Damascus: The Syrian conflict on Saturday spilled again into neighbouring Lebanon, where two girls were killed amid cross-border clashes, as the regime in Damascus bombarded towns in the northern province of Aleppo killing 19 people.
“Regime forces are attempting to regain control over this [Aleppo] region, where they suffered heavy casualties over the past months to rebels,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights was quoted as saying. It added that the bombardment killed a civilian and wounded dozens in the town of Qabtan Al Jabal.
In Lebanon, a teenager died when a rocket hit her house in the border region of Wadi Khaled, a Lebanese security official told AFP, adding that five others were wounded by rockets and exchanges of gunfire.
“A few hours later, an eight-year-old Bedouin girl, who recently fled with her parents from Syria, was killed,” said a hospital source in Akkar province told AFP.
A local official said clashes had broken out at dawn between the Syrian army and gunmen on the Lebanese side of the border.
On Friday, some 100 nations and organisations meeting in Paris called on the UN Security Council to adopt a transition plan for Syria backed by economic sanctions if the regime refuses to comply.
Concretely, they asked the council to urgently adopt a six-point peace plan drawn up by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan under the UN Charter’s Chapter VII.
But the final statement stressed that any immediate action under Article 41 provided only for non-military intervention.
Annan acknowledged yesterday that the international community’s efforts to find a political solution to the escalating violence in Syria have failed.
Annan told the French daily Le Monde that more attention needed to be paid to the role of longtime Syrian ally Iran, and that countries supporting military actors in the conflict were making the situation worse.
“The evidence shows that we have not succeeded,” he said.
