16 dead in Homs as Assad tells UN Chief operations 'stopped'

A Syrian living in Turkey shouts slogans Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has told UN chief Ban Ki-moon that military operations against protesters have "stopped", a UN spokesman said. The announcement comes ahead of a UN Security Council meeting on Thursday at which the UN's human rights chief, Navi Pillay, could call for Syria's crackdown on protesters to be referred to the International Criminal Court, according to diplomats. In a phone call with Assad on Wednesday, Ban "expressed alarm at the latest reports of continued widespread violations of human rights and excessive use of force by Syrian security forces against civilians across Syria, including in the Al Ramel district of Lattakia, home to several thousands of Palestinian refugees," the United Nations said in a statement. "The Secretary-General emphasized that all military operations and mass arrests must cease immediately. President Assad said that the military and police operations had stopped," the statement added. Pillay, head of the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), is expected to address the 15-nation Security Council in a closed-door session on Syria on Thursday, along with UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos. Pillay will say a "thorough appropriate international investigation is needed," said a diplomat speaking to Reuters anonymously, adding that Pillay was "likely to suggest that the ICC would be appropriate". "OHCHR (Pillay's office) have indicated that their Syria report will find evidence that Syria has committed grave violations of international human rights law in its actions dealing with protesters over the past five months," the diplomat said. Activists say more than 20 people were killed on Wednesday alone.

The UN said Mr Assad listed the reforms he planned to take, which included constitutional change and elections, while also agreeing to receive a UN humanitarian mission. The BBC's Jim Muir in Beirut says the Syrian authorities have staged highly-publicised troop withdrawals from three trouble-spots in the past couple of weeks - first the central city of Hama, then Deir al-Zour in the east, and now the Ramel district of Latakia on the western coast. But troops and tanks were pulled out only after they had done the job of restoring control by force, and there are many other instruments of security left behind to maintain the government's grip, he says. At this stage in the uprising, our correspondent adds, it is clear that if the regime really were to stand down all its many instruments of control - there are believed to be at least 17 different security organisations - large parts of the country would slide out of its grasp.  Syrian troops raided houses in a Sunni district of the besieged port of Latakia on Wednesday, residents said, arresting hundreds of people and taking them to a stadium after a four-day tank assault to crush protests against President Bashar Assad. Assad forces attacked Al-Raml Al-Filistini (Palestinian sand), named after a refugee camp built in the 1950s, at the weekend, as part of a campaign to crush a five-month uprising, which has intensified against major urban centers of protest since the start of Ramadan on Aug. 1. "Shelling and the sound of tank machine guns are subdued today. They are bussing hundreds to the Sports City from Al-Raml. People who are picked up randomly from elsewhere in Latakia are also being taken there," said a resident, referring to a complex that was venue for the Mediterranean Games in the 1980s.
"Tanks are continuing to deploy, they are now in the main Thawra (revolution) Street," said the resident, a university student who did not want to be identified.
A diplomat in the Syrian capital said: "The reports about detention conditions and torture are increasingly alarming. Assad is backing himself more into a corner by using more and more violence and turning more Syrians against him."
Violence elsewhere in the country left four people dead. In a village in Idlib province near the border with Turkey, security forces shot dead a man standing on his balcony, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The United Nations on Wednesday said it had withdrawn all nonessential staff from Syria. "We have pulled more than 20 personnel out of Syria, all of whom are nonessential United Nations staff," said the office of UN Lebanon representative Michael Williams.
The Tunisian government recalled its ambassador in Syria for "consultations," a Foreign Ministry source said in Tunis. "Given the dangerous situation in Syria, the Tunisian government has decided to recall its ambassador in Damascus for consultations," the official TAP news agency quoted a ministry source as saying. Switzerland Thursday said it has recalled its ambassador to Syria, while condemning the violence conducted by Syrian forces against civilians. "The actions of the Syrian security forces are not acceptable. For this reason, the FDFA has recalled the Swiss Ambassador in Damascus to Berne for consultations," the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs said in a statement. Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan compared the situation in Syria with that in Libya, where the opposition have been fighting forces loyal to Muammar Qaddafi since February. "We have done our best on Libya, but haven't been able to generate any results. So it's an international issue now. Qaddafi could not meet our expectations, and the outcome was obvious," Erdogan told reporters. "Now the same situation is going on in Syria. I've sent my foreign minister, and personally got in touch many times, the last of them three days ago on the phone. In spite of all this, civilians are still getting killed." Russia, however, said it would maintain arms sales to Syria despite US pressure because the United Nations had failed to impose sanctions against Assad's regime. Anatoly Isaikin, director of Rosoboronexport, Russia's state weapons exporter, said his organization was under contract to provide Syria with arms for as long as such sales remained legal under international law.
