• Regime also criticised Jordan
• 'Over 100' killed in fighting yesterday
• Live coverage with Paul Owen
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Paul Owen
guardian.co.uk, Friday 5 April 2013 15.10 BST
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An image grab taken from a video made available by the Syrian presidency media office on 3 April 2013, shows Syrian president Bashar al-Assad after his interview with Turkish journalists in Damascus on 2 April 2013. The interview is due to air today. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images Live
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33m ago
Meanwhile other aid agencies have also spoken out about the Syrian crisis today.
Referring to the fact that most Syrian refugees to Jordan live in urban areas rather than camps, Geoffrey Dennis, chief executive of Care International UK said:
The refugee crisis in urban areas is far less visible, but no less serious, than in the refugee camps. No matter where refugees seek shelter, we must ensure that they do not continue suffering.
Oxfam’s Syria response crisis manager, Francis Lacasse, said:
Syrian refugees in host communities urgently need help. As long as they have no access to income, their problems will only multiply. People are already running out of money for rent and basic needs; refugees are taking loans from each other, but soon there will be nothing left for them to borrow.
Families will be forced to desperate measures to get by; many are already obliged to beg for food. They are deeply ashamed to do this, but they have no choice.
37m ago
The chief executive of humanitarian organisation Goal has been visiting Syria today and has called the needs of the population "staggering". Barry Andrews said:
Already, more than 70,000 people have been killed over the two years of this conflict and more than one million people have left the country.
There are an estimated four million people who require humanitarian assistance inside Syria, where Goal is delivering aid. I have met some of these people this morning; many of them are living in desperate conditions, without sufficient access to food, water, heating or shelter.
He called on the international community to "honour its commitments to Syria", saying: “Even since the beginning of the year, the amount of money pledged has not been honoured and even if it had, it wouldn’t meet the increasing level of needs here. There is a huge requirement on the international community to meet its pledges and demonstrate to the world that it really does have the political will to put an end to the loss of life in Syria, and to the unbelievable suffering of its people.”
1h 5m ago
Syria
Lauren Wolfe, the director of Women Under Siege, which investigates rape in conflict, has filed a disturbing piece for the Atlantic on the prevalence of rape against women and men in the Syrian civil war. Her team gathered 162 reports of sexual violence from the conflict. She writes:
All our reports are currently marked "unverified" (even those that come from well-known sources like Human Rights Watch, the United Nations, and news outlet such as the BBC) because we have not yet been able to independently confirm them. Eighty percent of our reports include female victims, with ages ranging from 7 to 46. Of those women, 85 percent reported rape; 10 percent include sexual assault without penetration; and 10 percent include detention that appears to have been for the purposes of sexualised violence or enslavement for a period of longer than 24 hours. (We generally use this category when we hear soldiers describe being ordered to detain women to rape them; we're not guessing at intent.) Gang rape allegedly occurred in 40 percent of the reports about women.
Of those carrying out the attacks, she writes:
Government perpetrators have allegedly committed the majority of the attacks we've been able to track: 60 percent of the attacks against men and women are reportedly by government forces, with another 17 percent carried out by government and shabiha (plainclothes militia) forces together. When it comes to the rape of women, government forces have allegedly carried out 54 percent these attacks; shabiha have allegedly perpetrated 20 percent; government and shabiha working together 6 percent.
Overall, the FSA has allegedly carried out less than 1 percent of the sexualized attacks in our total reports. About 15 percent of the attacks have unknown or other perpetrators.
When it comes to men, more than 90 percent of the reports of sexualized violence have been allegedly perpetrated by government forces, which can perhaps be explained by the fact that most of these attacks occurred in detention facilities.
2h 12m ago
Summary
Here is a summary of today’s event so far.
Syria
• The United Nations is warning that it will soon run out of money to cope with the vast numbers of Syrian refugees fleeing across the border into Jordan and other countries. "The needs are rising exponentially, and we are broke," Marixie Mercado, spokeswoman for the UN Children's Fund Unicef, told a UN news conference in Geneva.
• At least five people have been killed in rocket attacks in Barzeh, on the north-eastern outskirts of Damascus, according to various opposition and activist groups. Video clips seemed to show residents searching through the rubble for survivors and bodies. "The impact of the rockets was huge," a Barzeh-based activist told the Associated Press. "Several houses collapsed and others were set on fire.”
• An interview with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad conducted by Turkish journalists, recorded on 2 April, is expected to be shown on television today. Assad speaks in public relatively rarely. A brief preview has been posted to YouTube. In it, Assad said: “Erdoğan has not said a single word of truth since the beginning of the crisis in Syria,” referring to Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. He was also quoted by the New York Times as saying of the Arab League’s decision to give a seat to the Syrian opposition: “Real legitimacy is not accorded by organisations or foreign officials. All these theatrics have no value in our eyes."
