MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia will speed up initial deliveries of S-400 surface-to-air missile batteries to Turkey, Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday, speaking at a press conference in Moscow together with his Turkish counterpart Mevlut Cavusoglu.
Russia and Turkey agreed in December that Moscow would begin supplying the missile systems in the first quarter of 2020.
(Writing by Polina Ivanova; Editing by Catherine Evans)
By Steve Holland and Roberta Rampton
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday after a series of public rifts over policy on North Korea, Russia and Iran, replacing his chief diplomat with loyalist CIA Director Mike Pompeo.
The biggest shakeup of Trump’s Cabinet since he took office in January 2017 was announced by the president on Twitter as his administration works toward a meeting with the leader of North Korea.
Some foreign policy experts criticized the decision to swap out top diplomats so soon before the unprecedented meeting and worried that Pompeo would encourage Trump to scrap the Iran nuclear deal and be hawkish on North Korea.
Trump chose the CIA’s deputy director, Gina Haspel, to replace Pompeo at the intelligence agency. She is a veteran CIA clandestine officer backed by many in the U.S. intelligence community but regarded warily by some in Congress for her involvement in the agency’s “black site” detention facilities.
Tillerson’s departure capped months of friction between the Republican president and the 65-year-old former Exxon Mobil chief executive. The tensions peaked last fall amid reports Tillerson had called Trump a “moron” and considered resigning.
“We got along actually quite well but we disagreed on things,” Trump said on the White House lawn on Tuesday. “When you look at the Iran deal: I think it’s terrible, I guess he thinks it was OK. I wanted to break it or do something and he felt a little bit differently.”
Trump said he and Pompeo have “a similar thought process.”
Pompeo, a former Army officer who represented a Kansas district in Congress before taking the CIA job, is seen as a Trump loyalist who has enjoyed a less hostile relationship with career spies than Tillerson had with career diplomats.
Senior White House officials said Trump wanted his new team in place before any summit with Kim Jong un, who invited the U.S. president to meet by May after months of escalating tensions over North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs.
TILLERSON UNCLEAR ON REASON
Tillerson’s imminent departure had been rumored for several months and Trump said he and Tillerson had discussed the move for a long time. But Steve Goldstein, a State Department undersecretary of state for public affairs, said Tillerson did not know why he was being pushed out and had intended to stay.
Goldstein was fired later on Tuesday, two U.S. officials told Reuters.
Many Democrats in Congress expressed dismay at the firing, which they said would sow more instability in the Trump administration at a crucial time.
Foreign policy experts from Republican and Democratic administrations also questioned Trump’s timing and choice, noting that Pompeo was known as a political partisan who strongly opposed the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
Evans Revere, a former senior U.S. diplomat who dealt with North Korea under President George W. Bush, said Trump’s move sends “a bad signal about the role of diplomacy.”
“Tillerson’s replacement by … Pompeo, who is known as a political partisan and an opponent of the Iran agreement, raises the prospect of the collapse of that deal, and increases the possibility that the administration might soon face not one, but two nuclear crises,” he said.
Senior White House officials said White House chief of staff John Kelly had asked Tillerson to step down on Friday but did not want to make it public while he was on a trip to Africa. Trump’s Twitter announcement came only a few hours after Tillerson landed in Washington.
On Monday, Tillerson blamed Russia for the poisonings in England of a former Russian double agent and his daughter. Earlier at the White House, press secretary Sarah Sanders had refrained from saying Moscow was responsible.
He appeared to be caught by surprise last week when Trump announced he had accepted Kim’s invitation to meet.
“Mike Pompeo, Director of the CIA, will become our new Secretary of State. He will do a fantastic job! Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service! Gina Haspel will become the new Director of the CIA, and the first woman so chosen. Congratulations to all!” Trump said on Twitter.
Tillerson joined a long list of senior officials who have either resigned or been fired since Trump took office in January 2017. Others include strategist Steve Bannon, national security adviser Michael Flynn, FBI Director James Comey, White House chief of staff Reince Priebus, health secretary Tom Price, communications directors Hope Hicks and Anthony Scaramucci, economic adviser Gary Cohn and press secretary Sean Spicer.
