Syria Analysis: Chemical Weapons Attack --- Is This Plastic Canister A Vital Clue?

Update: A new video (above) of the canister that allegedly carried a cehmical weapon in Saraqib.

Despite increasing reports that Assad's forces have used chemical weapons attacks against insurgents, so far there has been no concrete evidence. A video taken yesterday of a small piece of plastic, burned up deep inside Syria's warzone, may actually contain a vital clue as to whether forces loyal to Assad have deployed chemical agents.

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Syria Live Coverage: "Darayya is Being Pounded to Dust"

Al Jazeera's Sue Turton on Syrians decimating forests to survive the winter

See also Algeria (and Beyond) Coverage: Gas Plant Siege Ends with 23 Hostages, 32 Attackers Killed
Saturday's Syria Live Coverage: UN Human Rights Chief Calls for War Crimes Investigation

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2029 GMT: A Town After the Bombardment. Al Jazeera English's Basma Atassi reports:

The centre of Salqin in northern Syria looked deceptively normal, just a day after the town came under lethal government air strikes.

Shops were open for business. Residents strolled through the main square. Children could be seen playing in the narrow streets.

Yet a closer look at the streets of Salqin revealed the brutal scars of war. Away from the square, sidewalks were stained with blood and littered with broken glass.

Residents said six people were killed when government forces attacked the rebel-held town bordering Turkey on Friday. Dozens of people were injured, locals said, including many children.

Three siblings --- Basel, 12, Doriyeh, 10, and Raghad, 8 --- were injured by shrapnel as a rocket detonated near their home while they played.

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Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Is Assad's Military Collapsing?

2107 GMT: Bahrain Government authorities claim they have arrested a "domestic terror cell" responsible for planting "fake bombs in several crowded areas throughout Bahrain". They don't specify what a "fake bomb" actually is, but do say that they found one when they raided the house of one of the suspects.

Yesterday, newly appointed Bahrain Government Spokesperson Sameera Rajab told pro-regime newspaper Gulf Daily News that reports of an imminent terrorist attack were baseless and being spread "to create panic and chaos".

2103 GMT: Syria. For over an hour we've been looking at, analyzing, and searching for additional videos after several different sources posted images from the air-defense base that was captured by the FSA yesterday southwest of Damascus, near Hajar al Aswad and Buwaydah (map, see yesterday's entries).

#Syria #Damascus Rebels seized air-defence in southern suburbs youtube.com/watch?v=WIddJK… youtube.com/watch?v=csz2xj…

— Mark (@markito0171) November 20, 2012

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Syria 1st-Hand: Darayya --- 6 Weeks After the Mass Killings (Sands)

Some of the dead from the Darayya mass killing, August 2012

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Chickens once more turn on spits outside of Abu Kamal's, a restaurant in the centre of town and a local landmark of sorts, known for its mediocre but filling fast food.

People slowly walk in the streets, small general stores are open and some of the town's furniture makers are busy again in their small workshops, sawdust drifting out on to the roads.

It has been more than six weeks since Daraya suffered the bloodiest single massacre of the Syrian uprising, and daily life has resumed.

On the surface, little appears to have changed since the time before that bright and breezy Friday in late August, when, after a sustained artillery bombardment, tanks and ground troops moved into central Daraya and killed hundreds, perhaps a thousand, people. Men, women and children died, most of them shot.

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Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Will a Few Thousand Deaths Change Anything?

1938 GMT: Syria. The LCC's deathtoll is even higher than the CFDPC's. According to the Local Coordination Committees, 224 people have been killed nationwide by regime forces:

148 martyrs were reported in Damascus and its Suburbs (including 42 martyrs in Zamalka, 39 in a new massacre in Daraya, and 25 in Mouadamiyeh) 27 in Daraa (including 11 in Jiza; most of them are women and children), 12 in Idlib; most of them in Ariha, 10 in Aleppo, 8 in Deir Ezzor, 10 in Homs (including a person who was martyred in Tadamun neighborhood, Damascus), and 9 in Hama.

Dissecting the numbers, it's worth noting that Zamalka is on the other side of the capital as Darayya and Moudamyah.

1927 GMT: Syria. The CFDPC has posted this summary of events in Zamalka, an eastern suburb of Damascus, where battles and shelling have been reported since dawn:

Tanks and helicopters of regime forces began to shell the Zamalka suburb of Damascus early morning causing the collapse of entire buildings on their residents.

So far the number of dead is about 30, among them children, while about 150 people were injured (some of them are in critical condition).

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