Syria’s Assad makes rare public appearance for Muslim holiday

Ramadan ends in bloodbath as car bombing claimed by IS kills over 100 in Iraq

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made a rare public appearance on Friday for holiday prayers at a Damascus mosque, state media reported.

Assad attended morning prayers at the Al-Hamad mosque in northwest Damascus on Eid al-Fitr, the Muslim holiday marking the end of the fasting month of Ramadan, theSANA news agency reported.

He was accompanied by “high-ranking officials from the (ruling Baath) party and from the state,” it added.

Photographs published by the news agency showed a smiling Assad surrounded by religious figures.

A photograph published by the president’s official Twitter account showed him kneeling in prayer beside other officials.

The mosque’s imam, Sheikh Mohammad Sharif al-Sawaf, “prayed to God to save Syria, its leader, its army and its people, and to bring victory against its enemies”.

“The Syrian army will continue to defend the country,” Sawaf said in his sermon, SANAreported.

Damascus has been largely spared the devastation wrought on other Syrian cities by more than four years of civil war, although there has been periodic mortar and rocket fire by rebels entrenched in the suburbs.

Assad has made few public appearances since the uprising against his rule erupted in March 2011.

Iraq: Car bombing claimed by IS kills over 100 at end of Ramadan

In Iraq, the death toll in a suicide car bombing claimed by Islamic State militants rose to more than 100 on Friday, police and medical sources said.

The force of the blast brought down several buildings in Khan Bani Saad, about 30 km (20 miles) northeast of Baghdad, crushing to death people who were celebrating the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, police and medics said.

The bomb exploded in a busy market where people were celebrating the end of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, police said.

The Islamic State have taken responsibility for the attack. The IS extremists, who control large parts of northern and western Iraq, have previously carried out attacks in the ethnically mixed eastern province of Diyala where Khan Bani Saad is located.

Angry crowds went on the rampage after the explosion, smashing the windows of cars parked in the street in grief and anger.

“Some people were using vegetables boxes to collect body parts of kids’ bodies,” said police major Ahmed al-Tamimi from the site of the explosion, describing the damage to the market as “devastating”.

IS used poison gas in northeast Syria: Kurds, monitor

The extremist group used poison gas in attacks against Kurdish-controlled areas of northeastern Syria in late June, a Syrian Kurdish militia and a group monitoring the Syrian conflict said on Saturday.

The YPG militia said Islamic State had fired “makeshift chemical projectiles” on June 28 at a YPG-controlled area of the city of Hasaka, and at YPG positions south of the town of Tel Brak to the northeast of Hasaka city.

Redur Xelil, the YPG spokesman, said the type of chemical used had not been definitively determined. None of the YPG fighters exposed to the gas had died because they were quickly taken to hospital, he said.

It was the first time Islamic State had used poison gas against the YPG, he added.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a UK-based group that reports on the war using an activist network on the ground, said it had also documented the use of poison gas by Islamic State in an attack on a village near Tel Brak on June 28.

It said 12 YPG fighters had been exposed to the gas. The Observatory also said it had received information about the gas attack on Hasaka city, but gave no further details.

Reports of poison gas attacks by the Islamic State group could not be independently verified by Reuters. The YPG statement said it was investigating Islamic State’s use of chemical weapons with help from an international team of experts.

The YPG has driven Islamic State from wide areas of northeastern Syria this year with the help of US-led air strikes. Areas captured from Islamic State include the town of Tel Abyad at the border with Turkey.

In a statement, the YPG said its forces had captured industrial grade gas masks in the last four weeks from Islamic State fighters, “confirming that they are prepared and equipped for chemical warfare along this sector of the front”.

It said soldiers exposed to the gas “experienced burning of the throat, eyes and nose, combined with severe headaches, muscle pain and impaired concentration and mobility”. “Prolonged exposure to the chemicals also caused vomiting,” it added.

 

http://www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/middle-east/78775-150718-islamic-state-used-poison-gas-in-northeast-syria-kurds-monitor