OUT OF THE LOOP
Trump publicly undercut Tillerson’s diplomatic initiatives numerous times.
In December, Tillerson had offered to begin direct talks with North Korea without pre-conditions, backing away from a U.S. demand that Pyongyang must accept that any negotiations would be about giving up its nuclear arsenal.
The White House distanced itself from those remarks, and a few days later, Tillerson himself backed off.
Several months earlier in Beijing, Tillerson said the United States was directly communicating with North Korea but that Pyongyang had shown no interest in dialogue. Trump contradicted Tillerson’s efforts a day later.
“I told Rex Tillerson, our wonderful Secretary of State, that he is wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” Trump wrote on Twitter, using a pejorative nickname for Kim.
Tillerson had joined Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in pressing a skeptical Trump to stick with the agreement with Iran and other world powers over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions and he has taken a more hawkish view than Trump on Russia.
If confirmed by the U.S. Senate after an April committee hearing, Pompeo will be taking over a State Department shaken by the departures of many senior diplomats and embittered by proposed budget cuts.
Lawmakers from both major parties have criticized those cuts and the administration’s failure to fill dozens of open jobs there.
Tillerson faced a tougher confirmation that most nominees to be secretary of state last year as Democrats grilled him about his oil business ties to Russia. But over time, many lawmakers grew to appreciate Tillerson as a relatively steady hand in the chaotic Trump administration.
“He represented a stable view with regard to the implementation of diplomacy in North Korea, Iran and other places in the world,” said Senator Ben Cardin, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during most of Tillerson’s tenure.
(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle, David Brunnstrom, Lesley Wroughton, Paul Simao, Susan Heavey; Writing by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Bill Trott)
By Michelle Nichols and Suleiman Al-Khalidi
UNITED NATIONS/AMMAN (Reuters) – U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley warned on Monday that Washington “remains prepared to act if we must,” if the U.N. Security Council fails to act on Syria, as the Syrian army’s onslaught in eastern Ghouta continued unabated.
The United States asked the Security Council to demand an immediate 30-day ceasefire in Damascus and rebel-held eastern Ghouta, where Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces, backed by Russia and Iran, say they are targeting “terrorist” groups which are shelling the capital.
The army’s onslaught in eastern Ghouta, backed by air and artillery strikes, has killed about 1,160 people since Feb. 18, a war monitoring group said, as Assad seeks to crush the last big rebel stronghold near the capital Damascus.
“It is not the path we prefer, but it is a path we have demonstrated we will take, and we are prepared to take again,” Haley told the 15-member Security Council. “When the international community consistently fails to act, there are times when states are compelled to take their own action.”
The United States bombed a Syrian government air base last year over a deadly chemical weapons attack.
The Security Council demanded a 30-day ceasefire across Syria in a unanimously adopted Feb. 24 resolution.
Russia and Damascus say a ceasefire ordered by the U.N. Security Council does not protect the fighters in eastern Ghouta, arguing that they are members of banned terrorist groups.
“There has been no cessation of hostilities,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said on Monday. “Violence continues in eastern Ghouta and beyond – including in Afrin, parts of Idlib and into Damascus and its suburbs.”
“No sieges have been lifted … To our knowledge, not one critically sick or wounded person has yet been evacuated.
Russia’s U.N. envoy Vassily Nebenzia also said some states were accusing the Syrian government of carrying our chemical weapons attacks in a bid to “prepare the ground for the unilateral use of force against sovereign Syria.”
“We have heard hints of that in the statements of some delegations today,” Nebenzia said. “Basically steps are being weighed which could hit regional stability very, very hard.”
Elsewhere, Syrian jets also struck rebel-held towns in the country’s south, the first aerial attacks on the area since the United States and Russia brokered a deal making it a “de-escalation zone” last year, rebels and residents said.
The Trump administration frequently points to the de-escalation zone as a sign of progress it can achieve with Moscow on reducing the violence in Syria. But on Monday, the U.S. State Department said it was very concerned by the violence and called an “urgent meeting” in Jordan to ensure maintenance of the de-escalation zone.
