*** 16-Apr-17 World View -- Deadly explosion in Syria targets buses carrying 5,000 al-Assad supporters
This morning's key headlines from
GenerationalDynamics.com
- Deadly explosion in Syria targets buses carrying 5,000 al-Assad supporters
- Evidence of Bashar al-Assad's war crimes and atrocities continues to grow
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**** Deadly explosion in Syria targets buses carrying 5,000 al-Assad supporters
****
![[Image: g170415b.jpg]](http://Media.GenerationalDynamics.com/ww2010/g170415b.jpg)
A bus burning during the attack. The passengers were still in their seats as the bus burned. (ARA News)
On Saturday, a suicide bomber approached a group of buses carrying
thousands of supporters of Syria's president Bashar al-Assad. He was
in a car supposedly carrying food aid to be delivered to the people in
the buses. The driver of the car started passing out crisps (potato
chips) to children, and when a group of children had gathered around
him and his car, he exploded the car bomb. The massive explosion
killed over 100, and injured hundreds more.
The buses were evacuating about 5,000 Shia supporters of Shia/Alawite
al-Assad from villages near Aleppo under control of the Sunni
opposition, to bring them to an area under control of al-Assad's
government.
The evacuation was a complex plan as part of a peace deal negotiated
by Russia, Iran and Turkey in January. At the same time that Shias
were being evacuated from Sunni-controlled areas near Aleppo, there
were a similar number of buses evacuating a similar number of Sunnis
from government-controlled areas near Damascus.
This complex arrangement of simultaneous evacuations had been stalled
for months due to disagreements among various factions as to who would
be evacuated. Finally, the buses had all been loaded up and ready to
go on Friday, but there were additional delays, and the buses were not
permitted to move, making them static targets. After the passengers
had been waiting in the buses for about 30 hours, the suicide bomber
struck.
Once the explosion had occurred, a decision was made to allow the
remaining buses to leave immediately, so that they would no longer be
static targets of possible additional attackers.
No one has taken credit for the explosion, but it's assumed that the
perpetrators are from the Sunni opposition groups, such as the
al-Qaeda linked Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front, now Jabhat Fateh
al-Sham or JFS), or the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or
Daesh).
There are thought to be two possible motives for the attack.
First, it's possible that it was a revenge attack in response to last
week's horrific Sarin gas attack by Syria's president Bashar al-Assad
on the town of Khan Sheikhoun in Idlib province, killing up to 100
people. Al-Assad's Sarin attack has infuriated Sunnis throughout
the Mideast, and prompted calls for revenge.
A second possible motive is to express opposition to the so-called
peace agreement. The farcical agreement was reached by Russia, Iran
and Turkey, meeting in Astana, the capital city of Kazakhstan, in
January, but it was considered a joke by many because it did not
include any parties who are nominally the opponents in Syria's civil
war -- the Bashar al-Assad regime or the Sunni opposition militias.
So it's possible that the Sunni opposition perpetrated Saturday's
explosion in order to undermine the so-called peace agreement.
Last year, as Bashar al-Assad's warplanes were dropping barrel bombs
loaded with explosives, metal and chlorine gas on marketplaces,
hospitals, schools and homes in Aleppo, al-Assad issued a delusional
statement saying that the destruction of Aleppo would be a victory
that would be remembered throughout history, and that it would end the
war, since the jihadists would no longer have any reason to continue
fighting. We're all still waiting for the war to end and the
jihadists to go home.
ARA News (Syria) and
AP and
Reuters (14-Apr)
Related Articles
****
**** Evidence of Bashar al-Assad's war crimes and atrocities continues to grow
****
Last week's Sarin gas attack by the Bashar al-Assad regime was just
the latest atrocity in his years of torture, enforced disappearances,
siege warfare and indiscriminate bombing of civilian neighborhoods and
hospitals.
A length analysis by the New York Times calls the amount of evidence
of al-Assad's war crimes "staggering," but al-Assad continues
committing war crimes with impunity. According to the article:
> [indent]
<QUOTE>"Three tons of captured Syrian government documents,
> providing a chilling and extensive catalog of the state’s war
> crimes, are held by a single organization in Europe. A Syrian
> police photographer fled with pictures of more than 6,000 dead at
> the hands of the state, many of them tortured. The smartphone
> alone has broken war’s barriers: Records of crimes are now so
> graphic, so immediate, so overwhelming.
>
> Yet six years since the war began, this mountain of documentation
> — more perhaps than in any conflict before it — has brought little
> justice. The people behind the violence remain free, and there is
> no clear path to bring the bulk of the evidence before any court,
> anywhere.
>
> More than 400,000 people have been killed in the Syrian war. Half
> the country’s population has been displaced. Syrian human rights
> groups list more than 100,000 people as missing, either detained
> or killed. Tens of thousands languish in government custody,
> where torture, deprivation, filth and overcrowding are so severe
> that a United Nations commission said they amounted to
> “extermination,” a crime against humanity. ...
