Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Assad Declares, "We Are In a Real State of War"

View Syria - 2012 June 26 - EA Worldview in a larger map

An interactive map of Tuesday's developments in Syria

See also Syria Audio Feature: Scott Lucas with Monocle 24 "No Negotiation Possible --- This is War"
Bahrain Document: Court Testimony of Abdulhadi Alkhawaja "I Have Been Subjected to Torture"
Saudi Arabia Feature: Interview with the "Eastern Province Revolution"
Tuesday's Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: NATO Meets Over Downing of Turkish Jet

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2220 GMT: Syria. Below we have posted an interactive map, compiled by myself and our intern, Josh Moss. Each flag on the map links to a specific live entry, an effort to impose order on a bloody and chaotic day in Syria. You can click on the link below the map to see it in a large window.

View Syria - 2012 June 27 - EA Worldview in a larger map

2210 GMT: Syria At least 104 people have been killed today, including at least 20 children, according to the Local Coordination Committees of Syria:

42 martyrs were reported in Idlib, 15 in the Damascus Suburbs, 14 in Deir Ezzor, 10 in Daraa, 10 in Homs, 8 in Qamishli, 3 in Hama, 1 in Hasakeh, and 1 in Aleppo.

The numbers are staggeringly high, as they have been all week, and most of last week. The number of dead children is just heartbreaking, however. Among the dead, 10 year old Badreddine Sadeq, killed today in Aleppo:

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Syria 1st-Hand: "The Wounded Will Be Killed" (Cook)

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I was close to the field hospital, so I started spending time there. It wasn't a real hospital, of course -- just a bombed-out house. They converted a couple of bedrooms. When they fill up, the bodies go into the courtyard.

It's run by Dr. Qasim, a gastroenterologist. He used to run a hospital in one of the other towns in Homs Province. When the war started the army took over his hospital, so he went to Al Qusayr, and has been working there ever since, running the field hospital for the past 18 months. He's the only game in town. Whenever the Syrian army finds out where it is, they shell it. I don't know how many times it's been moved. They shelled it twice while I was there, killing two patients and wounding two or three of the medical personnel.

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Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Nothing Certain but Death & Protests

2210 GMT: Syria. By the end of the day, more than 75 people have been killed today in Syria. Large protests, and reports of violence, continue well into the night.

One look at out interactive map (created with help from EA intern Josh Moss), and we can see that the reports of both large protests and violence were not isolated to a few locations, but were very widespread. This provides more evidence that the violence, as well as the opposition to Assad, are intensifying and spreading in every corner of the country:

View Syria - 2012 June 22 - EA Worldview in a larger map

2200 GMT: Bahrain. Was the head of AlWefaq specically targeted by police? Activists claim that this is the case, and they provide this photo as evidence:

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Syria Revealed: CIA Helping with Arms Shipments to Insurgents (Schmitt)

A small number of C.I.A. officers are operating secretly in southern Turkey, helping allies decide which Syrian opposition fighters across the border will receive arms to fight the Syrian government, according to American officials and Arab intelligence officers.

The weapons, including automatic rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, ammunition and some antitank weapons, are being funneled mostly across the Turkish border by way of a shadowy network of intermediaries including Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood and paid for by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the officials said.

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Turkey Analysis: An Opposition MP Gives Prime Minister Erdogan An Edge on the Kurdish Issue

Last week, Leyla Zana, an MP of the pro-Kurdish opposition Peace and Democracy Party, expressed hope in an interview that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan would solve the Kurdish issue:

There is a solid fact here. Let’s say this openly and accept this fact. If he wanted, the strongest can solve this [Kurdish] issue. Who is the strongest one? It’s the government and its head, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The person who is the head of the strongest government in [our] history is able to show the willpower and has the power to sort out this issue. I believe that he will be able to solve this issue. I have never lost my faith in him solving this issue. And I don’t want to lose my faith in him. If I had lost [my faith], I wouldn’t be here.

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Syria Live Coverage: How Will Protests Respond Today to More Deaths?

