"The traitors, agents and mercenaries are deluding themselves if they think that Syria will bow to this strike, even if it hurts," said the ruling party's mouthpiece, Al Baath newspaper.
Wednesday was one of the bloodiest days in Syria since the outbreak of the revolt in March last year, second only to the relentless bombing of Homs on February 4, in which 230 people were killed.

Terrorist snipers in Qusseer neighbourhood in Homs.

Your crusader coalition and terrorist nonsense is inappropriate on the eve of the Syrian people liberating their own country from the treacherous and murderous Shi'a minority regime.

In fact I spit on it and throw my sandal at you.



Very strong stuff here, and I think the Russkies would do well to heed that last paragraph.

Who rules Damascus now?

19/07/2012By Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid



Following yesterday’s exciting dramatic events, the al-Assad regime may not live through Ramadan to celebrate Eid at the end of the month. In fact, the regime may not even survive the night! Yesterday, we were watching our television screens and not asking who died, but rather who is still alive, and where is President Bashar al-Assad himself who – at the time of writing this article – has failed to make a public appearance after a number of his senior ministers and officials had been killed. Al-Assad has not appeared in public since this attack, nor have any of his senior officials. This means that al-Assad was either killed in the attack – and this is possible but unlikely – or that he is alive and secluding himself in a secret location. Even if he does appear and issue a statement, his followers all believe that he is completely responsible for the successive failures that have struck the regime. Al-Assad is a man who has failed to learn any lessons from his successive failures over the years, transforming failures into crises, and leading the country into the inferno of the revolution. Despite all the ropes that have been thrown to him, al-Assad has played the role of Nero whilst Syria burns!



Following the mass killing of the leaders of the Damascus regime, we can only ask ourselves: will the al-Assad regime last for weeks or hours? Nobody is asking whether al-Assad will remain in power or be toppled, for the annihilation of the leadership of this security military regime is too great for it to overcome, both in terms of morale and numbers.



As a result of what happened yesterday, the majority of the [opposition] fighters will attack the capital, believing that it is now possible to achieve the moment of victory in light of the regime’s confusion and the weakness of its forces, which have been broken, both in terms of morale and numbers. We must also recall the battles that broke out at the beginning of this week in Damascus and the swift and surprising deployment which proved that the Free Syrian Army [FSA] is larger than analysts previously thought. The FSA’s sudden attacks from the Damascus neighborhoods of Al Qaddam and Midan forced the al-Assad regime to use helicopters and heavy weaponry. This confirmed that the Syrian regime is fragile and its military fatigued, after it had been fighting long battles outside of Damascus for more than a year. I believe that the Syrian opposition fighters sudden storming of the capital has confused the regime and frightened its followers, and perhaps this is what precipitated the massacre of the leaders on the third day of the fighting.



Whether what happened was an explosion or a counter-coup, namely an internal elimination, there can be no doubt that the regime has suffered an injury that it will not recover from. It seems that al-Assad’s Damascus will face a similar fate to Saddam’s Baghdad, which collapsed rapidly. How is it possible that al-Assad’s forces have been fighting for over a year – including in Homs – but are now witnessing a rapid collapse in Damascus? This is thanks to the resolve and steadfastness of the Syrian revolutionaries, which is unparalleled in modern history. They demonstrated from the outset that they are capable of marching on the capital, albeit slowly, and despite their modest capabilities. Accordingly, everybody –from the government to regional and international powers – must review their calculations in this regard.



How have the Russians benefited by clinging to a president who has completely failed to manage political and military battles? They have truly entangled themselves with a regime that is hated in the Arab world and whose hands are stained with blood, a regime that is being defeated in the most humiliating manner.

And the brutal assaults on the heroic Syrian freedom fighters and the assorted Al Qaida nutcases go on...

