Syria Today: Assad Appears --- Does It Matter?
Thursday, May 2, 2013 at 5:55 | Scott Lucas in EA Live, EA Middle East and Turkey, Middle East and Iran 
President Assad looks at the wall of an electricity plant on Workers' Day on Wednesday
Claimed photos are circulating of the mass killing in Bayada.
Activists are claiming that scores of people have been slain by regime forces in Bayada in Homs Province:
Another martyr, Wassim Uthman, from the #BaydaMassacre today in #Banias. Total martyred: 200-300 civilians. | #Syria twitter.com/yasmeenmobayed…
— yasmeen mobayed (@yasmeenmobayed) May 2, 2013
Activists ckaim regime forces have shelled insurgent-held districts in Homs and the opposition-controlled city of Raqqa, while insurgents says that they have taken the headquarters of Assad's anti-terrorism forces in Aleppo.
Regime troops moved on the Wadi Sayeh district in the center of Homs early Thursday morning, trying to dislodge insurgents.
State news agency SANA said three people were wounded in an insurgent mortar attack on the northern Damascus district of Abbasid and claimed that a car bomb wounded one man in another part of the capital.
Salim Idris, Chief of Staff of the Supreme Military Council, has written to President Obama, "Assad is not taking your carefully phrased condemnations [on allegations of chemical weapons use] as warnings but as loopholes."
Idriss continues that he "understands the reasons behind [Obama's] cautious involvement in Syria" but he hopes that the President "will not discount the imperatives urging the free world to assist us in protecting the people".
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has declared that the Syrian military has used chemical weapons, saying that he will discuss the issue with US President Barack Obama in Washington two weeks from now.
Erdoğan said the opposition fighters are dominating the land battles but the regime forces are using chemical weapons, warplanes, and helicopters. “The regime is stronger than opposition only in air,” he asserted.
The Prime Minister insisted that the regime is on the brink of falling: “We cannot know when it will come down [but] it will happen suddenly.”
He urged the international community to speed up the transition period in Syria.
The Local Coordination Committees claim 95 people were killed on Wednesday, including 36 in Damascus and its suburbs, 18 in Aleppo Province, 16 in Hama Province, and 14 in Homs Province.
The Violations Documentation Center puts the confirmed death toll at 58,953 since the conflict begin in March 2011, an increase of 99 from Wedmesday.
Of those killed, 46,326 were civilians, a rise of 53 from yesterday.
0500 GMT: Assad Appears
On a relatively quiet day in Syria, President Assad created a flutter for some in the Western media with a photo opportunity on Workers' Day at the Umawyeen Electricity Station at Tishreen Park in Damascus.
To be honest, the photos are not very impressive (see top of entry) and State news agency SANA's text is far from inspiring:
During this visit, President al-Assad said that the values of work are associated with the meanings of dedication, building, production, strength and good, all of which are embodied in Syria's workers who always participated in bolstering points of strength and surpassing weaknesses in order to build a proud, powerful Syria.
President al-Assad said that Syria's workers proved during the war which has been targeting the country for over two years that they will always remain one of the elements of Syria's strength, and not the other way around, asserting that the attempts to target the infrastructure which was built with Syrian hands will not dissuade workers from continuing to carry out their duties, despite the fact that hundreds of them were martyred at the hands of terrorists.
Still, the regime will no doubt hope that the event will convey Assad's authority during the crisis. And no doubt it is hoping that the appearance will offer a diversion from more inconvenient stories ---- say, the possible use of chemical weapons by the Syrian military --- that have dominated headlines this week.
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