“If (reports of the strikes are) true, this would be a clear violation of the (southwest) ceasefire by the Syrian regime that broadens the conflict,” a State Department official said.
“We urge all parties in the southwest de-escalation zone not to take actions that would jeopardize the ceasefire and make future cooperation more difficult.”
HEAVY ONSLAUGHT
The assault on Ghouta is one of the heaviest in the war, which enters its eighth year this week.
Thousands of families are sleeping in the open in the streets of the biggest town in the enclave, where there is no longer any room in packed cellars to shelter from government bombardment, local authorities said.
At least 70 people had been buried in a town park because air strikes made it unsafe to reach the cemetery on the outskirts, it said.
In a video filmed inside Douma, one man cowering in a heavily damaged shelter said: “It is completely uninhabitable. It is not even safe to put chickens in. There is no bathroom, just one toilet, and there are 300 people.”
Douma residents said dozens of people were trapped alive under rubble, with rescuers unable to reach them due to the intensity of the raids.
Government forces have now captured more than half the rebel enclave, entirely besieging Douma and the large town of Harasta, cutting them off from each other and neighboring areas with advances on Saturday and Sunday.
In an apparent sign of local discontent with the rebel policy of holding out, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group reported that hundreds of people protested in the town of Kafr Batna to demand a deal to end the onslaught.
Jaish al-Islam, one of eastern Ghouta’s main rebel groups, said on Monday it had reached an agreement with the government’s ally Russia to evacuate wounded people, after communicating with Moscow through the United Nations.
A U.N. humanitarian spokeswoman said the United Nations was not part of that deal and still called for the urgent evacuation of more than 1,000 sick and wounded people in eastern Ghouta.
State television broadcasts from the government-controlled side of the battlefront showed dark grey clouds of smoke billowing from several places across a landscape of shattered buildings.
Smoke rises from the besieged Eastern Ghouta in Damascus, February 27.
REUTERS/ Bassam Khabieh
HALF-MILLION DEAD
The Observatory, said on Monday the death toll in the civil war had passed half a million people.
It has confirmed the deaths of 511,000 people, it said, and has the names of more than 350,000 of them. About 85 percent were killed by government forces and their allies, it said.
Eastern Ghouta has been besieged for years after many of its residents joined the initial protests against Assad’s rule in 2011 that triggered the slide into civil war. The United Nations says 400,000 people live in the enclave, already suffering shortages of food and medicine even before the massive assault began in mid-February.
Assad says the assault on eastern Ghouta is needed to end the rule of Islamist insurgents over the civilian population and to stop mortar fire on nearby Damascus.
The United Nations has warned of dire shortages of food and medicine, where international deliveries have long been erratic and often obstructed before they could reach the enclave.
The expulsion of the rebels from eastern Ghouta would represent their biggest defeat since they lost their enclave in Aleppo in December 2016. They still control large areas in the northwest and southwest and a few scattered pockets elsewhere but have been driven from most major population centers.
(Additional reporting by a reporter in eastern Ghouta, Angus McDowall and Ellen Francis in Beirut and Yara Bayoumy in Washington; Writing by Yara Bayoumy; Editing by Alistair Bell)
PARIS (Reuters) – France is prepared to launch targeted strikes against any site in Syria used to deploy chemical attacks that result in the deaths of civilians, President Emmanuel Macron said.
Shortly before the United Nations was due to discuss Syria, Macron said Moscow, a close ally of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government, had not done enough to permit relief efforts into the rebel-held Damascus suburb of eastern Ghouta.
Asked about the Syrian conflict at a news conference in India, Macron said France would be ready to strike if it found “irrefutable evidence” chemical weapons had been used to kill.
“The day we have, in particular in tandem with our American partners, irrefutable proof that the red line was crossed — namely the chemical weapons were used to lethal effect — we will do what the Americans themselves did moreover a few months ago; we would put ourselves in position to proceed with targeted strikes,” Macron said.
The French leader has made the threat before but has so far made little headway influencing events in Syria.
“We are cross-matching our own information with that of our allies but to put it very clearly we have an independent capacity to identify targets and launch strikes where needed.”
