Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: 7 Weeks Later, The Battles in Aleppo Continue

Saturday night's opposition rally in Bab Qibli in Hama Province

See also Bahrain 1st-Hand Special: Friday's Manama Protests and the "Overwhelming Humane Side of People"
Syria 1st-Hand: Darayya After the Mass Killing --- "The Stink of Death"
Syria Photo Feature: A Moment of Life and Death in Aleppo
Saturday's Syria (and Beyond) Live Coverage: Fighting Escalates in Aleppo and Damascus

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1957 GMT: Bahrain. The Speaker of the Council of Representatives has called on ambassadors of "Western" states to condemn the "vandalism, sabotage, and targetting of the trade sector by the chaotic rallies" of the leading opposition society, Al Wefaq.

Authorities tried to prevent an Al Wefaq march on Friday by declaring it illegal and mobilising security forces around and in the capital Manama, but smaller demonstrations occurred throughout the city, with the police trying to disperse them with tear gas.

See Bahrain 1st-Hand Special: Friday's Manama Protests and the "Overwhelming Humane Side of People"

1951 GMT: Libya. The Prosecutor's Office has said that the trial of former leader Muammar Qaddafi's son Saif al-Islam will be delayed by five months to include any relevant testimony obtained from the interrogation of Libya's former head of intelligence.

Government officials said in August that Saif al-Islam's trial on charges of war crimes would begin this month, but the extradition of Abdullah al-Senussi from Mauritania on Wednesday led to the postponement.

1845 GMT: Syria. Deputy Prime Minister Omar Ghalawanji has met the North Korean Ambassador, Choe Su Hon, on Sunday to discuss bolstering co-operation.

Ghalawanji used the occasion to declare the regime's aid to citizens forced to leave their houses "because of the terrorist acts committed by the armed terrorist groups". He called upon citizens of Homs to go back to their houses, since the Government had finished work on rehabilitating the infrastructure and service institutions in the areas that were cleared of the terrorists".

1833 GMT: Syria. Opposition activists have claimed that regime airstrikes destroyed a residential complex in the Hanano neighbourhood in eastern Aleppo. They said dozens of killed and wounded people were being dug out from the rubble.

Activists added that aerial bombardment also wrecked a water pumping station in the Mayadeen district.

In Damascus, the Palestinian refugee camp at Yarmouk in south Damascus and the adjacent neighbourhood of Hajar al-Aswad were reportedly shelled.

The Local Coordination Committees report that 88 people have been killed by security forces today, including 25 in Aleppo Province,18 in Homs Province, and 14 in Damascus and its suburbs.

1515 GMT: Syria. Filmmaker Tamer al-Awam has been killed in Aleppo .

The opposition Syrian National Council said, "Syria lost one of its dear sons. Director and journalist Tamer al-Awam was martyred by the bullets of the murderous and treacherous regime on the front line of Aleppo. Originally from Soueida in the Druze mountain, he left Germany to join the media activists of the Syrian revolution to share his experience and bravery."

The website, Syrian Documents said al-Awam was killed on Saturday while shooting a film for the Free Syrian Army.

An interview on Al Jazeera English with al-Awam in November 2011 about the Free Syrian Army:

The Local Coordination Committees report that 54 people have been killed security forces today.

1325 GMT: Iraq. Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi, who is in exile in Turkey, has been sentenced to hang after he was convicted of running death squads.

Hashemi fled Iraq earlier this year after authorities sought his arrest.

Hashemi, a Sunni, accused Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki of conducting a political witch-hunt, but the Government said it was a judicial case. Hashemi is currently in Turkey.

The camp around Hashemi said the Vice President attaches little importance to the decision and that he is headed to Ankara for talks with Turkish officials.

1312 GMT: Iraq. The death toll from today's series of attacks has been updated to at least 58 people.

The most serious of the bombings, blasts, and shootings happened near the city of Amara, 300 kilometres (185 miles) south of Baghdad, when two car bombs exploded outside a Shi'ite shrine and a market place, killing at least 16 people and wounding more than 100. With the main hospital overflowing with injured, mosques used prayer loudspeakers to call for blood donations.

Overnight in Dujail, 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Baghdad, gunmen and a suicide bomber driving a car attacked a military base, killing 11 soldiers and injuring seven. Later on Sunday, a car bomb in Kirkuk killed eight people queuing for jobs as police guards for the Iraqi North Oil Company.

Several other blasts hit Kirkuk, including a car bomb and a bomb packed into a motorcycle detonated outside a crime investigation office, killing seven and wounding 40.

1136 GMT: Turkey. At least one Turkish soldier has been killed in a bomb attack, possibly by the insurgent Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), in Sirnak Province in the southeast.

The blast occurred during ta military operation by Turkish security forces on Mount Kato in the Beytüşşebap district..

