Arab League Chief Labels Aleppo Killings as War Crimes ⚠️

(31 Jul 2012) STORYLINE:
Arab League chief Nabil Elaraby said on Tuesday that the massacres taking place in Syria "amount to war crimes under international law".
Elaraby made the comments during a meeting with the Bulgarian Foreign Minister, Nickolai Mladenov, at the League's headquarters in the Egyptian capital, Cairo.
Elaraby spoke particularly of Aleppo, from where 200-thousand Syrians have fled over the past 10 days as the government trains its mortars, tank and helicopter gunships on neighbourhoods seized by the rebels.
The battle for Aleppo, Syria's commercial hub with around 3 million inhabitants, has now lasted longer than the rebel assault on the capital Damascus that regime troops crushed earlier in July.
Once a bastion of support for Assad, Aleppo is critical for both the regime and the opposition. Its fall would give the opposition a major strategic victory with a stronghold in the north. A rebel defeat, at the very least, would buy Assad more time.
Despite pledges by the government and opposition to implement the six-point peace plan for Syria brokered by Kofi Annan, a cease-fire never happened, and fighting has continued to escalate to a point where the conflict was recently declared a civil war.
For many diplomats and military experts, Annan's plan is all but dead.
Bulgarian Foreign Minister, Nickolai Mladenov, on Tuesday called on Syrian opposition groups to unify and agree on a leadership in preparation for a post-Assad Syria.
"I hope that we can see our friends in the Syria opposition organise more quickly to implement what under the auspices of the Arab league that they have achieved," Mladenov said. "This is the National Compact and the transition plan, because this will send a strong message to the people in Syria about the future of their country after the end of the Assad regime," he added.
Participants at a meeting of opposition groups in Cairo earlier this month (July) did agree on fundamental principles for a post-Assad Syria and a general outline to guide the opposition through a transitional period - but scuffles and fistfights during the session and a walkout by a Syrian Kurdish group visibly demonstrated the opposition's disarray.
The fighting in Aleppo stretched into its 11th day on Tuesday.
Despite regime claims of success and repeated forays by tanks and ground forces into rebel-controlled areas in the northeast and southwest of the city, the rebels appear to have held their ground,
prompting government forces to resort to more shelling by artillery and mortars. Rebel positions are also being attacked with helicopter gunships.
The Syrian government has defended its assault on Aleppo to the U.N., describing a city in the grip of "terrorist mercenaries" funded by Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey, that are holding people hostage as human shields and committing "horrifying crimes."


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