WarSclerotic

Syrian opposition ask world’s help to stop Assad – Israel News, Ynetnews.

(Contact your representatives.  This insane butchery of the innocent MUST be stopped… – JW)

Damascus opposition members meet in Istanbul, plead with West to pressure regime into ceasing brutal crackdown on protesters

Reuters

Members of the Syrian opposition meeting in Istanbul on Tuesday pleaded for international help to persuade President Bashar Assad to halt a brutal crackdown on a popular revolt.

“Our friends in the West, in Turkey, in the Arab world, if they want to help us, then they can do that by… putting the clearest possible pressure on the Syrian regime to stop targeting civilians,” Anas Abdah, the British-based chairman of the Movement for Justice and Development, told Reuters.

Abdah was speaking on the sidelines of a gathering of opposition and rights groups organized by Turkish non-government organizations to highlight the Syrian people’s plight.

“It looks like Bashar al-Assad has taken a strategic decision to crush a non-violent movement in Syria by ordering his brother Maher al-Assad… to go and storm Deraa city,” Abdah said.

Earlier, Syrian security forces deployed in the hills around the Banias in preparation for a possible attack on the coastal city to crush a popular uprising, a protest leader said.

“Forces wearing black and carrying AK-47s deployed today in the hills. Armored personnel carriers passed by the highway adjacent to Banias at night,” Anas al-Shaghri told Reuters from Banias, which has seen intensifying pro-democracy protests against the rule of President Bashar al-Assad.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that Damascus security forces have shot dead at least 400 civilians in their campaign to crush the country’s month-long peaceful pro-democracy revolution.

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