Syria Today: The Battle for Qusayr Continues

Insurgents fighting in Qusayr

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Opposition Insists Assad Must Go

The opposition Syrian National Coalition has rejected Russian demands that, for an international conference, there should be no pre-condition of the departure of President Assad.

"We have been very clear that any transitional period must start with the departure of Assad and the heads of the security services," Khalid Saleh, the spokesman of the SNC, said Tuesday.

Saleh also said the Free Syrian Army must receive "major shipments of weapons" and "must be able to control more areas of Syria before we start thinking about the conference".

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Syria Today: Pressure and Propaganda --- From the UN to Israel to Russia

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Wednesday's Syria Today: US and Russia Manoeuvre Over Support for Assad

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Obama and Erdogan Speak.

US President Barack Obama and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan have given a joint press conference in a rainy White House Rose Garden. One would think with both world leaders on the same stage that topics like terrorism on the Turkish/Syria border, the ongoing Syrian crisis, and the sectarian strife in Iraq would be major priorities. They were not. These topics were not raised until more than halfway through Obama's opening comments, and there was no news beyond echoing very general statements that mirror the policies that have been more-fully expressed at other times.

Syria was clearly not on the agenda, though another journalist makes an important note that this may soon change:

Note that PM Erdogan will have 2 hour private dinner w/pres Obama tonight, it's when, Erdogan says, will talk Syria in depth #rosegarden

— ilhan tanir (@WashingtonPoint) May 16, 2013

More notable might be the questions from the press. Due to rain, the press conference may have been shortened, but the 1st question asked to Obama was about a domestic scandal (the IRS) and the 1st question to Erdogan was about Turkey's policies towards Israel. In other words, while having both leaders on record at the same time, some really interesting questions could have been asked about how these two leaders will pursue their most pressing common problem. Instead, they were squandered on offering the leaders an opportunity to echo talking points that they're already given.

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Syria Today: "US Moving Towards Supply of Weapons to Insurgents"

Claimed footage of US "non-lethal" aid moving to insurgents inside Syria

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Tuesday's Syria Today: A Chemical Weapons Attack in Idlib Province?

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1920 GMT: Chemical Weapons

Local Turkish officials say they testing blood samples taken from Syrian casualties, brought over the border this week, to determine whether they were victims of a chemical weapons attack.

The samples were sent to Turkey's forensic medicine institute after several Syrians with breathing difficulties were brought from Syria's Idlib Province to the Turkish town of Reyhanli in Hatay Province along the border..

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Syria Live: A Mass Killing Near Damascus

2107 GMT: Death Toll Rises. According to the Local Coordination Committees, 96 people have been killed so far today nationwide:

47 martyrs were reported in Damascus and its suburbs; 23 in Aleppo; 9 in Idlib; 8 in Homs; 3 in Daraa; 2 in Deir Ezzor; 2 in Hama; 1 in Raqqa; and 1 in Lattakia.

That number is over an hour old. With the amount of violence reported, expect it to rise by morning.

See our note on the casualty figures published by the LCC.

2059 GMT: Opposition Group Calls for Rebellion to "Correct its Path". The Local Coordination Committee of Douma has called for the unification of all rebel groups under the control of the Free Syrian Army east of Damascus. The goal is not just about combat effectiveness, however. The unification is important " for the sake of supporting and achieving the revolution goals in freedom, and dignity and in toppling the regime and building up a civil democratic state for all Syrians regardless of their backgrounds and religion."

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Syria Live: International Support for the Insurgency?

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and US Secretary of State John Kerry at Saturday's Friends of Syria meeting

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1935 GMT: Opposition Criticises Lack of International Action

Moaz al-Khatib, the leader of the Syrian National Opposition Coalition, has confirmed the resignation he announced last month.

A Coalition official said, "Khatib is resigning to denounce the international community's lack of real action on behalf of the Syrian people," after the opposition requested "specific, precise and immediate action to protect Syrian civilians from the use of ballistic missiles and chemical weapons".

Khatib had met US Secretary of State John Kerry before Saturday's Friends of Syria meeting. Kerry announced a doubling of "non-lethal" aid to $120 million from Washington, but it was not enough to satisfy the Coalition.

"The result in Istanbul was less than the Syrian people expected," Hisham Marwa, a senior member of the Coalition, said. "The US said that the use of chemical weapons was a red line for the Assad regime but the regime is using them and nothing has happened. We expected more. Russia sends Assad tonnes of weapons every week."

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Syria Live: Assad "No to Surrender, No to Submission"

1523 GMT: Sectarian Threats on the Front Lines of Homs. Some of the rebels who captured the Al Dabbaa airport in Homs (see update 1320) appear to have chanted sectarian slogans. According to The Guardian, a translation of a video from Syrian rebels indicates a strong sectarianism in the language of some of the victorious rebel groups.