Syrian government forces ‘shell parts of Damascus’ in wake of bomb attack



An image taken from YouTube shows smoke billowing from a building in the Al-Hajar al-Aswad district of Damascus. Picture: AFP


Published on Thursday 19 July 2012 13:11

GOVERNMENT forces in Syria are shelling a number of neighbourhoods in and around Damascus today, activists are reporting.
The renewed violence in the capital comes the day after three members of President Bashar Assad’s inner circle were killed by a bomb
The reports of shelling today come from the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
It says residents are fleeing parts of the Mezzeh neighbourhood after troops surrounded it and clashed with local rebels.
This morning, Prime Minister David Cameron called on Assad to go.
The whereabouts of Assad, his wife and three young children remain unknown after yesterday’s bombing struck at the heart of his power.
Speaking in Kabul, Mr Cameron said: “I have a very clear message for President Assad. It is time for him to go.
“It is time for transition in this regime. Clearly, Britain doesn’t support violence on either side, but if there isn’t transition it’s quite clear there’s going to be civil war. That is the clear fact, I think, that we can all see on the ground.
“The regime has done some truly dreadful things to its own people and I don’t think any regime that carries out acts as they have against their own citizens - and continues to do so, by the way - should survive. I think that regime should go.
“So the message to President Assad is ‘It is time for transition, it is time for you to go.’
“The message to President Putin, who I discussed this with at the G20 in Mexico - and the message to all those on the UN Security Council - is ‘It’s time for the UN Security Council to pass clear and tough messages about sanctions, I believe under Chapter 7 of the UN, and to be unambiguous about this.’
“Obviously, we are a UN Security Council with permanent members, and permanent members that have vetoes. We can’t pass these things without everybody stepping up to the plate and taking the right action.
“But I would appeal to those who in the past have held against tough action against Syria - what more evidence do we need about a regime that has brutalised its own people?
“The alternative to political transition at the top of Syria is revolution from the bottom in Syria.”
Rebels claimed responsibility for yesterday’s attack, saying they had been planning it for two months and finally decided to plant the bomb in the room where the senior government security officials in charge of crushing the revolt were holding the meeting.
Syrian TV yesterday confirmed the deaths of defence minister Dawoud Rajha, 65, a former army general and the most senior government official to be killed in the rebels’ battle to oust Assad; General Assef Shawkat, 62, the deputy defence minister who is married to Assad’s elder sister, Bushra, and is one of the most feared figures in the inner circle; and Hassan Turkmani, 77, a former defence minister who died of his wounds in hospital.
Also wounded were interior minister Mohammed Shaar and Major General Hisham Ikhtiar, who heads the National Security Department.

Originally Posted by OhOh

Terrorist snipers in Qusseer neighbourhood in Homs.

take a look at the CIA American agent watching over his accomplishment

I saw on the news yesterday that North Korea was assisting Syria with a nuclear program years back, and that the Israelis did an airstrike to endo it at the location.
I remember the Israel hit on Iraq's nuclear project but i never heard they attacked Syrian nuclear facilites.
Also saw yesterdays news that the Russian ships that docked in Latakia had specialists that went to remove the chemical weapons that NOBODY wants to get into the wrong hands, said weapons were of course supplied by Russia.

Originally Posted by harrybarracuda

In fact I spit on it and throw my sandal at you.

Careful you'll be off to the mosque tomorrow

Syria: Ban alarmed by intensifying violence, condemns attack on government building

"18 July 2012 – Expressing alarm over the intensifying violence in Syria, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon strongly condemns today’s bomb attack at the National Security Headquarters in Damascus, according to his spokesperson.
“The Secretary-General reiterates that acts of violence committed by any party are unacceptable and a clear violation of the six-point plan,” the spokesperson added in a statement. “He is also gravely concerned about reports of the continued use of heavy weapons by the Syrian security forces, including in the Damascus area, against civilians, despite repeated Syrian government assurances that such weapons would be withdrawn.”

According to media reports, a high-level meeting was underway in the National Security Headquarters building when the attack occurred, killing and wounding Government officials. Amongst those said to have been killed are Syria’s defence minister and his deputy.

Media reports also note that the Free Syrian Army has claimed responsibility for the bombing, as has another opposition group. In addition, there have been reports of clashes between Syrian Government forces and opposition fighters in several neighbourhoods of Damascus."