Meanwhile, security forces in Damascus raided homes and shops on Wednesday and arrested dozens of activists in Rukn Eddin district, known to be a predominantly Kurdish area, where electricity was cut off. Scores of others were arrested on the outskirts of the capital, activists said. . According to activists, security forces opened fire in Latakia, Aleppo, Hama, and Homs. At least 16 people were killed in the Syrian flashpoint city of Homs by forces loyal to President Bashar Al Assad on Wednesday, according to activists. Meanwhile, thousands demonstrated against the regime in Aleppo’s Jabri square and several neighborhoods. Those killed included two protesters shot dead by pro-Assad militiamen, known as shabbiha, in front of the Fatima mosque in the district of Al-Waar after nightly Ramadan prayers, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Activists said two explosions and heavy firing were heard late at night in Homs, Syria’s third largest city, situated 165 km (100 miles) north of Damascus. In the mainly quite city of Aleppo, the country’s second largest city and industrial center, thousands demonstrated in Saad Allah Al Jabri Square and neighborhoods of Sakhour, Bab Al Hadeed, Jamilya, Saif Dawla, and Mashareqa, according to activists. Meanwhile, the United Nations has said it hopes to send a team to Syria in the near future to carry out a long-delayed UN assessment of the humanitarian situation in areas hit by a government crackdown.
“We hope that we are very nearly at the point where a mission will be able to go in and we’ll be able to make assessments,” UN humanitarian affairs chief Valerie Amos told reporters in New York. Damascus has yet to allow the world body to send a team to Syria, where the government has been clamping down on pro-democracy protesters since March, despite months of urging by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Amos.
Syrian state media claimed earlier on Wednesday that security forces had withdrawn from the city of Deir ez-Zor and areas of Latakia, but witnesses rejected the reports. Ahmet Davutoglu, the Turkish foreign minister, also said Syrian troops were still in Deir ez-Zor. "I can confirm that Deir ez-Zor is still witnessing problems and the army is in Deir ez-Zor and other towns," he said, speaking at a news conference in Istanbul with his Jordanian counterpart Nasser Judeh.
Witnesses on the ground also disputed the government's announcements, saying tanks were still present at the outskirts of Deir ez-Zor and that troops raided houses looking for dissidents.
Syria's interior ministry said security forces had also completed their operation in the al-Ramel al-Janoubi neighbourhood of the coastal city of Latakia, which had been subjected to days of assault. But Al Jazeera's Nisreen el-Shamayleh, reporting from Ramtha, on the Syria-Jordan border, said witnesses reported conflicting accounts. "Activists told us that on Tuesday night and early on Wednesday morning, specifically at 8am local time on Wednesday, heavy gunfire was heard across neighbourhoods in Latakia and that two Palestinians were killed on Tuesday night," said Shamayleh.
US President Barack Obama, meanwhile, is expected to call for President Assad to leave power within the coming couple of days, according to Al Arabiya correspondent in Washington. Al Arabiya sources said that the US will hold a meeting with its European allies later on Thursday to reach a kind of unified western stand towards the expected White House announcement that will urge Mr. Assad to go. The Europeans would probably echo Washington, according to Al Arabiya sources, and would ask the Syrian President to step down after some time. The United States also may lay out plans to impose additional US sanctions on Syria, whose government has engaged in a brutal crackdown against protesters seeking an end to the 41-year rule by President Assad and his father, Hafez, according to Reuters.
Washington has been edging closer to an explicit call for President Assad to go since Syrian protesters began to demonstrate against his rule in March, inspired by revolts that toppled autocratic rulers in Tunisia and Egypt earlier this year. The United States held off initially in hopes that Assad might reverse course and embrace democratic reforms, a possibility that US officials appear to have given up on. As recently as last week, however, US officials said President Obama was leaning toward an explicit call for Mr. Assad’s departure but they made clear they wanted other nations to make a similar appeal.
About 2,000 people have been killed in a government crackdown since protests started in mid-March, according to rights groups. President Assad has promised reforms but western governments say there are few signs of them being carried out.