Eyewitnesses in the Syrian port city of Latakia reported today that gunboats from the Syrian Navy have attacked the city, firing shells and machine gun barrages into the town and killing at least 31 people.
The attacks came after major protests in the key city, as forces opened fire on residential neighborhoods. Regime tanks were also reported to have struck in the city, and dozens of others were wounded.
Syria’s state media insisted that the reports were untrue, that that “what is really taking place is a pursuit of gunmen who terrified people and vandalized public and private properties using machine guns.” They reported two members of the police slain and 41 others wounded.
Reports about exactly what is happening on the ground are difficult to discern, because the Syrian government has banned journalists from the crackdown cities. The state media has repeatedly lied about other crackdowns, however, and the massacres in Hama went entirely unreported domestically.
Jason Ditz,
Contrary to what you claim, the Syrian events have been over reported. Al Jazeerah, among other Arab and Western media, devoted over eleven hours of daily coverage of Syria. It got to the point where Ghassan Bin Jeddo, director of Aljazeera’s office in Beirut quit his job at Al Jazeerah. While it may be true that the Western news media may have been banned from Syria, it does not mean that you have the moral privilege of reporting each and every falsity that the "Syrian Activist" feeds you.
http://www.emirates247.com/news/world/prominent-a…
And although the Syrian government has denied these reports, still you go ahead and headline the claims by some Syrian activist. Putting Justin Raimondo's "Barbarians With BlackBerrys" next to this and other reports, really makes a lot of people convinced that hypocrisy is perhaps a characteristic trait among Westerners in general and not only their politicians. After all no police officers were killed in London and no guns fired at the police, but in Syria according to the government over five hundred members of the police and security forces have been killed by the "Syrian Activists". Most of them in firing squad executions. Of course you say that those are the claims of the government and you do not have to accept it. But, while the government can provide names and pictures and identity of its murdered members, the "Syrian Activist" has only shown something wrapped in a blanket, implying a dead body and a couple of graves, which it insists are killed by the Syrian government forces, and you readily accept it.
Ditz is lying as always. He claims that the Syrian state media have lied. Yes, thats undoubtedly true. It is a foul regime. But so have the western media and their US manipulated 'dissident' sources in Syria undoubtedly lied over and over and over again. Both sides are lying.
Ditz is an evil warmonger. Is Antiwar now a Prowar site?
Not too that lying Ditz dismisses Syrian claims of gunmen and external subversion, even though the latter is blatantly true and there is considerable evidence for the former.
Funny, too, I don't remember Ditz ever showing any concern over government atrocities in Honduras, where the right and wrong of the situation was much more clear cut. Mmm. Could that be because the pro-democracy movement in Honduras really was massive, pro-democracy, and non-violent, all the things the Syrian factional uprising claims to be, but was LEFT?
cliton must be very happy to have supported the demonstrations