Continues.....

Can Ban Ki-Moon be coming around to the Russian and Chinese position?

The Russians should immediately move to make Syria THEIR satellite country. Offer the asshole Assad and his family some kind of asylum if he offers his public regrets over the deaths. Big middle finger to Israel. America could say nothing. Big strategic move. Putin should do it.

Originally Posted by Tom Sawyer

Putin should do it.

How?

Originally Posted by Butterfly

Originally Posted by OhOh

Terrorist snipers in Qusseer neighbourhood in Homs.

take a look at the CIA American agent watching over his accomplishment

Geez, I was looking at the air-cons.

What a disaster this is, and where are the chemical weapons? Again, if the West goes in, the chemicals will not be found. Erm, how did Hussein kill all those Kurds again?
The UN is worthless as usual. Russia & China are fekin it up at usual while thousands of civilians die. Rwanda anyone?

Oooh Fisk has had an almost busy afternoon by the pool. They must have stopped serving cocktails because it's Ramadhan.

Assassinations On An Epic Scale – But Syria Rebels Will Not Claim Their Greatest Prize

By Robert Fisk

Source: The Independent
Thursday, July 19, 2012

They have gone for the jugular now. The brother-in-law of the President, the Defence Minister, a massive bomb close to – or in – the headquarters of the military apparatus run by the President's own brother. Assassinations take time to plan, but this was on an epic scale, to match the bloodbath across Syria.
Bashar al-Assad's own sister, Bushra, one of the pillars of the Baath party, loses her husband in a massive explosion in the very centre of Damascus. No wonder the Russians talk about the "decisive battle".
It won't be a replay of Stalingrad, but the tentacles of the rebellion have now moved towards the heart. And, of course, there are massacres to come. Why else would thousands of Syria's citizens flee to the Yarmouk Palestinian refugee camp yesterday, to seek protection from the most betrayed citizens of the Arab world?
And there is hatred enough to maintain this savage strike at the Syrian government. Eight months ago, during one of the massive pro-regime demonstrations in the Rawda district, I walked past the very intelligence-security establishment which was bombed yesterday.
At the time, a Syrian friend of mine looked at it bleakly. The torture goes on below ground, he said. "You don't even want to know what happens there." But whoever emerged from there would be happy to kill his tormentors, let alone the chief torturers.
The people's anger will embrace a duke or two. It was typical that, in their desperation to fill the vacuum left by yesterday's assassinations, the regime chose a nonentity, Fahd Jassim al-Furayj, to fill the job of Defence Minister – a man who comes from Hama, the centre of every major uprising against Syria's rulers.
We have a habit, we Westerners, of always looking at the Middle East through our own cartography – the Middle East is "east" of "us", isn't it? – but tip the map on end and you realise how close Syria is to Chechen Muslim irredentists. No wonder Moscow fears the rebellion in Syria.
And old Hafez al-Assad, father of Bashar – he used to worry in his last years that a rebellion in Syria would take the form of the terrible conflict which he followed daily on television: the break-up of "secular" Yugoslavia, whose sectarian divisions were then remarkably similar to Syria's today. And weirdly, although the throat-cutting, the militia massacres of civilians and the slaughter of children parallel the 1990s war in Syria's Algerian ally, the appalling scenes from Syria do now begin to reflect the barbarism of Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia.
What can Bashar do now? Another Syrian friend put an interesting question to me the other day. Suppose the Alawite Shia President Bashar decides to flee, he said. "He will be driven to the airport by an Alawite colonel. Will the colonel let him go? I doubt it."
So two gloomy predictions. Yes, Bashar may still hang on longer than we think. And he won't leave; his brother Maher, who runs the so-called 4th Brigade, may be a different matter. But tanks in the streets of Damascus, the oldest inhabited city in the world, and the shooting can be heard from the presidential palace; these are unprecedented days. Why, a few times yesterday, even Syrian television was forced to tell the truth. The verdict? Going, but not yet gone.

