Activist preacher voted head of Syria umbrella opposition group

Activist preacher Moaz al-Khatib has been elected as the first leader of a new Syrian opposition umbrella group that hopes to win international recognition and prepare for a post-Assad Syria, in a poll counted before reporters.   

Influential businessman Riad Seif, who proposed the U.S.-backed initiative to set up an umbrella group of opposition groups inside and outside Syria, was elected as deputy president along with Suhair al-Atassi, a well-known female activist.

Earlier, Syrian opposition groups have signed an initial agreement to form a new coalition of forces fighting to end the rule of President Bashar al-Assad, a Syrian delegate at talks in Doha said on Sunday.    

"An initial deal has been signed. The evening session will be for electing the president of the body and his deputy," Ali Sadreddine al-Bayanouni, a Muslim Brotherhood delegate at the talks, told reporters.    

The new body, made up of groups inside and outside Syria, would be called the National Coalition for Opposition Forces and the Syrian Revolution, he added.           

On the field, the Syrian air force launched raids on Sunday morning over eastern regions, while clashes continue in the south of a border town with Turkey, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Syrian helicopters and artillery bombarded the Ras al-Ain area near the border with Turkey days after Free Syrian Army rebels captured it during an advance into the northeast, opposition campaigners said.   

Helicopters fired rockets at a grain storage area near the village of Tal Halaf and shells hit the border crossing in the northeastern oil-producing province of Hasaka, home to a large proportion of Syria's Kurdish minority, 600 km (375 miles) from Damascus, the activists told Reuters.


REUTERS/LBCI

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