Mona Mahmood translates a speech given by a bearded leader in the clip. He says:

"Let the Arab leaders knee under the feet of the mujahideen and heroes of Quasir. We are fighting the most vicious enemy in the world the Shia and the Nusairi. The Shia and Nusairi are gathered against us to destroy Quasir."

It came as the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Right uploaded a video claiming to show three soldiers from the ruling Alawite sect being tortured by rebels in Homs province [Warning: disturbing content].

The clip shows three naked men with plastic blindfolds in oil drums being repeatedly kicked, slapped and spat at by rebels.

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Syria Live Coverage: Airstrikes Continue Around Damascus

Photo: AFP1942 GMT: Fighting Near Border with Lebanon.

NOW Syria reports from the border village of al-Qasr, just inside Lebanon, where insurgent fire hit for the first time:

Al-Qasr [did not] feel like a place hit by lethal rocket fire just two days ago. Despite an army statement Sunday declaring its increased presence in the area, there wasn’t so much as a routine checkpoint impeding our entrance. In the village center, all shops were open; adults and children alike going about their business as usual. It could have been anywhere in the Beqaa.

Except, of course, for the two crumbled walls near the main mosque, results of an unprecedented series of rockets fired Sunday by Syrian rebels that, for the first time, left one resident dead and up to nine injured (another was killed by the same attack in Hosh al-Sayyid Ali, a nearby village on the Syrian side of the border). The blood of 23-year-old Ali Hassan Qataya, light brown by now, still spans the width of the street where he died.

“He was just visiting,” said a local resident who did not give his name. “He lived in Beirut, and came here to visit his fiancée.”

Why, then, was Qataya killed? The Syrian National Coalition, the opposition body recognized by over a dozen countries as the representative government-in-exile, said Monday that “the Free Syrian Army was forced to respond to [the] repeated aggressions” of Hezbollah, whom it accused of carrying out “military operations on Syrian territory.”

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Syria Live: "We Are Stronger Than Those Who Would Divide Us"

Protest in Kafranbel in Idlib Province on Friday

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1945 GMT: Airstrike. Graphic footage has been posted which claims to be of people trying to put a fire, including burning victims, after an airstrike on Jobar in Damascus.

1915 GMT: Insurgents and "Al Qa'eda". The opposition Syrian National Coalition has chided Jabhat al-Nusra leader Abu Mohammad al-Golani for praising the ideals of Al Qa'eda head Ayman al-Zawahiri while emphasising that JAN is fighting with and for the Syrian people:

The Coalition views with utmost concern recent statements made regarding the Syrian people and the rebels....We urge Jabhat al Nusra to stay within the ranks of nationalistic Syrians, to continue its efforts in fighting the Assad regime, and in supporting and protecting the freedom of all Syrian sects.

Other factions within the insurgency have also criticised the al-Golani statement.

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Syria Video Discussion: The Divisions In the Opposition (Al Jazeera English)

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A discussion on Al Jazeera English's Inside Syria of the state of the opposition....

After the initial set-up of last week's recognition by the Arab League of the opposition as the legitimate representative of the Syrian people, the programme gets to the core issue of what exactly that opposition is --- amid the resignation of Moaz al-Khatab as head of the Syrian National Coalition, the tension over the Coalition's election of Ghassam Hitto as Prime Minister-designate, the Free Syrian Army's criticism of the Coalition and the Muslim Brotherhood, and the wider question of the relationship between opposition inside and outside Syria.

Amr al-Azm, a US-based professor, sets the challenge early on: "Decisions [on the ground] have already been made and are being carried out, irrespective of whether this opposition forms a government or not."

The other panellists are Najib Ghadbian, a representative of the National Coalition of Syrian Revolution and Opposition Forces in the UN, and Robin Yassin-Kassab, a novelist and commentator.

Syria Live Coverage: The Opposition Opens an Embassy

1607 GMT: Rebels Attack Base in Daraa. The rebels have continued their assault against the home of the regime's Battalion 49 just west of Alma, in Daraa province (map). As you can see from the map below, made by @stApexf of Twitter, the base is north of a group of recently captured bases and is in an area of disputed territory:

View Map of Daraa in a larger map

This area is extremely important. Just months ago, the amount of blue or green territory here was almost non-existent. In fact, the regime was so strong that it would have been hard to call any of the area "yellow" or disputed. An influx of new fighters from other areas of Syria, new defectors from Daraa province, and new rebel recruits have helped change this dynamic. Perhaps more important, rebel fighters have also returned to this area after receiving training in both Jordan, and possibly Idlib province....

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