Syria signed a Russian-brokered deal to give up its arsenal of chemical weapons to avert U.S. air strikes after a nerve gas attack killed hundreds of people in 2013. Last year, the United States again accused Damascus of using nerve gas and launched air strikes.
Since then, Washington has repeatedly accused Damascus of using chlorine gas in attacks. Chlorine is far less deadly than nerve agents and possession of it is allowed for civilian purposes, but its use as a weapon is banned.
Damascus and Moscow have been carrying out a fierce bombing campaign and ground assault against the besieged rebel-held eastern Ghouta enclave since mid-February, despite a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a countrywide ceasefire.
“This is a debate we will have in the coming hours at the United Nations, where it will be shown that the concessions on the ground from Russia, but first and foremost the Syrian regime and its Iranian allies, are insufficient,” Macron said.
(Reporting by Jean-Baptiste Vey and Brian Love; Editing by Richard Lough and Peter Graff)
MOSCOW (Reuters) – President Vladimir Putin said on Monday that Britain should work out what happened to a former Russian spy struck down by nerve gas in southern England before talking to Russia, a BBC reporter said on social media.
Former double agent Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, have been in hospital in a critical condition since March 4 when they were found unconscious on a bench outside a shopping center in the southern English city of Salisbury.
“Get to the bottom of things there, then we’ll discuss this,” BBC reporter Steve Rosenberg quoted Putin as saying when asked about the alleged poisoning.
(Reporting by Jack Stubbs; Writing by Maria Tsvetkova; Editing by Andrew Osborn)
By Henry Nicholls and Alex Fraser
SALISBURY, England (Reuters) – Hundreds of people who visited the Zizzi restaurant or the Mill pub in the English city of Salisbury were told on Sunday to wash their clothes after traces of nerve agent used to attack a former Russian spy last week were found at both sites.
Public Health England said there was no immediate health risk to anyone who may have been in either the restaurant or the pub, but their was a small chance that any of the agent that had come into contact with clothing or belongings could still be present in minute amounts and contaminate skin.
Former double agent Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, have been in hospital in a critical condition since March 4, when they were found unconscious on a bench in the southern English cathedral city of Salisbury.
People walk past a restaurant which has been secured as part of the investigation into the poisoning of former Russian inteligence agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, in Salisbury, Britain March 11, 2018. REUTERS/Henry Nicholls
“We have now learned there has been some trace contamination by the nerve agent in both the Mill pub and Zizzi restaurant in Salisbury,” chief medical offer Sally Davies said on Sunday.
She said she was confident that no one who was in the restaurant or the pub on March 4 or 5 had been harmed, but their clothing should be washed and personal items like phones wiped as a precaution against any long-term exposure to any substance.
Skripal and his daughter remained in a “critical but stable condition in intensive care,” the chief executive of the local hospital said at a news conference.
A police officer who initially responded was “conscious and in a serious but stable condition,” she added.
British police have said a nerve agent was used against Skripal and his daughter, but have not made public which one.
SMALL RISK
Public Health England said it had weighed new evidence before issuing its advice on Sunday, and it said the general public had not been at risk in the days since the attack.
“This is about a very, very small risk of repetitive contact for any traces of contamination that people may have taken out,” Public Health England’s deputy medical director Jenny Harries said at the same press conference.
“In risk terms one or two days is not what we are concerned about, what we are worrying about is whether there could be an ongoing risk that could build over the future.”
Cordons were still around the restaurant and the pub on Sunday, and police could not say how long they would remain.
A number of police cars and other vehicles were removed from a local car park by soldiers wearing protective clothing and gas masks on Sunday, a Reuters eyewitness said.
Items from the Zizzi restaurant, including a table, had been removed and destroyed, the BBC said.
Local residents said they were concerned by the warnings about contamination issued to the people who had visited the venues.
“It’s worried a lot of people,” dog walker Phil Burt said. “This town is usually packed on a Sunday, but I think a lot of people are just staying away.”
Many in British media and politics have speculated that Russia could have played a part in the attack on Skripal, but interior minister Amber Rudd said on Saturday it was too early to say who was responsible.
