Hours after Syria troubleshooter Lakhdar Brahimi arrived
in Damascus overland from Beirut because of fighting near Damascus airport,
President Bashar al-Assad’s warplanes launched their deadliest air strike of the
conflict on a bakery breadline near Hama.
Dozens of people were killed in the air strike while
queuing for bread in the Hama province town of Halfaya, which was seized by
rebels last week in their 21-month-old revolt against Assad.
One activist in Halfaya,
Samer al-Hamawi, told Reuters news agency: "There is no way to really know
yet how many people were killed. When I got there, I could see piles of bodies
all over the ground.
"We hadn't
received flour in around three days so everyone was going to the bakery today,
and lots of them were women and children. I still don't know yet if my
relatives are among the dead."
Hamawi said more than
1,000 people had been queuing at the bakery. Shortages of fuel and flour have
made bread production erratic across the country, and people often wait for
hours to buy loaves.
Hamawi, who spoke to
Reuters via Skype, uploaded a video of the scene that showed dozens of
dust-coated bodies lined up near a pile of rubble by a concrete building, its
walls blackened.
Women and children were
crying and screaming as some men rushed to the scene with motorbikes and vans
to carry away the victims.
Other video footage of
the incident's aftermath showed graphic images of bloody bodies strewn on the
road outside the bakery.
Rescuers were trying to
remove some of the victims buried beneath piles of bricks and rubble.
Several badly damaged
motorbikes could be seen scattered near the site of the attack, which had drawn
a number of armed men to the area.
The UK-based opposition
activist group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said more than 50 of
the wounded were in critical condition and the death toll could rise.
Rebels of the Free
Syrian Army have been making a concerted push recently to take areas of Hama
province.
Six days ago they
declared Halfaya a "liberated area" after taking over Assad army
positions there.
As
has happened many times before, the Assad regime hit back with airpower at the
area it lost.
Yesterday’s
outrage comes as Brahimi arrived in Damascus to discuss ways to end the bloodbath.
There
is no word as to when Assad would receive him.
However,
Brahimi has made little progress on his troubleshooting mission. His proposed four-day
truce over Eid al-Adha last October blew up within hours.
The
primary demand of the rebels and the Syrian National Coalition of Revolutionary
and Opposition Forces is for Assad to go. Should that happen, the international
community is hoping there may be a chance for negotiations for a peaceful
transfer of power.
According
to the French daily Le
Figaro, Brahimi is carrying a joint U.S.-Russian plan for such a transfer
of power. The plan envisages formation of a transitional government comprising
ministers acceptable to the two camps.
According
to the plan, Assad would fully empower the proposed transitional government,
then sit on the sidelines and complete his second seven-year term of office,
ending in mid-2014.
Still
in dispute between the Russians and the Americans is whether Assad would be
allowed to run for a third term, which he is keen on doing.
Editorially,
Tariq
Alhomayed, outgoing editor-in-chief of the leading Saudi daily Asharq Alawsat, notes how fighting near Damascus
airport forced the special envoy -- on his third trip to Syria since taking the
post -- to arrive overland from neighboring Lebanon.
Sadly,
he writes, “nothing new” awaits Brahimi in Damascus “except an added loss of
time and lives.”
But
Talal
Salman, publisher and editor of the Beirut daily as-Safir, says: “Lakhdar Brahimi deserves a pat on the back for his
resilience and insistence on seeing through his critical mission to save Syria
from risks transcending its regime and threatening the unity of its people and
body politic.”
The
sine qua non for success of Brahimi’s mission is “an acknowledgment by the
regime that it committed fatal mistakes in its handling of the crisis.
“The
regime had no excuse for reneging on its reform promises, opting instead for
confrontation. The result is that the regime is now fighting in the hearts of
Damascus, Aleppo, Hama, Homs, Deir Ezzor, Deraa, Banias and elsewhere in Syria…
“The
mistakes on the home front opened the door to outsiders.”
Brahimi’s
task, Salman continues, is not so much to bail out the regime as to save Syria
the state, its people’s unity and its role in its surroundings.
