Updated on
Summary Fighting raged across Syria Saturday after a ceasefire declared for Eid fell apart.
The truce for the Eid al-Adha holiday that started Friday -- conditionally agreed by the regime and the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) -- had raised the prospect of the first real halt to the fighting after 19 months of conflict.But after fresh fighting on both Friday and Saturday, rebels and a monitoring group declared the ceasefire well and truly dead.As clashes between President Bashar al-Assads forces and rebels continued, a Syrian warplane struck a building in a rebel-held area east of Damascus that has been the scene of heavy fighting for weeks, killing eight.This was the first fighter jet air strike since the declaration of a truce for the four-day holiday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.The truce is dead, the groups director Rami Abdel Rahman commented. We can no longer talk of a truce.Another air strike hit near the Wadi Deif military base in the northwestern province of Idlib, where rebel forces have been battling for control of the facility, it said.A rebel commander in the northern city of Aleppo said there was no doubt the ceasefire initiative, proposed by UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, had collapsed.This is a failure for Brahimi. This initiative was dead before it started, Abdel Jabbar al-Okaidi, head of the FSA military council in Aleppo, told AFP by telephone.He insisted the FSA had not broken the ceasefire and was only carrying out defensive actions.I was on several fronts yesterday and the army did not stop shelling, Okaidi said. Our mission is to defend the people, it is not us who are attacking.The Eid holiday had started Friday with a slowdown in the fighting -- and state television footage of Assad smiling and chatting with worshippers at a Damascus mosque -- but quickly degenerated.The Observatory, a key monitor of the conflict, said 146 people were killed in bombings and fighting on Friday, including 53 civilians, 50 rebels and 43 members of Assads forces.On Saturday, fresh violence killed at least another 48 people, the Observatory said, amid clashes and attacks in Damascus province, Aleppo, Idlib, Daraa in the south and the eastern city of Deir Ezzor.Among the dead were five killed in a car bomb attack in Deir Ezzor, it said. State television blamed the attack on terrorists and said the bomb had gone off in front of a church, causing significant damage.According to the Observatory, more than 35,000 people have been killed in the conflict, which began as an anti-regime uprising but is now a civil war pitting mainly Sunni rebels against Assads regime dominated by his minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.The Britain-based Observatory relies on a countrywide network of activists, lawyers and medics in civilian and military hospitals. It says its tolls take into account civilian, military, and rebel casualties.Assads forces and the FSA had both agreed to a call by Brahimi to lay down their arms for the Eid, but both also reserved the right to respond to attacks.Brahimi had hoped the truce might lead to a more permanent ceasefire during which he could push for a political solution and bring aid to stricken areas of the country.Okaidi, the FSA commander in Aleppo, said the ceasefire had been doomed from the start and that the international community needed to stop putting faith in the regime.The Syrian people have become guinea pigs. Every time there is an envoy who tries an initiative, while we know the regime will not respect it.Observers also raised concerns of a new front opening in the conflict after reports emerged that clashes between rebels and Kurdish militia on Friday had left 30 dead and some 200 captured.