Beytüşşebap has been the scene of clashes between the PKK terrorists and Turkish forces. Ankara's fighter jets and attack helicopters striking PKK positions near the southeastern border with Iraq last week, after after 10 members of the Turkish security forces were killed in PKK attacks on outposts o 2 September.

1008 GMT: Yemen. Al Masdar reports that gunmen stormed the Parliament building in Sana'a on Saturday, causing the adjournment of the legislative session.

1005 GMT: Syria. Claimed footage of insurgents in the Sayf al-Dawla section of Aleppo today:

0925 GMT: Egypt. Ernesto Londoño of the Washington Post writes about the search for the missing from the uprising against the Mubarak regime:

Eighteen months later, the fate of Mohamed Sadiq and scores of others who demonstrated and battled riot police during those dramatic days remains a mystery. Relatives have searched morgues, hospital logs and prisons in a desperate quest for clues. Some of their findings suggest that security officials carried out abuse and unlawful detentions as the embattled regime sought to thwart the revolt, activists say.

“There are people missing who were not at the morgue, not in hospitals and not in prisons,” said Nermeen Yousri, an activist who earlier this year launched a campaign called We Will Find Them. “They didn’t evaporate, so there has to be something.”

Advocates for families say they have been tracking about 60 cases, a figure they believe represents a tiny fraction of the total number of people who vanished during the height of the revolt and the period of military rule that followed.

0855 GMT: Saudi Arabia. The Minister of Interior has stated that there are no restrictions on political activities and has claimed that unrest in Eastern Province is "isolated".

0845 GMT: Bahrain. An appeal court has postponed a ruling on leading members of the teachers' union Mahdi Abu Deeb and Jalila Al Salman until 12 September.

Abu Deeb was sentenced to 10 years and Al Salman to 3 years by a military court last autumn.

Abu Deeb's daughter Maryam wrote that she was prevented by three guards from speaking to her father:

Jailing my dad without any evidence is a crime, not allowing me to enter his court sessions or to hug him when I see him is a huger crime

— Maryam Abu Deeb (@MaryamAbuDeeb) September 9, 2012

0840 GMT: Iraq. Nine explosions across the country today killed at least 19 people and wounded scores.

The most serious incident occurred overnight in Dujail, 50 kilometres (30 miles) north of Baghdad, when gunmen and a suicide bomber in a car attacked a military base, killing 11 soldiers and injuring seven.

Another bomb killed seven police recruits, applying for jobs with the state-run Northern Oil Company, near the northern city of Kirkuk.

Later in the day, a car bomb exploded next to the French Consulate in Al Nasira, wounding at least two people.

0825 GMT: Syria. Jacques Bérès, the French surgeon who has made periodic trips to Syria to treat the wounded, has said that he found more foreign fighters among insurgents.

Bérès, co-founder of medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres, returned from Aleppo on Friday evening after spending two weeks working clandestinely in a hospital.

The 71-year-old doctor said, that contrary to previous visits to Homs and Idlib this year, about 60% of those he treated in Aleppo were insurgents and that at least half of the fighters were non-Syrian.

"It's really something strange to see. They are directly saying that they aren't interested in Bashar al-Assad's fall, but are thinking about how to take power afterwards and set up an Islamic state with sharia law to become part of the world Emirate," Bérès said.

He added that he treated young Frenchmen who said they were inspired by Mohammed Merah, a self-styled Islamist militant from Toulouse, who killed seven people in March in the name of Al Qa'eda.

Bérès said he received as many as 40 injured people each day, including civilians who had been queuing for bread at a market place when it had been shelled: "The baker was killed. He was a thin man completely covered in white flour with shrapnel holes and blood all over. It was a striking and troubling image."

The surgeon asserted, "What people have to know is that the number of dead is a far cry from what's been announced. I'd say you have to multiply by two to get the real figure."

Bérès, who entered Syria via Turkey's northern border, reported signs that Ankara was trying to stop Syrians moving across the border, flooded the Reyhanli area with water: "We were caught by the Turkish army. It took us 20 hours to cross the border and I was fined $500 for crossing the border illegally. They flooded the border completely so that they can hear who is crossing. Those they do catch they are sending back."

0600 GMT: Syria. A fight for an army base extending over two days, the claimed death of 89 civilians on Saturday, reports of a main water pipeline being damaged by fire from helicopters --- more than seven weeks after insurgents entered Aleppo, despite repeated claimed by State media and military that regime forces had cleared this neighbourhood and that one of opposition fighters, the battle continues.

The Local Coordination Committees claim that 178 people died at the hands of security forces on Saturday. The LCC generally does not record the deaths of insurgent troops, however, and State media does not give news on casualties among regime forces.