Red Crescent blocked from Homs district

[MindMover]

Source: AlJAZEERA

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has said that it was unable to enter the Homs district of Bab Amro on Friday, where it had hoped to bring in aid and evacuate the sick and wounded.

"The ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Society [SARC] were not allowed to enter the Bab Amr district of Homs today," Jakob Kellenberger, ICRC president, said in a statement issued in Geneva on Friday.

"It is unacceptable that people who have been in need of emergency assistance for weeks have still not received any help. We are staying in Homs tonight in the hope of entering Bab Amr in the very near future. In addition, many families have fled Bab Amr, and we will help them as soon as we possibly can."

Syrian authorities had given the independent agency a "green light" on Thursday to enter on Friday, the statement said without providing further details on what had prevented their humanitarian operation to start.


Read more: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/03/20123215518519445.html

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Can anybody spell M O N E Y.........to the person that says yes, it is OK to provide humanitarian relief.....

[muriel_volestrangler]

1. Still not allowed in

http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFL6E8C52E220120302

[pinto]

2. Statement from Red Cross (via LA Times) -

Red Cross kept out of embattled Syrian neighborhood [Video]

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/world_now/2012/03/syria-red-cross-kept-out-homs-baba-amr.html

[pampango]

3. "the Syrian authorities on Friday went back on a promise to allow a Red Cross convoy with food and

medical supplies into Baba Amr, a rebellious neighborhood in the city of Homs where thousands of residents have endured weeks of heavy bombardment."

As my colleagues Neil MacFarquhar and Alan Cowell report, the Syrian authorities on Friday went back on a promise to allow a Red Cross convoy with food and medical supplies into Baba Amr, a rebellious neighborhood in the city of Homs where thousands of residents have endured weeks of heavy bombardment.

An activist who fled Baba Amr claimed on Facebook that forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad were rounding up men and boys and conducting summary executions, but the escape of the last foreign journalists from the neighborhood this week, with a team of opposition video bloggers, made it impossible to confirm those reports.

Mr. Conroy, an experienced war photographer and former soldier, said: “I’ve worked in many war zones, I’ve never seen or been in shelling like this. It was a systematic — I’m an ex-artillery gunner so I can kind of follow the patterns — they are systematically moving through neighborhoods with munitions that are used for battlefields.”

Asked if the shelling was indiscriminate, Mr. Conroy said: “Absolutely indiscriminate — there are no targets in Baba Amr. The Free Syrian Army are there purely to bring in bread and to stop the ground assault, which, over the last week the intensity of the bombardment increased daily,” adding, “it’s an attempt at massacre.”

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/03/02/rescued-journalists-describe-conditions-in-syrian-city/

[haele]

4. Of course they won't be allowed in.

Gotta mop up all the rebels and get rid of the majority of obvious incriminating evidence before anyone not associated with the government is let in.
I heard on the BBC coming in to work that reports are coming out that government forces were planning or in the process of on rounding up all males over 12 years old in Homs.
Can't have the Red Cross or Red Crescent find a potentially innocent non-combattant man still alive and able to talk before all the rebels are dealt with. 'Cause of course, the women and children would all lie for their men folk, or they could have been misled.

Yes, I'm that cynical about the Assad regeim.

Haele

[MindMover]

5. as well you should be cynical......