In an interview with The Associated Press in Damascus, Assad also said deadly USA airstrikes on Syrian troops last week were intentional, dismissing American officials’ statements that they were an accident.
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While the U.S. and Russian Federation have previously jousted over proposed resolutions critical of the Syrian government, yesterday’s agenda didn’t even include a suggested course of action. Assad also suggested that the US, which leads a coalition against ISIS that has been conducting operations in Syria for two years, “doesn’t have the will” to work against ISIS and other extremist groups.
Assad, who inherited power from his father and is now in his 16th year in office, cut a confident figure during the interview Wednesday – a sign of how his rule, once seriously threatened by the rebellion, has been solidified by his forces’ military advances and by the year-long air campaign by his ally Russian Federation, which has turned the tables on the battlefield.
Dozens of people have been reported killed in eastern Aleppo since the army announced the new offensive late on Thursday, burying any remaining hope for reviving a ceasefire brokered by the United States and Russian Federation.
A truce deal negotiated between Moscow and Washington brought a few days of respite from the violence, though no humanitarian aid, earlier this month.
Syria and the United States have been at loggerheads since the September 17 US airstrike last week that hit Syrian troops in the eastern province of Deir el-Zour.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said a revival of a ceasefire in Syria depended on all sides involved and not only on “Russia’s unilateral concessions”. Selmo said the death toll was now over 100.
The International Syria Support Group was to consider a U.S. call for all warplanes to halt flights over aid routes following an attack on a humanitarian convoy near the besieged city of Aleppo, as well as a Russian suggestion for a three-day pause in fighting to get the “cessation of hostilities” back on track.
Rebels vowed to fight to keep President Bashar Assad’s forces out of their districts and shelled government neighborhoods, wounding several people, according to state media. However, as NPR’s Alison Meuse reported, an eyewitness said that “the attack consisted of helicopters and warplanes”.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Saturday that troops and pro-government Palestinian fighters have captured the Handarat camp north of the city.
“Most of the victims are under the rubble because more than half the civil defence has been forced out of service”, he said.
A United Nations official says almost 2 million people in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo are without running water as security conditions deteriorate.
“The raids are intense and continuous”, Observatory Director Rami Abdulrahman told Reuters.
Asked about his methods, including the use of indiscriminate weapons, Assad said there’s no difference between bombs: “When you have terrorists, you don’t throw at them balloons, or you don’t use rubber sticks”.
Speaking about Aleppo, where rebel-held areas have been intermittently under siege for months, he said, “If there’s really a siege around the city of Aleppo, people would be dead by now”. However, as The Guardian has reported, aid organizations “are refusing to share Global Positioning System coordinates with Russian and Syrian authorities because of repeated attacks on medical facilities and workers”. Millions have fled Syria, some of them drowning at sea in the Mediterranean. He told the AP that “I’m sure that the majority of those Syrians who left Syria, they will go back when the security and when the life goes back to its normality and the minimal requirements for livelihood will be affordable to them, they will go back”.
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However, Alice said numerous Syrian refugees she interviewed told her they are too afraid of Assad’s security forces to return home, even if there is peace in Syria.