Skripal betrayed dozens of Russian agents to British intelligence before his arrest in Moscow in 2004. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2006, and in 2010 was given refuge in Britain after being exchanged for Russian spies.
Finance minister Philip Hammond said Britain would respond “appropriately” if a foreign state is found to have been involved in the poisoning.
“This is a police investigation and it will be evidence-led and we must go where the evidence takes us,” Hammond told BBC television on Sunday.
“So we have to allow the police investigation to run its course. But if there were to be an involvement of a foreign state evidenced by this investigation, then obviously that would be very serious indeed and the government would respond appropriately,” he said.
(Reporting by Paul Sandle and William Schomberg; Editing by Mark Potter and David Evans)
By Peter Nicholls and Elizabeth Burden
SALISBURY, England (Reuters) – Britain deployed specialist troops on Friday to help remove potentially contaminated objects from the small English city where a Russian double agent and his daughter were poisoned.
Sergei Skripal, 66, who once passed Russian secrets to Britain, and his daughter Yulia, 33, have been in intensive care since they were found slumped unconscious on a bench on Sunday afternoon in the cathedral city of Salisbury.
Britain’s interior minister Amber Rudd, who visited Salisbury on Friday, said they were both still in a very serious condition, five days after collapsing.
About 180 troops including some with chemical expertise had been sent to the city to remove ambulances and other vehicles involved in the incident and other objects, Britain’s ministry of defense and police said.
“The public should not be alarmed,” counter-terrorism police, who are leading the investigation, said in a statement.
“Military assistance will continue as necessary during this investigation.”
LOW RISK
Health chiefs have said there is a low risk to the wider public from the nerve agent used against Skripal and his daughter.
Police said Skripal and his daughter were deliberately targeted with the rare toxin. They said experts had identified the substance, which will help determine the source, but they did not name it publicly.
The incident has been likened to the case of former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who died in London in 2006 after drinking green tea laced with radioactive polonium-210.
A British public inquiry said Litvinenko’s killing had probably been approved by Russian President Vladimir Putin and carried out by two Russians, Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoy. Lugovoy is a former KGB bodyguard who later became a member of the Russian parliament.
Both denied responsibility and Russia has refused to extradite them.
Britain has said it will respond robustly if evidence shows Russia was behind the Salisbury poisoning. The Kremlin has denied any involvement in the incident and says anti-Russian hysteria is being whipped up by the British media.
“In terms of further options, that will have to wait until we’re absolutely clear what the consequences could be, and what the actual source of this nerve agent has been,” Rudd said after visiting Salisbury and seeing the area around the bench where Skripal was found, now covered by a police forensics tent.
RUSSIAN RESPONSE
Responding to previous comments by the interior minister, Russia’s embassy in London tweeted on Thursday: “Totally agree with Secretary @AmberRuddHR: first evidence then conclusions on Mr Skripal’s case. Responsible political approach.”
Britain’s Home Secretary Amber Rudd, accompanied by Temporary Chief Constable Kier Pritchard, visits the scene where Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found after having been poisoned by a nerve agent in Salisbury, Britain, March 9, 2018. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls
Twenty-one people were taken to hospital following the incident but apart from the Skripals only Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey, the first police officer on the scene, is still being treated. He remains in a serious condition although he is now able to talk, Rudd said.
She declined to give details of the police investigation. “We have to give the police all the space they need in order to collect all the information, to secure and to be able to be absolutely clear that there is no further risk,” Rudd said.
Police have cordoned off Skripal’s modest home in Salisbury, about 80 miles (130 km) from London, and erected forensic tents in the garden. Officers were guarding the area where he and his daughter were found, along with a pizza restaurant and a pub they had visited and the graves of Skripal’s wife and son.
Skripal betrayed dozens of Russian agents to British intelligence before his arrest in Moscow in 2004. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2006, and in 2010 was given refuge in Britain after being exchanged for Russian spies.
