The Daily Monitoring Report – Sunday – 12-08-2012

August 12^th, 2012

     – Some 105 people were martyred by the Assad gunfire in a massacre carried out inArihaCity, Idlib governorate. Activists warned against another massacre that the Assad regime prepares for inHoms, or it might have already committed it. Clashes continued inAleppoand renewed inDamascus. (2)

 Political mobility

- Gomaa El-Anzy, head of Ar-Raqqah governorate prosecution, announced his defection from the Syrian regime. (1)

Internal situation  

- Closely-related sources to the Free Syrian Army (FSA) in Rif Dimashq announced that the FSA had freed the mass media woman Yara Saleh working in Al-Akhbaria channel (a state backed Syrian news outlet). (1)

- A French plane carrying nearly 100 tons of equipment left Saturday forJordanto establish a field hospital on the Jordanian-Syrian borders. It is worth mentioning that that shipment includes medicines and equipment to be added to the first 20-ton shipment arrived last Thursday. (4)

Political stances

Syria

 -Syria’s Vice President Farouk Sharaa office denies news on Sharaa’s defection. (1)

Arab

- Farouk Ksentini, president of the National Advisory Committee for the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, said that the Algerian government adopted many special procedures for helping the Syrian refugees in Algeria after their number soared, including the allocation of specific education divisions for children of Syrian refugees .” (2)

International

- TheUnited StatesandTurkeyare considering imposing no-fly zones and other steps to help Syrian rebel forces as the conflict there deepens,USSecretary of State Hillary Clinton said. “Our intelligence services, our military have very important responsibilities and roles to play so we are going to be setting up a working group to do exactly that,” she said. (1) (2) (3)

- “We need to take joint efforts to prevent a power vacuum from being formed” which could be exploited by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK),Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said. He also asserted that the transitional period should end ASAP inSyria. (4)

- Mosques and Islamic centers across theUnited Statescame together on Friday to condemnSyria’s brutal crackdown on dissent and raise funds for civilians trapped in the conflict. (1)

- An opinion poll inFranceshowed that 52% of the French people back a military intervention inSyriaunder the supervision of the UN, while 61% of them object to any French military intervention inSyria. (4)

-Germany’s spy chief saidSyriaPresident Bashar Assad’s government appeared to be in its final phase because its army had been depleted by casualties, deserters and defectors to the opposition. Gerhard Schindler, head ofGermany’s BND intelligence agency, said Assad’s once 320 000-strong army had lost about 50 000 troops since the uprising against his rule began 17 months ago. (3)

Sources

1	Asharq Al-Awsat
2	Aljazeera.net
3	Reuters
4	The AFP
5	The AP
6	The Guardian
7	The Telegraph