And as for the stupid fucking chinkies, only about a year behind the game.

West to blame for Syria U.N. resolution failure: Xinhua

Reuters 1:42 a.m. EDT, July 20, 2012


SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Western diplomats are to blame for the failure of the latest U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria after they tried to ram through an imbalanced draft that did not put enough pressure on opposition groups, China's official Xinhua news agency said on Friday.

Russia and China voted down the Security Council resolution on Thursday, the third time the two countries have used their veto power to block resolutions designed to isolate Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and end the 16-month conflict that has killed thousands.


The draft threatened Syrian authorities with sanctions unless they halt violence against an uprising, and the dual veto drew immediate criticism from the United States, Britain and France, which all backed the resolution.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, who visited Beijing earlier t
his week and discussed the issue with Chinese President Hu Jintao, said he was "deeply disappointed" by the Security Council vote on Thursday.

In a commentary, Xinhua said the draft was not balanced, and that Western diplomats "displayed arrogance and inflexibility" in negotiations, effectively killing the draft.

"Western diplomats rushed to point fingers at Russia and China after the resolution was defeated, but they have only themselves to blame for trying to force such an ill-considered draft through the Council," it said.

While such commentaries do not necessarily constitute official statements, they may be read as a reflection of Chinese government thinking on important issues.

The resolution draft did not exert "enough pressure on the increasingly violent opposition groups", Xinhua said.

Western support of the resolution sent a message "that politicians in London and Washington are only interested in tying the hands of Damascus, while the violent operations of the anti-government forces would be tolerated and even encouraged", it said.

Instead of taking what Xinhua called a confrontational approach, Western powers should work with Russia and China to support the peace-making efforts of U.N.-Arab League joint special envoy Kofi Annan.

"The mandate of the U.N Supervision Mission in Syria, which expires on Friday, should be renewed as soon as possible to give peace efforts another chance," it said.

"Council members should also enhance coordination and display flexibility so as to convey a unified message to all concerned parties in Syria. Only through this way can the Council find an effective resolution to the crisis and secure its own credibility."

(Reporting by John Ruwitch; Editing by Daniel Magnowski)

Originally Posted by Tom Sawyer

The Russians should immediately move to make Syria THEIR satellite country. Offer the asshole Assad and his family some kind of asylum if he offers his public regrets over the deaths. Big middle finger to Israel. America could say nothing. Big strategic move. Putin should do it.

I think that will be Russia's move, without asylum for Assad, they don't want any more ragheads in Russia.

I think Assad might get asylum in France, no one else wants him.

^ Oh FFS he's already got the estate in a Teheran suburb. The first thing the Syrian people will do when they take charge is kick out every fucking Russian and Chinese c**t they can find (that's if they don't put them up against a wall).

Syrian rebels step closer to victory

20 Jul 2012 08:31 - Martin Chulov


The assassination of the regime's top military strategists has led to mass defections from the Syrian army, writes Martin Chulov.