>
> Since this month’s chemical attack, residents have reported
> several attacks with incendiary weapons in Idlib and neighboring
> Hama provinces, uploading videos that show blinding fires typical
> of weapons like thermite and white phosphorus. They cause severe
> burns, similar to napalm, and their use is prohibited in civilian
> areas. ...
>
> A Syrian man who did four stints of detention and torture for
> taking humanitarian aid to wounded protesters and rebels recounted
> his experiences, but then expressed despair that anything would
> come of it.
>
> “Countries don’t need this evidence — they already know what’s
> happening. ... We are just pawns on a chessboard. I have women
> friends who were detained, raped, got pregnant, were tortured with
> acid. ... There is no justice. And because there is no justice,
> there is no hope."<END QUOTE>[/indent]
This week, the Russians and Syrians began their usual disinformation
campaign, claiming that black is white or that there's no evidence
that the al-Assad regime was responsible.
The clearest example of how this works occurred after the MH17
passenger plane was shot down over eastern Ukraine by a Russian Buk
missile. There was a two-year investigation by a Dutch team that
included investigators from Australia, Malaysia, Ukraine, and Belgium.
They collected tens of thousands of pieces of evidence, including
forensic examinations, witness statements, satellite images, radar
data and intercepted telephone calls. Their conclusion was that there
is absolutely no doubt that the passenger plane was shot down by a
Russian Buk missile shot from by Russians. But the Russians just say
it's all manufactured data, as if it were even possible to manufacture
that much evidence.
Similarly, there are thousands of pieces of evidence, including
forensic collections and analyses, photos, videos, eyewitness
testimony, doctors' testimony, the UNSC report, analyses of the UNSC
report, and so forth, proving al-Assad's repeated use of chemical
weapons, including Sarin gas, chlorine gas, ammonia and phosphorus,
and that he used them on hospitals, schools and markets with no
military objective except to kill as many innocent women and children
as possible.
So I saw Bashar al-Assad interviewed by the AFP on television last
week. The guy is a total sleazebag, but I watched as much of the
interview as I could stand. He said he has no chemical weapons.
Well, that's exactly what he said after his Sarin gas attack in 2013.
In that case, he ended up agreeing to let the Americans take control
of and destroy 1,300 tonnes of his chemical weapons that he had said
he didn't have.
So now he's saying that gave away all his chemical weapons and doesn't
have any left. But Brigadier-General Zaher al-Sakat, who was head of
chemical warfare in the al-Assad regime until he defected in 2013, has
said that al-Assad failed to declare additional tonnes of chemical
weapons, including sarin components. There was never any independent
verification that al-Assad had declared all his chemical weapons, and
al-Sakat's testimony proves that al-Assad was lying.
It's almost unbelievable how much destruction al-Assad has caused.
Thanks to al-Assad, Putin and Khamenei, there are about 50,000
jihadist fighters from 86 countries that have come to Syria, first to
join the rebels fighting al-Assad, then to join the al-Qaeda linked
Jabhat al-Nusra (al-Nusra Front, now Jabhat Fateh al-Sham or JFS), and
the so-called Islamic State (IS or ISIS or ISIL or Daesh). Al-Assad
has created the al-Nusra front and ISIS. He's created millions of
refugees that have flooded into neighboring countries, and over a
million have poured into Europe.
It's now clear to al-Assad that nobody is going to stop him, and he
can continue committing genocide as long as he wants, with impunity.
Al-Assad is the worst war criminal so far in the 21st century, and
nobody is even going to try to stop him. That's the way the world
works. And people wonder why we have world wars.
The worst people in the world are the leaders that order their armies
to commit genocide, war crimes, atrocities, and crimes against
humanity -- people like Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, Robert
Mugabe, Josef Stalin, and Bashar al-Assad.
Right behind them, in second place, are people like the people who
support al-Assad -- the deniers, the collaborators, the acolytes and
the trolls -- the people who defend the war criminals and make the
actions of Hitler, Mao, Stalin and al-Assad possible. These are the
people that make genocide and war crimes possible, and they are as
much to blame as the war criminals themselves.
NY Times and
Telegraph (London) and
Salon
Related Articles
[*]
France says there's 'no doubt' that Syria regime used sarin gas (05-Jun-2013)
[/list]
KEYS: Generational Dynamics, Syria, Bashar al-Assad, Aleppo, Damascus,
Russia, Iran, Turkey, Brigadier-General Zaher al-Sakat,
Jabhat Fateh al-Sham, JFS, Front for the Conquest of Syria,
Islamic State / of Iraq and Syria/Sham/the Levant, IS, ISIS, ISIL, Daesh,
Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, Russian Buk 9M38 missile, Ukraine
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