(Additional reporting by Alistair Smout and David Milliken; Writing by Guy Faulconbridge and Michael Holden; Editing by Andrew Roche)
By Laila Bassam and Suleiman Al-Khalidi
BEIRUT/AMMAN (Reuters) – Syria’s army is poised to slice rebel-held eastern Ghouta in two as forces advancing from the east link up with troops at its western edge, a pro-Damascus commander said on Thursday, piling more pressure on the last major rebel enclave near the capital.
The government, backed in the war by Russia and Iran, is seeking to crush the enclave in a ferocious campaign that the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says has killed 909 civilians in the last 18 days, including 91 on Wednesday.
Rebels, who accuse the government of “scorched earth” tactics, said they were deploying more guerrilla-style ambushes in lost territory, trying to stop further advances.
“We came because of the intensity of the bombing,” said Abu Mohammed, a 32-year-old farmer who left his cows, sheep and farm equipment to flee to Douma, further into the rebel enclave.
“It was a miracle that we made it here,” he said, speaking of the heavy air strikes. As for his former home town of Beit Sawa: “It was totally destroyed. Burnt,” he said.
Defeat in eastern Ghouta would mark the worst setback for rebels since the opposition was driven from eastern Aleppo in late 2016 after a similar campaign of siege, bombing and ground assaults.
The pro-Damascus commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media, confirmed a report by the Observatory late on Wednesday that the enclave had effectively been sliced in two.
But Wael Alwan, the Istanbul-based spokesman for Failaq al-Rahman, one of the main rebel groups in eastern Ghouta, denied that the territory had been cut in half. “No” he said in a text message when asked if the report was correct.
A Red Crescent truck is seen parked near Syrian and Russian soldiers at a checkpoint at Wafideen camp in Damascus, Syria March 8, 2018. REUTERS/Omar Sanadiki
CONVOY
In northern Syria, rebels began to bombard two government-held villages besieged by insurgent forces, killing two children, the Observatory reported.
An aid convoy that intended to go to Ghouta later on Thursday was postponed, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United Nations said.
The United Nations says 400,000 people are trapped in the towns and villages of eastern Ghouta. They have been under government siege for years and were already running out of food and medicine before the assault.
“We are dying of hunger and our children are dying of hunger. Have pity on us,” said a woman reached in Douma by a voice messaging service, who identified herself as Um Mahmoud.
Russia, President Bashar al-Assad’s most powerful ally, has offered rebels safe passage out with their families and personal weapons. The proposal echoes previous agreements under which insurgents, in the face of military defeat, were permitted to withdraw to opposition-held areas along the Turkish border.
Syrian state news agency SANA reported that a second safe route out of eastern Ghouta, along with one near Douma, had been opened in the southern part of the enclave.
Russia’s defense ministry said on Wednesday some rebels wanted to accept the proposal to evacuate. So far rebels have dismissed it in public and vowed to fight on.
BATTLES RAGING
Syria’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Hussam Aala, told the U.N. Human Rights Council on Thursday the assault targeted “terrorist organizations in accordance with international humanitarian law”.
Moscow and Damascus say the Ghouta campaign is necessary to halt deadly rebel shelling of the capital.
Rescue workers and opposition activists in eastern Ghouta meanwhile have accused the government of using chlorine gas during the campaign.
The government firmly denies this. Damascus and Moscow have accused rebels of planning to orchestrate poison gas attacks in order to accuse Damascus of using banned weapons.
A Syria-focused medical aid group said there reports from doctors of a chlorine attack on Wednesday evening. Local rescue workers said gas had affected 50 people. Social media activists shared videos and photos, which Reuters could not verify, of people with signs of breathing difficulties.
The opposition-run rescue service also said two of its rescuers were killed when their ambulance was hit last night adding its teams were hampered from reaching many victims under rubble with extensive destruction in many areas.
The narrow point linking rebel territory in north and south parts of eastern Ghouta is all within the range of government fire and impossible for insurgents to cross, meaning the enclave has in military terms been bisected, the commander said.
A rebel fighter with Jaish al-Islam, one of the main factions in eastern Ghouta, said intense fighting was underway.
“Nothing is secure and battles are raging and it’s difficult to predict what will happen,” the fighter, who gave his name as Abu Ahmad al-Doumani, said in a text message to Reuters.
