Syria threatens missile attack on Israel
Syrian President Bashar Assad has threatened to "set Middle East on fire", firing hundreds of rockets on Israel, if Nato decides to attack his country, Iranian Fars News Agency reported.
Assad conveyed this message to Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, who met the Syrian President to relay a US warning, Ynetnews quoted the Iranian news agency as saying.
"If a crazy measure is taken against Damascus, I will need not more than six hours to transfer hundreds of rockets and missiles to the Golan Heights to fire them at Tel Aviv," the Syrian leader, who is facing a wave of protests against his regime for months, reportedly said.
Assad reportedly stressed that Syria will also call on Shia militant faction Hizbullah in Lebanon to launch a fierce rocket and missile attack on Israel, "one that Israeli intelligence could never imagine".
"All these events will happen in three hours, but in the second three hours, Iran will attack US warships in the Persian Gulf as American and European interests will be targeted simultaneously," the Syrian leader reportedly warned.
Meanwhile, , the United Nations human rights office said thedeath toll in Syria has risen to more than 2,900 since pro-democracy protests began in March as activists warned that the country could descend into armed conflict.
"Based on our detailed list of individual names that we have been keeping, the total number of people killed in Syria since protests began now stands at more than 2,900," Rupert Colville, spokesman for UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay, told Reuters.
The United Nations' previous death toll was 2,700 from the bloody crackdown by the government of President Bashar al-Assad, which generally denies reports of human rights abuses and says it has no choice but to restore law and order.
Colville noted that the latest figure did not include those who have disappeared and whose fate is unknown.
On Friday, the UN Human Rights Council is to review Syria's record, part of its regular examination of all UN member states. The United States and other Western countries are expected to denounce what they say are atrocities by Syria.
The Geneva forum last month launched an international commission of inquiry into alleged crimes against humanity which a preliminary UN investigation said were being perpetrated by Syrian security forces.
Sergio Pinheiro, a Brazilian heading the new three-member investigation, was to meet a high-level Syrian delegation in Geneva this week to seek permission to enter the country. The team, which plans to gather testimony in the region, is due to issue a report by the end of November.
Radwan Ziadeh, an exiled Syrian activist, said yesterday that more than 30,000 Syrians had been imprisoned since protests began, many in schools or soccer fields converted into detention centres.
"Mass killings continue," he told a discussion on torture in Syria. "Detention centres are a nightmare for Syrians now."
His Damascus Centre for Human Rights Studies had documented the deaths of 183 children at the hands of Syrian forces, many under torture, as well as 18 cases of rape in Homs, he said.
Ziadeh said Syrian forces felt immune from any accountability. He voiced dismay at the UN Security Council's failure to condemn Syria, after China and Russia vetoed a European-drafted resolution on Tuesday.
Jeremie D Smith, of the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, also warned of the situation deteriorating further in Syria if world powers failed to act.
"Syria is bound to become more destabilised, more radicalized, if there isn't any form of hope for these people."
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