Bombers strike Syrian city of Aleppo as offensive continues in Homs 9FEB12 & Gunmen assassinate Syrian army general in Damascus 10FEB11

IT will be no surprise to find out in a few years that assad himself ordered the bombing of the security compounds in Alepo in an attempt to invigorate his supporters outside Damascus to stay with him and not join the opposition. The world has seen assad is not afraid to spill Syrian blood, he has murdered over 7000 of his own people in the past year, so the sacrifice of a few dozen low level security officers and maybe some innocent civilians means nothing to him. Witness the brutality of the governments continuing bombardment of Homs, where hundreds have died this past week along with protest spreading to more parts of Damascus itself and the defection of approximately 10% on the Syrian Army to the Free Syrian Army and it becomes obvious assad will be removed from power, but not before the deaths of thousands more children, women and men. From the Washington Post.....

View Photo Gallery —  Protesters opposed to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad face deadly responses from security forces, and the United States has closed its embassy in the country as the violence grows

By Karen DeYoung and Liz Sly

The Obama administration and its allies see few, if any, viable options to end the carnage in Syria as President Bashar al-Assad’s forces continue their offensive against the opposition to his rule in what has become the uprising’s most violent month.
With no appetite for a military intervention, a flagging Arab League initiative and the failed effort to win a U.N. Security Council resolution, officials said the current situation could continue for months. Plans for an international “Friends of Syria” conference and stepped-up humanitarian aid are seen as unlikely to change the grim calculus on the ground.

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Major events in the country’s tumultuous uprising.

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Syrian state television says 28 people were killed in two explosions that targeted security compounds in the northern city of Aleppo. (Feb. 10)

“What frustrates . . . us is that there are no silver bullets here,” said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “There are no good options.”
In the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Friday, two suicide bombers struck compounds housing government security services, reportedly killing 28 people and wounding 238 in the worst violence to hit the country’s relatively calm commercial capital since the uprising began in March. The government blamed the attacks on foreign-backed “terrorists.”
The bombings coincided with the ongoing military offensive against the central city of Homs, where activists claim hundreds of people have been killed in the past week in the sustained artillery bombardment of neighborhoods loyal to the opposition.
An opposition group said 16 people were killed Friday in Homs and 15 in the suburbs of Damascus.
Russia’s veto of the U.N. resolution last weekend condemning the crackdown — and supporting an Arab League plan for Assad to surrender power — appears to have emboldened the government to unleash even greater force in its effort to crush the uprising, which began as a peaceful revolt but is rapidly evolving into an armed insurgency.
Proposals from some quarters — including within the U.S. Congress — to arm the opposition Free Syrian Army, establish a no-fly zone over Syria or provide outside military protection for “safe zones” or a humanitarian corridor inside Syria are not under consideration, administration officials said.
On Friday, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, whose government has played a leading role in efforts to broaden the Syrian opposition to include minority groups, said Turkey is not providing arms or support to army defectors, whose ranks he estimated at 40,000, even though U.S. officials put the number much lower.
Davutoglu, in Washington for consultations on Syria, said that the military’s attacks against civilians “cannot be tolerated. We cannot wait and see [it become] like Sarajevo,” the Bosnian capital where Serbian forces rained artillery on civilians while the international community stood by and watched.
But Davutoglu acknowledged, along with administration officials, that international intervention is not currently on the table. He called for rapid international action to supply humanitarian assistance to Syrian cities he said were in desperate need of food and other supplies. Administration officials said that aid was likely to consist of stepped-up supplies to non-governmental organizations operating in Syria.

