WarSclerotic

Assad steps up crackdown as US announces n… JPost – Middle East.

    AMMAN – Syrian tanks swept into two towns near the Turkish border on Wednesday despite international demands to end a military crackdown, and the United States announced sanctions against a major Syrian bank and mobile phone company.

Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that an armored government force killed at least 11 civilians in an assault on a main residential district in the city of Homs.

“Troops and armored vehicle stormed Bab Amro early evening. The neighborhood is witnessing a massacre. The number of dead are likely to go up because there are seven out of 25 wounded in critical condition,” Observatory director Rami Abdelrahman told Reuters.

Syria said the army pulled out of the central city of Hama after a 10-day assault on a symbolic center of protest against President Bashar Assad’s 11-year rule, but tank attacks in towns north of Hama killed a woman and injured 13 people, an activist group said.

In Deir al-Zor, another Sunni Muslim bastion of dissent towards Assad’s minority Alawite rule, residents reported heavy gunfire as troops deployed across the eastern city, making arrests and spraying pro-Assad slogans on buildings.

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, who sent his foreign minister to Damascus on Tuesday to urge an end to the bloodshed, said the Syrian state “is pointing guns at its own people”.

“Turkey’s message to Assad is very clear: stop all kinds of violence and bloodshed,” Erdogan said.

In Washington the White House said President Barack Obama believes Syria would be better off without Assad and the United States plans to keep pressure on the Syrian government.

“We are all watching with horror at what he is doing to his own people,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

Earlier the US Treasury Department announced new sanctions which it said were aimed at the financial infrastructure helping to hold up Assad’s government.

It said it was designating the Commercial Bank of Syria, a Syrian state-owned financial institution, and its Lebanon-based subsidiary, Syrian Lebanese Commercial Bank, under a presidential executive order that targets proliferates of weapons of mass destruction and their supporters.

It also designated Syriatel, Syria’s largest mobile phone operator, under an executive order targeting Syrian officials and others responsible for human rights abuses in the country.

The Turkish leader said he hoped that Assad, confronting nearly five months of pro-democracy demonstrations, would take steps within 10 to 15 days towards promised political reforms.

Rights groups say at least 1,700 civilians have been killed since the uprising against Assad erupted in March, making it one of the bloodiest upheavals in the Arab world this year. Authorities say 500 soldiers and police have died.

Syria has barred most independent media since the unrest began, making it hard to verify conflicting reports by activists, residents and officials.

Already under Western sanctions targeting him and his top officials, Assad faces growing pressure to curb the bloodshed after three regional powers publicly called for change this week, leaving Iran as Syria’s only staunch remaining ally.

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