The road to Damascus had been the Syrian opposition’s most difficult journey. Now, after one decisive and deadly strike, the world’s oldest capital appears within reach.
As the dust settled at the national security building on Wednesday, a transformation unthinkable only hours earlier was under way. Three of the regime’s leaders lay dead around the table where they had been holding a weekly crisis meeting: the deputy defence minister, Assef Shawkat, the defence minister, Dawoud Rajha, and the military committee leader, Hassan Turkmani – all key figures in the Middle East’s most ruthlessly efficient police state.
Of the three, Shawkat had long been the main target. His influence and power had been unmatched since the popular uprising began nearly 17 months ago. Shawkat was, as Syrian rebels like to say, the keeper of the secrets.
Every strategic decision about the crackdown carried out by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime that had steadily morphed into full-blown war had passed across his desk. He was an essential part of the inner sanctum. In many eyes, he was a symbol of its infallibility.
Within minutes of the assassinations the regime had acknowledged the deaths – an unusual event in a police state that has been reluctant to admit setbacks throughout the uprising.
Battling regime
The announcement, made first through Hezbollah’s television [at]station in Lebanon then confirmed by the state television in Syria, electrified Damascus, where rebel groups had been battling regime troops, who had been considered to be the capital’s staunchest defenders, for three days.
Some of the units regarded as “die-hards” immediately swapped sides, according to activists and residents in Damascus. Others are reported to have abandoned their tanks and fled.
The reaction was the same in all the hot spots. A video posted on the internet showed hundreds of men defecting in Homs. Another appeared to show cars streaming out of Aleppo to reinforce the rebels.
In Idlib province, envoys from opposition villages travelled to pro-regime enclaves and implored them to join the revolution. The mood, bleak and full of foreboding only last week as shortages and the siege began to take hold, was reported to be euphoric. Shawkat’s death, in particular, seemed to strike a chord among loyalists and rebels alike.
The coming days, however, will give a sense of whether the rebel gains can be sustained or consolidated. To get from this point to outright control of Damascus, as opposed to the bragging rights they now have in some areas, will need a continued momentum.
Damascus has seen empires rise and fall. Throughout the four decades of the Assad regime, it has been central to some of the Middle East’s most defining moments. But in recent years it has seen few more important days than this.
The opposition is still reeling from what it managed to do on Wednesday. The quest to finish the job is not entirely its own.
Whether the deaths of the strongmen can bring the masses around will determine whether this is indeed the beginning of the end – or the start of something far worse. – © Guardian News & Media 2012

8.40am: Syrian state-run TV says government troops have recovered full control of the Midan district of Damascus, AP reports.

Damascus activist Khaled al-Shami, said rebels carried out a "tactical" retreat early Friday to spare civilians further shelling after five days of intense clashes between opposition fighters and regime forces.

8.21am: (all times BST) Welcome to Middle East Live.
Here's a roundup of the latest developments on Syria:
• Rebel fighters took over the country's border crossings into Turkey and Iraq as diplomacy reached a dead end. The capture of the crossings – reportedly including all into Iraq – appeared to represent a dramatic new challenge to Bashar al-Assad's control and will likely prove crucial in funnelling arms and supplies into besieged rebel areas.
• A senior Iraqi government official said Iraqi border forces had witnessed the executions of several Syrian army soldiers at the hands of the rebels, according to the New York Times. Iraqi officials confirmed the seizures of four crossings and said the frontier was shut and additional Iraqi troops sent there as a precaution, it said.
• The UK, US and France rounded on Russia and China following the veto of a UN draft resolution on fresh Syrian sanctions, lambasting the move as "inexcusable" and accusing Moscow of buying time for Assad to "smash the opposition". Britain's foreign secretary, William Hague, condemned the two countries vetoing the resolution as "inexcusable and indefensible".
• The security council is due to vote on a UK tabled proposal to extend the UN's monitoring mission in Syria for another 30 days. Russia said it is willing to back extending the mission for 45 days under another draft tabled by Pakistan. Both proposals are expected to be put to a vote later today.
• "This is a battle that looks, unfortunately, as if it's going to be decided by brute force rather than negotiations that the international community had hoped," says Ian Black in a new Guardian video. Martin Chulov warns of the dangers of more violence if, and when, the regime falls.
• In Damascus rebels torched the main police headquarters as law and order continued to break down in the capital. The battle for parts of the capital raged into the early hours of Friday, with corpses piled in the streets. In some neighbourhoods, residents said there were signs the government's presence was diminishing.
• Assad has amassed up to $1.5bn (£950m) for his family and his close associates, according to analysts, despite moves in London, Switzerland and the US to freeze the assets of his regime. Many of Assad's assets are held in Russia, Hong Kong and a range of offshore tax havens to spread the risk of seizure, according to London-based business intelligence firm Alaco.
• About 20,000 Syrians have travelled across the main border crossing into Lebanon over the past 24 hours, a Lebanese security source working at the border told Reuters. The number of Syrians, many of them day-workers, who travel through the official Masnaa border crossing usually hovers around 5,000 per day, the source said. The US government has mapped the unfolding refugee crisis.