The United Nations had hoped to deliver aid to eastern Ghouta on Thursday after a convoy on Monday was unable to fully offload, but it was postponed.
“We continue to call on all parties to immediately allow safe and unimpeded access for further convoys to deliver critical supplies,” said the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Assistance (OCHA).
(Reporting by Laila Bassam, Tom Perry, Lisa Barrington in Beirut, Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva, Editing by Paul Tait, John Stonestreet, William Maclean)
By Estelle Shirbon
LONDON (Reuters) – Britain will methodically work out who carried out a nerve agent attack on a Russian ex-spy and his daughter, then take robust action, interior minister Amber Rudd said on Thursday.
Former double agent Sergei Skripal, 66, and his daughter Yulia, 33, have been in hospital since they were found unconscious on Sunday on a bench outside a shopping center in the southern English city of Salisbury.
“Both remain unconscious, and in a critical but stable condition,” Home Secretary Rudd told parliament.
Sergei Skripal, a former colonel of Russia’s GRU military intelligence service, looks on inside the defendants’ cage as he attends a hearing at the Moscow military district court, Russia. Kommersant/Yuri Senatorov via REUTERS
British media and some politicians have speculated that the Russian state could be behind the attack – suggestions dismissed by Moscow as knee-jerk, anti-Russian propaganda.
“The use of a nerve agent on UK soil is a brazen and reckless act. This was attempted murder in the most cruel and public way,” Rudd said.
“But if we are to be rigorous in this investigation, we must avoid speculation and allow the police to carry on their investigation.”
Despite her call, several lawmakers pointed the finger at Russia during their questions to Rudd, with some calling for investigations to be re-opened into the deaths of Russian exiles in Britain in recent years.
Rudd rebuffed them, urging people to keep a cool head and saying the focus should remain on the Salisbury incident.
“We will respond in a robust and appropriate manner once we ascertain who was responsible,” she said. “We are committed to do all we can to bring the perpetrators to justice, whoever they are and wherever they may be.”
DOUBLE AGENT
Police said on Wednesday that a nerve agent was used against Skripal and Yulia. A British police officer who was also harmed by the substance was now able to talk to people although he remained in a serious condition, Rudd said.
Scientific tests by government experts have identified the specific nerve agent used, which will help identify the source, but authorities have refused to disclose the details.
Skripal betrayed dozens of Russian agents to British intelligence before his arrest by Russian authorities in 2004. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2006, and in 2010 was given refuge in Britain after being exchanged for Russian spies.
The attack on him has been likened in Britain to the assassination of ex-KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko, a critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who died in London in 2006 after drinking green tea laced with radioactive polonium-210.
A British public inquiry later said Litvinenko’s murder had probably been approved by Putin and carried out by two Russians, Dmitry Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoy, an ex-KGB bodyguard who later became a member of parliament.
Both men denied any responsibility and Russia has refused to extradite them to stand trial.
Rudd was pressed during a BBC radio interview earlier on whether Britain had been too soft on Russia following the Litvinenko murder, sending out a message that such acts could be carried out with impunity.
She denied this and hinted that if Russia turned out to be implicated in the attack on Skripal, action would be taken against it.
“We are absolutely robust about any crimes committed on these streets in the UK. There is nothing soft about the UK’s response to any sort of state activity in this country,” she said.
(Additional reporting by Sarah Young, Alistair Smout and Michael Holden; Editing by Stephen Addison)
By Tom Perry and Angus McDowall
BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian government forces bombarded eastern Ghouta anew on Wednesday in an effort to slice the rebel enclave in two as they intensified a campaign to deal the opposition its biggest defeat since 2016.
The Syrian government assault on the densely populated area on the outskirts of Damascus, which began more than two weeks ago, has become one of the fiercest campaigns of a war now entering its eighth year, with bombardment killing hundreds.
Live footage broadcast by Syrian state TV from the outskirts of the town of Mesraba showed enormous clouds of smoke rising into the sky. The sounds of explosions and jets could be heard.
