Syrian President Bashar al-Assad
formed a new government on Saturday, but kept on the heads of its interior, defense
and foreign ministries, state television reported.
Assad had promised after the May 7 parliamentary elections to make the government more inclusive to politicians from other parties. But the appointment as prime minister of Baathist Riad Farid Hijab, a former agriculture minister, raised questions about his commitment to that pledge.
In
turn, the president of the Syrian National Council, Abdul Basit Sida stressed
that the announcement of a new Syrian government is misleading and similar to “lifting
the state of emergency in Syria because Assad cannot be part of the reform”.
On the ground, at least 46 people, including 10 pro-government forces, were killed in violent clashes and shelling across Syria, opposition activists said on Saturday.
A source at a hospital in the city said
the victims, who included three women and several children, were mostly
civilians killed by shelling on their houses in the Old Airport district.
Meanwhile, a volunteer with the Syrian Arab Red Crescent was shot and killed while on first aid duty in Deir Ezzor in eastern Syria on Friday, the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross said in a statement on Saturday.
Bashar al-Youssef, 23, was the fourth member of the Red Crescent to be killed in Syria since September, the statement said. He was wearing a uniform clearly marked with the red crescent emblem when he was shot, it said.
On the other hand, a Jordanian official source
stressed on Saturday that the family of the Syrian defector pilot, who landed his
warplane in a military base north of Jordan on Thursday asking for political
asylum, entered the kingdom’s territory a few days ago.
The source said that the
pilot’s family travel to Jordan was not prepared, stressing that Jordan
accepted to grant the pilot asylum and will not hand him over to the Syrian
authorities.
REUTERS/LBCI/AP