Gunmen assassinate Syrian army general in Damascus

By Associated Press

BEIRUT — Gunmen assassinated an army general in Damascus Saturday in the first killing of a high ranking military officer in the Syrian capital since the uprising against President Bashar Assad’s regime began in March, the state-run news agency said.
The attack could be a sign that armed members of the opposition, who have carried out attacks on the military elsewhere in the country, are trying to step up action in the tightly controlled capital, which has been relatively quiet compared to other cities.
SANA news agency reported that three gunmen opened fire at Brig. Gen. Issa al-Khouli Saturday morning as he left his home in the Damascus neighborhood of Rukn-Eddine. Al-Khouli was a doctor and the chief of a military hospital in the capital.
Capt. Ammar al-Wawi of the Free Syrian Army, a rebel group that wants to bring down the regime by force, denied involvement in the assassination, which came a day after two suicide car bombers struck security compounds in Aleppo.
Such assassinations are not uncommon outside Damascus and army officers have been killed in the past, mostly in the restive provinces of Homs and Idlib.
Assad’s regime says terrorists acting out a foreign conspiracy to destabilize the country are behind the uprising, not people seeking to transform the authoritarian regime. The Syrian government says more than 2,000 soldiers and police officers have been killed since March.
Violence in other parts of the country left at least 17 people dead as regime troops pushed into rebel-held neighborhoods in the central city of Homs and seized parts of the mountain town of Zabadani, north of Damascus.
The U.N. estimates that 5,400 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising began in March. But that figure is from January, when the world body stopped counting because the chaos in the country has made it all but impossible to check the figures. Hundreds are reported to have been killed since.
Syria’s turmoil began with peaceful protests against Assad’s rule, sparking the fierce regime crackdown. But it has since grown more militarized as army defectors and armed protesters formed the Free Syrian Army.
After Russia and China last weekend vetoed a Western and Arab attempt at the U.N. to pressure Assad to step down, the FSA’s commander said armed force was the only way to oust the president. Western and Arab countries are considering forming a coalition to help Syria’s opposition, though so far there is no sign they intend to give direct aid to the FSA.
Arab foreign ministers were to meet in Cairo on Sunday to decide their next step. An Arab League official said the ministers were likely to consider calling for a joint Arab-U.N. team of observers to be sent to Syria to investigate Assad’s adherence to past promises to halt the violence.
Damascus allowed in Arab League observers in December, but the mission was halted amid the accelerating bloodshed. The Syrians would be unlikely to accept a new observer team.
The ministers in Cairo also may discuss formally recognizing the main opposition Syrian National Council in a show of support, but such a step does not yet have full agreement among the ministers, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, one of Assad’s top allies, warned Arab countries on Saturday not to give aid to the opposition.
Speaking to tens of thousands of supporters in Tehran on the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ahmadinejad said countries in the region that have never held free elections are trying to write a “prescription for freedom and elections for others” with the help of the United States.
“This is the most bitter and ridiculous joke of history,” Ahmadinejad said.
On Saturday, Damascus gave Tunisian and Libyan diplomats 72 hours to leave the country, Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi told reporters. The move was in retaliation to the north African Arab nations’ eviction of Syrian ambassadors earlier this month.
For the past week, Syrian forces have been bombarding rebel-held neighborhoods in Homs, aiming to regain control of one of the main cities involved in the uprising. Activists say more than 400 people have been killed in the campaign.
On Saturday, Syrian troops shelled the Baba Amr district in Homs, killing at least nine people, and another in the Bab Sbaa area, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees said 15 people were killed in Baba Amr on Saturday.
The Observatory also reported that regime troops moved into parts of Zabadani, north of Damascus, after intense shelling and after rebel soldiers pulled back to spare residents’ property from further damage. Three people were killed in the bombardment, the group said.
Troops and rebel soldiers battled in Douma, a suburb of Damascus, said Mohammed Doumany, an activist there. The Observatory said troops stormed the Grand Mosque in Douma and detained a number of people who were inside.
The Observatory also reported a rare clash between troops and defectors late Friday in the northern Damascus neighborhood of Qaboun but had no details. It said troops shot dead an activist in the area.
In Idlib, where rebels control some areas, army defectors detonated roadside bombs and hand grenades against military vehicles near the village of Kfar Oweida Friday night, killing at least 10 soldiers, the Observatory said.