SYRIA: Scenes of damage to key buildings in the Syrian town of Deraa, cradle of the 10-month long uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's 11-year rule

Record ID: 280477

  • Title: SYRIA: Scenes of damage to key buildings in the Syrian town of Deraa, cradle of the 10-month long uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's 11-year rule
  • Date: 23rd January 2012
  • Summary: DERAA, SYRIA (JANUARY 22, 2012) (REUTERS) DRIVING SHOT TO SYRIAN ARMY CHECK POINT AT THE ENTRANCE OF DERAA SOLDIERS AT THE CHECK POINT ARMY CHECK POINT IN THE CITY BURNED OUT PALACE OF JUSTICE WHICH RESIDENTS SAID ON MARCH 20 2011 WAS SET ON FIRE BY PROTESTERS THE SIGN FOR PALACE OF JUSTICE SYRIAN SOLDIERS SYRIAN FLAG WITH PICTURE OF PRESIDENT BASHAR AL-ASSAD ON THE
  • Embargoed: 7th February 2012 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Syrian Arab Republic
  • Country: Syria
  • Topics: Conflict,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVASYISVI5VQCQVZ3E39IKQBULW
  • Story Text: Syrian soldiers were positioned at the entrance of the southern Syrian town of Deraa on Sunday (January 22) where the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began, ten months ago.
    A Reuters team was invited to see the town, near the border with Jordan, escorted by Syrian minders, to show that the town's residents are living a calm and normal life.
    Driving into the city is slow as vehicles snake their way past several well established barricades set up on the main roads by security forces controlling residents' movements.
    The Palace of Justice is gutted. Residents said that on March 20, 2011 demonstrators, reinforced by protesters from nearby villages, had set fire to key buildings including the Palace of Justice, the headquarters of the ruling Baath Party and two cellphone company branches, one of which, Syriatel, is owned by the president's cousin, Rami Makhlouf.
    Over the past 10 months images uploaded on social media and which cannot be independently verified have shown repeated anti-government protests in Deraa, some of them appearing to be crushed by soldiers and tanks.
    One prominent activist said 18 people were killed on March 18 last year. It was the first time that there had been reports of a Syrian tank being deployed inside a population centre since the pro-democracy demonstrations began.
    Deraa was brought to a virtual standstill by an eight-day strike called to protest the intensifying military crackdown. The strike spread to other major cities, including Homs, in northewestern Syria, last October.
    One resident said hundreds of soldiers had fanned out across Deraa's main commercial street, during the strike, smashing windows and threatening anyone who refused to go back to work.
    Residents said the strike had revealed new young clandestine leadership behind the protests and witnesses spoke of masked youths taking to the streets at night handing posters and writing graffiti on school walls, shops and public buildings during the strike which appeared to come to an end on Oct.27.
    General Mohamed Adib Assaad told journalists on Sunday that armed gangs were operating at night in Deraa.
    "The life is normal. The shops are open and the so are the ways. Everybody is at their jobs. There is an armed group that are bandits who hide in the day and become active at night. It is a piracy or sabotage process," he said.
    One Arab League monitor, who asked not to be named because he was not authorised to speak to media, said he was ready to walk out of the mission after an Algerian observer told Al Jazeera TV that he had quit because the mission was a "farce".
    He said Syrian soldiers stood in mosques and the army had failed to withdraw military equipment from Deraa's Abu Bakr al-Siddiq mosque, despite the monitoring team's request that they do so.
    The unnamed monitor said he had been appalled by what he had seen and spoke of continued violence, killings and torture in towns he had visited in Syria and from conversations he had had with Syrians.
    The Arab League monitoring mission began work on December 26 2012 tasked with verifying if Syria was complying with an agreement ot halt the crack down on anti-Assad protests in which the U.N. says more than 5,000 people have been killed.
    An Arab League committee on Syria is expected to ask Arab foreign ministers on Sunday to extend the monitoring mission by one month.
    Syria's opposition are demanding the League refer Syria to the U.N. Security Council.
    The opposition Syrian National Council (SNC) says the observers lack the resources and clout to truly judge Assad's compliance with an Arab peace plan Syria signed up to in November and has called upon the Arab League to refer the Syrian crisis to the Security Council.
    But Egypt, Algeria and Tunisia told the head of the Arab League, Nabil Elaraby, they would oppose such a move, a League source said on Sunday.
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