Syria troops advance in Yabrud as war enters fourth year

Syrian troops advanced on Saturday on the key rebel bastion of Yabrud as the country’s civil war entered its fourth year, with more than 146,000 dead, millions displaced and peace efforts stalled.

Army troops were locked in fierce clashes with rebel forces, including the al-Qaeda affiliate Al-Nusra Front, after they entered the town on Friday.
The strategic stronghold is the last rebel-held town in the Qalamun region, which lies along the border with Lebanon and on the key highway between Damascus and third city Homs.
The human cost of the conflict has soared, with nine million people forced from their homes, creating the world’s largest displaced population, according to the UN’s refugee agency.
More than 2.5 million Syrians are registered or awaiting registration as refugees in neighbouring countries, and in excess of 6.5 million people are displaced inside the country.
The total number who have fled their homes now exceeds 40 per cent of the pre-conflict population, the UN said.
The exodus has strained the neighbouring countries disproportionately bearing the burden of the new arrivals, including small Lebanon, which is housing nearly one million Syrians.
UN refugee chief Antonio Guterres on Saturday urged all nations to open their doors to Syria’s refugees.
‘To see Syrian children drowning in the Mediterranean today after fleeing the conflict... is something totally unacceptable,’ he said.
‘Borders need to be open everywhere, visa policies need to be open everywhere, family unification programmes need to exist everywhere.’
Aid groups are urging government and citizens to continue to donate to relief efforts with no end to the humanitarian disaster in sight.
A generation risks being ‘lost forever’ with millions of Syrian children deprived them of health care, education and security, they warned Saturday.
Experts say neither side can score a decisive military victory and the country is gradually splintering. Agence France-Presse . Damascus 

Syria barrel bombs kill 85 in Aleppo

At least 85 people were killed in 24 hours of Syrian regime air raids on the city of Aleppo, a monitoring group said Sunday, after 10 days of inconclusive peace talks.
The deaths came as a suicide car bombing in a Hezbollah stronghold across the border in Lebanon killed four people on Saturday, in the latest regional spillover of the conflict.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said regime helicopters hit rebel-held areas of Aleppo with barrels packed with explosives.
The so-called barrel bombs are a controversial weapon, condemned by rights groups as indiscriminate.
‘At least 85 people were killed, including 65 civilians, 10 of whom were children,’ on Saturday, the Observatory said.
Attacks targeted several areas of the city, with 34 killed in the southeastern Tariq al-Bab area alone, among them six children.
Another 22 civilians, including another six children, were killed in the Salhine, Ansari and Marjeh districts, with nine others killed in other parts of the city.
The Britain-based Observatory said 10 jihadists from Al-Nusra Front, al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, were also killed in a local headquarters in the city.
Ten other deaths in the attacks were recorded but the identities of the dead had not been confirmed.
Once Syria’s economic hub, Aleppo is now divided between regime and rebel-held areas, with large swathes of the city devastated by the fighting that began there in mid-2012.
In December, government aircraft launched a sustained blitz on the city that killed hundreds of people, most of them civilians.
Regime forces recently launched an offensive on rebel-held areas in the east of the city, with defence minister General Fahd al-Freij visiting the province on Friday.
The latest aerial assault came the day after Syrian government and opposition delegations wrapped up peace talks in Geneva.
The 10 days of talks yielded no tangible results and the government team said it was unsure whether it would return to the negotiating table.
On Sunday, SANA carried scathing remarks from deputy foreign minister Faisal al-Moqdad, who accused the opposition of being ‘mercenaries manipulated by foreign forces.’
He said they bore ‘full responsibility for the lack of results at Geneva because of their refusal to engage on the basis of principles that no Syrian could refuse: the unity of Syria, its independence and its sovereignty.’ 
Syria’s UN ambassador, Bashar al-Jaafari, was equally critical of the opposition, accusing them of having ‘no vision or political programme,’ SANA said.
Al-Watan added, however, that the conflict has ‘transferred to the political and diplomatic field, which is one that the Syrians know well.’ Agence France-Presse . Damascus