Syria: The Executive Summary, 3/13

Dozens Die in Battle for Village Located in Latakia Province

More than 50 government soldiers and Jabhat al-Nusra militants have been killed as they battled for control of a strategic village in Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s home province of Latakia, the BBC reports.

Al-Qaida’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra, and its Islamist allies launched on all-out assault on the village of Doreen, which sits overlooking their positions in one of the district’s main towns, Salma.

The militants lost the village to government forces last week after controlling it for more than a year.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights claims that the militants attacked Doreen on Wednesday night, but were driven back by regime forces.

“Nusra managed to retake parts of the village, but the regime still controls the hilltop that overlooks Salma,” Observatory head Rami Abdulrahman said.

Salma and Doreen are located in a mountainous area known as Jabal al-Akrad, “a mainly rebel stronghold in Latakia province, the heartland of President Bashar al-Assad’s Alawite sect,” the BBC writes.

Kurdish Fighters Hold Off Attack on Strategic Syria Border Town

Kurdish fighters held off an assault on Thursday by Islamic State militants on the strategic border town of Ras al-Ain in northeast Syria, which has a border crossing with Ceylanpinar in Turkey, AFP reports.

However, the Islamic State was able to make advances against the Kurdish forces around Tal Tamr, another key village on the same front line in the Syrian province of Hassakeh. “The jihadists want to seize the town, as well as Tal Tamr, to control key routes that link to their Iraqi bastion of Mosul farther east,” said Rami Abdulrahman.

“The Islamic State took over the village of Tal Nasri, so they are now only 500 meters (yards) from Tal Tamr. This is all one operation by the Islamic State. Tal Tamr and Ras al-Ain are the same front,” he added.

According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Islamic State militants launched a preemptive strike on Ras al-Ain to prevent Kurdish fighters from using it as a base to launch attacks on the ISIS-controlled town to Tal Abyad, a key gateway from Turkey into the Syrian province of Raqqa, the de facto capital of the Islamic State.

The Islamic State offensive comes weeks after Kurdish fighters successfully ousted the militant group from the key battleground town of Kobane near the Turkish border.

U.N. Comes in for Sharp Criticism as Syria’s Four-Year Conflict Continues

The U.N. is coming in for sharp criticism as Syria’s four-year war drags on, the New York Times reports.

This week, aid agencies came out with a new report criticizing the U.N. for failing to enforce three resolutions it had put into place aimed at protecting civilians and increasing aid access, calling the humanitarian situation in Syria “a stain on the conscience of the international community.”

“On all three counts, the United Nations as a whole has been unable to offer a path out of a war that has dragged on for four years, left an estimated 220,000 dead, given rise to vicious jihadists and spread havoc across the region,” the New York Time writes.

“I fear the Syrian war will become one of the darkest chapters in the history of the United Nations,” said Jan Egeland, head of the Norwegian Refugee Council, one of the 21 aid groups that issued the “Failing Syria” report.

According to the report, aid access to Syria has not improved, despite a U.N. resolution authorizing aid agencies to deliver cross-border aid without government consent.

Compared with 2013, an additional 2.3 million people in Syria are living in areas that are “hard to reach,” bringing the total to 4.8 million Syrians.

UNICEF said on Thursday that the situation in Syria has left more than 5.6 million children inside Syria in desperate conditions, with 2 million children living in areas largely cut off from humanitarian aid and another 2.6 million out of school.

Separately, Physicians for Human Rights, in a report earlier this week, said that at least 610 medical personnel have been killed, and there have been 233 deliberate or indiscriminate attacks on 183 medical facilities in Syria. They claim government forces were responsible for the vast majority of the targeted attacks on medical personnel.

Another U.N.-backed report by the Syrian Center for Policy Research released on Wednesday said the war had plunged 80 percent of Syrians into poverty.

The resolutions passed by the Security Council also cited the use of barrel bombs as a breach of international law. However, the council has not taken any punitive action despite their continued use.

“Even the Security Council’s one notable achievement – compelling Syria to destroy its chemical weapons arsenal – has been undermined by recent reports of the use of chlorine in aerial bombardments,” the New York Times writes.

http://www.syriadeeply.org/articles/2015/03/6952/syria-executive-summary-313/