Syria: Assad Fails to Halt Violence Despite Arab League Deal

Since President Bashar Al’Assad agreed to the Arab League initiative last Wednesday to halt the violence, civilian deaths have continued to occur on a daily basis and “more than 100 people have been killed there in the past week.” The head of the Arab League, Nabil Elaraby remarked on Saturday that “the failure of the Arab solution would lead to catastrophic results for the situation in Syria and the region as a whole.”

The Syria National Council -whose President, Dr. Burhan Ghalioun addressed the Syrian nation on Saturday- has declared the city of Homs a “humanitarian disaster” and called upon “both the United Nations and its humanitarian organizations, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the League of Arab States and all international bodies concerned with human rights” to condemn the Assad regime’s attack on the city of Homs, declare the city a humanitarian disaster area and apply whatever international legal precedent is required so that medical assistance and aid relief would be allowed to enter the city, requested that international observers be sent to Homs to document and witness the situation themselves and finally, document all accounts of crimes against humanity for submission to the International Criminal Court.

On Sunday, the Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassi called for an emergency Arab League meeting for this upcoming Saturday to discuss “the continuing violence and the government’s failure to stick to its obligations under the Arab Action Plan to solve the crisis in Syria.”