Conflicting reports emerged Wednesday on the death of the 11 Lebanese abductees held in Syria, leaving their fate uncertain.
Sources to LBCI said that 11 Lebanese
abductees held in Syria were reported dead as a result of Syrian Air
Forces attack
on Aazaz, Aleppo. The attacks, according to the sources were conducted
via MiG 20 aircrafts. Head of the media office pertaining to kidnapping
mastermind Abu Ibrahim, Mohammad Nour, confirmed that three other
families were also killed in the area, with dozens wounded.
On "Abu
Ibrahim", it was also confirmed that he was killed alongside the detainees in Aleppo.
The air strike on the northern Syrian town of Aazaz killed 30 people and left dozens wounded according to rebel commander Ahmed Ghazali.
Pictures soon emerged of the
wounded being taken into Turkish hospitals in
the region of Kilis.
The
eleven Lebanese pilgrims were kidnapped on their way back from Iran by
insurgents hoping to use them for a prisoner swap on the 20th of May.
This as the Syrian Observatory
reported earlier that clashes are ongoing between opposition fighters and pro-regime
troops in the vicinity of the Prime Minister’s locality in Damascus’ Mazzeh
neighborhood.
Earlier, a bomb exploded in Damascus near
a hotel used by United Nations monitors and three people were wounded, Syrian
state television said on Wednesday.
It said the bomb was attached to a gas
canister. An opposition activist in the capital saw smoke rising from the scene
and ambulances arriving to treat the wounded.
Shortly after the attack, the Free Syrian Army claimed
responsibility bomb attack that hit Damascus.
Elsewhere in Syria on
Wednesday, activists reported shelling and clashes in the northern city of
Aleppo, Syria's largest, where rebels took over several neighborhoods over the
past weeks.
The Britain-based Syrian
Observatory for Human Rights said the rebels were trying to take over a key dam
in the northern town of Manbij, just east of Aleppo. It added that the army was
using helicopter gunships in the battles near the dam, on the strategic
Euphrates River.
The Local Coordination
Committees, anther activist group, reported violence in the eastern province of
Deir el-Zour, northwestern region of Idlib, Daraa to the south and in Damascus
suburbs.
International positions
Diplomats declared that Algeria’s
al-Akhdar al-Ibrahimi, who is to be named as the new UN envoy to Syria in place
of former envoy Kofi Annan, wants official support of the UN Security Council
before agreeing to take the mission.
For its part, Syria has agreed on naming Akhdar al-Ibrahimi,
according to the statement of Annan’s spokesman.
In turn, the
People's
Daily, the official newspaper of
the ruling Chinese Communist Party, declared that the western states prevent from
reaching a political solution for Syria’s crisis, and are held accountable for
the disagreements at the UN Security Council’s session on this issue.
The Saudi Daily
al-Watan insisted that it had conducted an interview with Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov where he made a statement
whereby he stressed that President Assad’s brother Maher Assad lost his legs in
an attack. Moscow has denied this statement on Tuesday.
The Daily’s website
spread an audio clip of the interview, where an Arabic-speaking man stressed
that “Maher Assad lost his legs in an explosion” and mentioned a “peaceful
power transition in Syria”.
AP/REUTERS/LBCI