A state TV correspondent said militant defenses in the town were being struck by “preparatory fire” in advance of a planned infantry assault. “Mesraba is under heavy attack today,” said Khalil Aybour, a member of an opposition council in Ghouta.
Capturing Mesraba would be a major step towards severing the northern half of the Ghouta, including its biggest town, Douma, from the southern part. Government forces have seized more than 40 percent of the territory so far.
On Wednesday pro-government forces advanced, taking the small town of Beit Sawa to Misraba’s south, a Hezbollah-run media unit said.
Civilians have been fleeing frontline areas into Douma and hiding in cellars, with aid workers saying many children had told them they had not seen daylight in 20 days. [L5N1QP5D5]
“It’s bad in the basement, but it’s better than the bombing,” Adnan, 30, a Douma resident who has been sheltering below ground with his wife and two-year-old daughter together with 10 other families, told Reuters by telephone.
The United Nations says 400,000 people are trapped in the towns and villages of the eastern Ghouta, under government siege for years and already running out of food and medicine before the assault. An aid convoy reached the area this week but government officials had stripped out most medical supplies.
The United Nations resident and humanitarian coordinator in Syria. Ali al-Za’tari, asked the government to commit to a ceasefire on Thursday to allow more aid in.
Russia, President Bashar al-Assad’s most powerful ally, has offered rebels safe passage out with their families and personal weapons. The proposal echoes previous agreements under which insurgents, in the face of military defeat, were permitted to withdraw to opposition-held areas along the Turkish border.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group says at least 815 civilians have been killed by government bombing and shelling in this offensive, with 45 killed on Wednesday.
The Observatory said an extra 700 pro-government militia fighters had arrived at the front as reinforcements to join the operation.
The U.N. Security Council has called for a 30-day countrywide ceasefire, but Moscow and Damascus have not halted the campaign, arguing that the fighters they are striking are members of banned terrorist groups unprotected by the truce.
The Security Council, where Russia holds a veto, will meet on Wednesday to discuss the failed ceasefire.
Russia’s defense ministry said some rebels wanted to accept the proposal to evacuate. So far rebels have dismissed it in public. The military spokesman for one of the main eastern Ghouta rebel groups said rebels would defend the territory and there were no negotiations over a withdrawal.
“The factions of Ghouta and their fighters and its people are holding onto their land and will defend it,” Hamza Birqdar of Jaish al-Islam told Reuters in a text message sent overnight.
The opposition says such evacuation agreements amount to a policy of demographic change by which Assad has forcibly displaced those who oppose him.
In an interview on state TV, a Syrian army colonel expressed confidence Ghouta would fall quickly, saying the people there would return to the “state’s embrace … very, very, very soon”.
COMPLICITY
Russian warplanes have taken part in the eastern Ghouta operation, and the White House has accused Russia of complicity in the killing of civilians there.
Defeat in eastern Ghouta would mark the biggest setback for the anti-Assad rebellion since the opposition was driven from eastern Aleppo in late 2016 after a similar campaign of siege, bombing, ground assaults and the promise of safe passage out.
Moscow and Damascus say the Ghouta campaign is necessary to halt rebel shelling of the capital. The Observatory says such shelling has killed at least 27 people since Feb. 18.
Syrian state media have given a higher death toll and said at least five people were injured on Wednesday due to rockets falling on government-held Damascus.
A commander in the military alliance fighting in support of Assad said he anticipated rebels would end up cornered in Douma and accept a withdrawal deal.
Assad said this week that the majority of people in eastern Ghouta wanted a return of state rule. But rebels and opposition activists say people fear government persecution.
State media said some people in Ghouta raised Syrian flags. The Observatory said a few people protested in the town of Hammouriyeh calling for an end to the bombardment and for rebel groups to leave.
U.N. human rights chief Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein said targeting a few hundred fighters was no justification for the offensive.
“Claims by the government of Syria that it is taking every measure to protect its civilian population are frankly ridiculous,” he told the U.N. Human Rights Council.
(Additional reporting by Ellen Francis, Laila Bassam and Lisa Barrington in Beirut, Maria Kiselyova in Moscow, Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Tom Perry; Editing by Peter Graff/Mark Heinrich)