2h 23m ago
The United Nations is warning that it will soon run out of money to cope with the vast numbers of Syrian refugees fleeing across the border into Jordan and other countries.
"The needs are rising exponentially, and we are broke," Marixie Mercado, spokeswoman for the UN Children's Fund Unicef, told a UN news conference in Geneva.
There are thought to be 1.25 million refugees. Mercado said:
Since the beginning of the year, more than 2,000 refugees have streamed across the borders [into Jordan] every day. We expect these numbers to more than double by July and triple by December. By the end of 2013, we estimate there will be 1.2 million Syrian refugees in Jordan - equivalent to about one-fifth of Jordan's population.
The impact of funding drying up would include a halt in 3.5m litres of daily water deliveries to Jordan's Za'atari camp, which houses more than 100,000 refugees, mostly children, Reuters writes. The other countries hosting large numbers of Syrian refugees are Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq.
3h 59m ago
Last month the New York Times produced this excellent map showing roughly which areas of Syria are controlled by the government and which by the rebels.
4h 5m ago
This dramatic video purports to show Aleppo residents running across open space to avoid snipers (hat tip: Enduring America). It cannot be verified.
Updated 2h 9m ago
4h 14m ago
This map shows where Barzeh is (green marker).
4h 47m ago
At least five people have been killed in rocket attacks in Barzeh, on the north-eastern edge of Damascus, according to the monitoring group the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The activist group, which is based in Britain, said a barrage of shells had killed several people. The Associated Press quoted another group called the Barzeh media centre as saying that the Syrian military had fired 14 rockets into Barzeh last night and early this morning, leaving people buried under rubble.
Another opposition group, the Local Co-ordination Committees, said that five people had been killed last night, including three children, and reported that three shells had landed in Barzeh this morning.
It posted this video, uploaded yesterday, purporting to show people retrieving the corpse of a child from the rubble in Barzeh.
It also posted this video, uploaded yesterday, purporting to show a woman retrieved alive – although that is unclear – from rubble in Barzeh. The video seems to show Barzeh residents using a chainsaw to cut through the fallen remains of a building.
This video, also uploaded yesterday, purports to show similar attempts to retrieve bodies from the rubble in Barzeh.
And this video, also uploaded yesterday, purports to show the aftermath of a missile attack in Barzeh.
These reports and videos cannot be confirmed because most media are banned from Syria.
6h 20m ago
My colleague Mustafa Khalili has translated the quotes in the interview. As reported earlier, Assad says of the Turkish prime minister: "Erdogan has not said a single word of truth since the beginning of the crisis in Syria."
And he talks about the death of the pro-regime cleric, Mohammad Said Ramada al-Bouti, one of the most senior figures in Sunni Islam, who was killed in an explosion at a Damascus mosque last month:
There is no doubt that the role of clerics, including Dr Bouti, was key to ensuring the failure of a covert plan to create sectarian strife. That's why they assassinated Dr. Bouti.
For that they assassinated Dr. Bouti, and two days ago they assassinated another cleric in Aleppo, and they assassinated a number of scholars before.
Updated 6h 20m ago
6h 36m ago
Syria
This clip seems to show the few comments by Assad that have been released ahead of the whole interview.
6h 52m ago
Summary
Syria
• An interview with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad conducted by Turkish journalists, recorded on 2 April, is expected to be shown on television today. Assad speaks in public relatively rarely. A brief preview has been posted to YouTube. The New York Times reports that Assad said: “Erdoğan has not said a single word of truth since the beginning of the crisis in Syria,” referring to Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. And he said of the Arab League’s decision to give a seat to the Syrian opposition: “Real legitimacy is not accorded by organisations or foreign officials. All these theatrics have no value in our eyes." The Syrian government also attacked Jordan in its state media yesterday, warning Amman it was “playing with fire” in hosting US-led training of insurgents. The New York Times has more here.
• Some 102 people were killed in fighting across Syria yesterday, according to the Local Co-ordination Committees, an opposition group. The number is relatively low compared to recent daily figures. The largest numbers of casualties were reported to be in Aleppo in the north and Damascus. This morning the group reported shelling in the suburbs of the capital and in Homs, in the west of the country, and the beginning of the protests that usually take place on Fridays. Their reports could not be confirmed because most media are banned from Syria.
Israel
• Palestinian protesters clashed with soldiers yesterday after thousands of mourners turned out for the funerals of a 64-year-old cancer-stricken prisoner and two teenage boys shot dead by the Israeli military, the latest sign of the increasing turbulence across the West Bank. Meanwhile Gaza militants fired rockets towards Israel for the third consecutive day in a move that threatens to trigger a fresh cycle of violence after almost five months of calm since the eight-day war last November. Harriet Sherwood has the full story here.
