REPORT: UN condemns Assad's Syrian forces, unease with rebels grows

The U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday condemned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces and praised the opposition Syrian National Coalition, but support for the Gulf Arab-drafted declaration was less than a similar text received last year.                    

While the non-binding text has no legal force, resolutions adopted by the 193-nation assembly can carry significant moral and political weight. The vote result - 107 in favor, 12 against and 59 abstentions - contrasted sharply with that of a resolution that passed last year with 133 in favor.                                    
U.N. diplomats said the decline in support for Wednesday's resolution showed growing unease about Syria's fractious rebel groups fighting Assad's forces in the two-year civil war.                                 

Wednesday's vote comes as Washington and European governments have been mulling the benefits and risks of supplying arms to Syrian rebels.  
                     
A senior U.N. diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said this draft resolution was stronger than the earlier resolution, prompting Russia to write to all states to complain that it was unbalanced. The diplomat said Russia had also warned that it could hinder preparations for a Syria peace conference, as agreed by Russia and the United States.                

This as, Syria's Communications Ministry said that the Internet service has been restored in the country after an outage that lasted more than eight hours.             

It was the second nationwide outage in a week.                   

The Communications Ministry claims a rebel bombing in an area about 60 kilometers (40 miles) north of Damascus cut a cable, but gave no details.
               
A foreign Internet watcher said earlier it was not possible to determine the cause of Wednesday's outage from outside Syria.                           

On another note, Syrian rebels launched a coordinated assault on the main prison in the northern city of Aleppo Wednesday in an attempt to free hundreds of regime opponents believed to be held in the facility, activists said.                          

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels detonated two car bombs simultaneously outside the walls of the central prison Wednesday morning before trying to storm the facility.                                                 

Observatory director Rami Abdul-Rahman said that Aleppo's central prison is believed to be holding about 4,000 prisoners, around 250 of whom are jailed for reasons related to the 26-month-old uprising against Syrian President Bachar Assad's regime.                      

The leadership of the General Staff of the Military and Revolutionary forces issued on Wednesday a statement whereby it promised to severely punish anyone who commits a violation. The statement comes as outrage erupts following the emergence of a video showing a Syrian rebel commander cutting the heart out of a soldier and biting it.                           

Meanwhile, Israel's military said that stray mortar shells from the fighting in Syria have struck a popular tourist site, Mt. Hermon in the Golan Heights.                                                 

Mortar shells have landed in the Golan before but this was the first time they hit Mt. Hermon, a site popular with Israeli tourists in wintertime.     
                        
The military says it didn't fire back but temporarily closed Mt Hermon for visitors.         

Israel believes most of the cases of mortars in the Golan have been accidental but has responded occasionally.          


REUTERS/AP/LBCI                  


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