DAMASCUS, Oct 27 (AFP) – Hopes for a halt to violence in Syria over a Muslim holiday lay in tatters Saturday as fighting raged, war planes targeted Aleppo and some 146 people were reported killed on the first day of Eid al-Adha. The ceasefire conditionally agreed by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the main rebel [...]

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Syria ceasefire in tatters as fighting rages

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DAMASCUS, Oct 27 (AFP) – Hopes for a halt to violence in Syria over a Muslim holiday lay in tatters Saturday as fighting raged, war planes targeted Aleppo and some 146 people were reported killed on the first day of Eid al-Adha.

The ceasefire conditionally agreed by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime and the main rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) on Thursday had raised the prospect of the first real halt to the fighting after 19 months of conflict.

But the first day Friday of Eid — one of the most sacred holidays in Islam — saw the ceasefire shattered by fresh fighting, deadly car bombings and a new regime vow to hunt down “armed terrorists”, its term for rebel fighters.

A rebel commander in the embattled northern city of Aleppo said there was no doubt the ceasefire initiative, proposed by UN-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, had fallen apart.

“This is a failure for Brahimi. This initiative was dead before it started,” Abdel Jabbar al-Okaidi, the head of the FSA military council in Aleppo, told AFP by telephone.

He insisted the FSA had not broken the ceasefire and was only carrying out defensive actions. “I was on several fronts yesterday and the army did not stop shelling,” Okaidi said. “Our mission is to defend the people, it is not us who are attacking.”

The Eid holiday had started with a lull in the fighting — and state television footage of Assad smiling and chatting with worshippers at a Damascus mosque — but quickly degenerated.

The most dramatic attack on Friday saw a car bomb in Damascus explode in a residential area housing police officers and their families, killing at least eight people and wounding more than 30, according to state media.




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