2048 GMT: Syria. Earlier, we heard a report that a mortar shell fell on a hospital in Douma, an important suburb just outside Damascus. Now, this video claims to show the heavy damage. It is unknown how many injuries or fatalities occurred as a result of this attack:

Hospitals in #Douma #RifDimashq being targeted by rockets & shells. youtu.be/8HC-u0B-vPQ #Syria

— Um Farouk(@Mou2amara) June 15, 2012

2008 GMT: Syria. I've been having a conversation with several bloggers, micro-bloggers, and activists about improvised weapons and mortars being used by the Free Syrian Army. It's clear that the FSA is increasingly finding ways of going on the offense against the Syrian military, not just the defense. However, the video below, apparently showing a remote controlled bomb, could indicate that the FSA is using more sophisticated weapons against Assad military convoys and checkpoints:

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Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: From Houla to Douma

2039 GMT: Syria. In Damascus, there are protests reported in multiple areas, but heavy gunfire reported in far more areas. The reports, from so many sources, are pouring in at this late hour - it will be a long night for Syria's capital.

2032 GMT: Syria. Meanwhile, protests continue, in the heart of Aleppo, and the heart of Damascus:

#Aleppo: protesters in #Khaldiyeh district chanting in solidarity with the suburbs of Aleppo tonight 5-6-2012youtube.com/watch?v=RHTDS8…#Syria

— Zilal (@zilal1) June 5, 2012

Protest in Kafarsouseh neighborhood of #Damascus tonight. Vid: youtube.com/watch?v=sQA8-o… #Syria twitpic.com/9t6acn

— Free Syrian (Sami) (@HamaEcho) June 5, 2012

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Syria 1st-Hand: 4 Days in Idlib Province with the Insurgents (Hall)

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There are large parts of Syria's northern region that are under tentative rebel control. The army does not patrol these areas very often, as Assad's men dislike leaving the safety of their armored vehicles. This means that the rebels have been able to set up checkpoints, which allow them to monitor the movement of people in the region and, more importantly, to travel with a vague degree of freedom. But this goes wrong constantly, and on many days cars leave without ever coming back, having been shot up at random. The great fear, however, remain the Shabiha; gangs of pro-Assad thugs who can appear at any time looking to cave your skull in.

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Syria Feature: Who and What are the Shabiha? (Keller)

Shabiha pursuing protesters at Aleppo University, 16 May 2012

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"Women, children and old men were shot dead," Syria's foreign ministry spokesman, Jihad Makdissi, told reporters this week. "This is not the response of the heroic Syrian army."

Then who did kill 108 people in Houla, including 49 children, in cold blood? The answer appears to lie with the armed civilian militias from nearby Alawite villages, who are known to Syrians as shabiha, from the Arabic word for ghosts.

The term initially referred to shadowy gangs of smugglers who grew up around the coastal city of Latakia in the 1970s, and whose immunity from law seemed to come from their tribal and village connections to the ruling Assad family.

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Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Bye-Bye to the Illusion of the Ceasefire

See Also, Wednesday's Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Assad Shoos Away UN Envoy Annan

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2100 GMT: Syria. The names of 12 of the 15 men whom, according to insurgents, were executed in a fertiliser plant outside Homs today:

1 - Mohammad Tawfik Bakkar
2 – Ibrahim Ismail Bakkar
3 – Khaled Abdel Najib Barro
4 – Adnan Omar al-Yassin
5 – Sulaiman Abdel Qader Satto
6 – Samer Mohammad Bakkar
7 – Abdel Kafi Hasan Bakkar
8 – Mohammad Abdo al-Zirai
9 – Maher Ahmad Taleb
10 – Hamed Saadiyeh
11 – Mohammad Mahmoud Satouf
12 – Yehia Sabri Buzan

1946 GMT: Syria. Insurgents claim 15 men have been executed at their workplace, a fertiliser plant, in Buwaydah Al Sharqiyah, outside Homs.

A Facebook account linked with the Free Syrian Army in Baba Amr claims that the FSA found the men:

This picture is from the first to arrive of the massacre committed in Albuweyda Alsharqiyah today where 15 men from the fertiliser plant were abducted by regime thugs, tortured and executed with close-range bullets.

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