Friday’s developments
— An artillery shell slammed into a pickup truck, killing nine members of a family during fierce fighting. The attack that killed one woman, her four children and four nieces and nephews, who were all under 12, was the latest carnage to hit the northern town of Saraqeb. Just days earlier, a government airstrike killed at least 20 people.
— Another 18 people were killed in heavy fighting in and around Homs, the country’s third largest city near the Lebanese border.
— A Syrian Army official was assassinated northeast of the capital, Damascus. The state-run SANA news agency said “terrorists” — the government’s word for opposition fighters — shot and killed Syrian Army Col. Tamim Abdullah as he was driving home in Barzeh.
Associated Press
The United States is poised to significantly expand its non-lethal military aid to the Syrian opposition as European nations weigh easing an arms embargo to potentially supply the rebels with arms and increase pressure on President Bashar Assad to step down.
The European Union arms embargo expires at the end of May and may be allowed to expire or be modified to only block weapons that are headed to Assad’s government.
If that happens, it will amount to a new threat to give weapons to the rebels, and test whether the Syrian president reacts to the increased pressure — or if stronger international intervention might be tried.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to announce plans today to give opposition forces up to $130 million in defensive military supplies — possibly including body armor, armored vehicles, night vision goggles and advanced communications equipment. U.S. officials said exactly what is given, and how much it will cost, will be determined today at a meeting Kerry will attend in Turkey of the Syrian opposition leadership and their main international allies.
On Thursday, Kerry said the conference aims to get the opposition and all prospective donors “on the same page” with how Syria will be governed if and when President Bashar Assad leaves power or is toppled.
“The hope is that that will then create a confidence level about who is getting what kind of aid from whom,” he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
With Syria’s civil war in its third year, the U.S. and its European and Arab allies are struggling to find ways to stem the violence that, according to the United Nations, has killed more than 70,000 people. Despite international pressure, Assad has managed to retain power far longer than the Obama administration first expected.
“We need to change President Assad’s calculation, that is clear,” Kerry said. He said the government’s survival largely depends on the continued support it gets from Iran, its proxy Hezbollah, and Russia.
“That equation somehow has to change,” Kerry said.
He said boosting the size and scope of non-lethal assistance to the rebels is one way to convince Assad that he must go.
Despite pressure from Congress and even advisers within his own administration, President Barack Obama has said he has no plans to send weapons or give lethal aid to the rebels.
Instead, the U.S. has been shipping food and medical supplies directly to the Free Syrian Army since February and later expanded the aid to include defensive military equipment. So far, the U.S. has provided an estimated $117 million in non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition, said White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden.
Sen. John McCain, one of the top Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, renewed his call Thursday for U.S. military action in Syria, including airstrikes on government aircraft and weapons but not sending in American soldiers. He said the steps he recommends would give moderate and secular opposition forces a better chance to succeed without having to depend on extremist groups that are supporting the rebels.
“Do the costs of inaction outweigh the costs of action? I believe they do,” McCain said at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. “And as much as I hate war and wish to avoid it, I believe this conflict will grind on with all of its worsening effects until the balance of power shifts more decisively against Assad.”
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