EU says its foreign Syria fighters are up to 2,000

 
Joelle Milquet said Thursday after a meeting involving a dozen nations that the total was "estimated at, more or less, between 1,500 and 2,000." She did not say how she got that number.
     
Milquet has been pushing for a united front within the 28-nation bloc to deal with the threat the increase of foreign fighters in Syria poses.
     
Her French counterpart Manuel Valls said the estimate included over 180 fighters coming from France, double the total before the summer.
     
The number is a rare public estimate. An AP analysis of government and expert figures published Tuesday found that the 11 western European countries with the biggest contingents in Syria are estimated to have some 1,200-1,700 people among rebel forces.

Meanwhile, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that desperate civilians in a swathe of Syria from Aleppo in the north to the southern border are largely out of reach of aid workers.
   
Throughout the country, the wounded are often denied medical treatment by either government officials or rebels, while hospitals and ambulances remain targets of unlawful attacks, ICRC President Peter Maurer said.
   
The ICRC is seeking 105.3 million Swiss francs ($116.27 million) in 2014 for Syria, its largest operation worldwide.
   
Syria accounts for one-tenth of its 1.29 billion Swiss franc emergency appeal for 80 countries, the largest in the 150-year history of the independent humanitarian agency.

This comes as the United Nations and the global chemical weapons watchdog are awaiting approval from a country to use its port to load Syria's most deadly chemicals onto a US ship for destruction offshore, the head of the mission said on Wednesday.         

Sigrid Kaag, head of the joint mission of the United Nations and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons Syria mission, briefed the UN Security Council on Wednesday but did not identify which country she had been in talks with.         

The OPCW said on Saturday the United States had started modifying a US naval vessel to be able to destroy Syria's 500 tons of chemicals, including actual nerve agents - neutralizing them offshore with other chemicals in a process known as hydrolysis.            

Italy, Norway and Denmark have offered to transport Syria's chemicals from the northern Syrian port of Latakia with military escorts. The chemicals would then be transferred to the U.S. ship at another port.          

"We're still awaiting confirmation by a member state that a port is available for trans-loading, so it will be trans-loading in a port," Kaag told reporters after briefing the council.         

When asked if the port to be used would likely be in the Mediterranean, she said: "The geographic range is quite significant, so no, not necessarily. At the moment, we're discussing and we're hoping to have early confirmation soon."          

The Hague-based OPCW, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in October, has been given the task of overseeing destruction of Syria's chemical weapons stocks under an agreement that averted US missile strikes.            

It followed a sarin gas attack on the outskirts of Damascus in August that killed hundreds of people.     


On the field:

Syrian opposition fighters killed an Iraqi freelance journalist in the rebel-held north of the country, the latest of dozens of reporters who have died in the country over the past three years, an activist group and an international media watchdog said Thursday.
     
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Yasser Faisal al-Jumaili was shot dead at a rebel checkpoint in the northwestern province of Idlib on Wednesday.
     
Soazig Dollet of the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders press advocacy group confirmed al-Jumaili was killed in Idlib, adding that his body was taken to Turkey in order to be sent home later. She said she doesn't know how al-Jumaili was killed.
     
The Committee to Protect Journalists said that Syria was the most dangerous country in the world for journalists in 2012. According to the group, 28 reporters were killed in that year alone.
     
Those who lost their lives since the crisis began in March 2011 include award-winning French TV reporter Gilles Jacquier, photographer Remi Ochlik and Britain's Sunday Times correspondent Marie Colvin. Also, Anthony Shadid, a correspondent for The New York Times, died after an apparent asthma attack while on assignment in Syria.