UN team in Syria as Assad prepares to address the nation
DAMASCUS: A UN humanitarian team has arrived in Syria to assess crisis needs as President Bashar al-Assad prepared to speak to the nation Sunday, amid global pressure to end a brutal crackdown on protesters.
"Most of the team is in place in Syria now," a UN humanitarian department spokeswoman, Amanda Pitt, told AFP late Saturday. It was not known when the experts would start their work in areas of concern across the country.
The team is led by the head of the Geneva bureau of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, Rashid Khalikov, who is now in Damascus, the official said.
Assad's television appearance on Sunday will be his first since June 20, and only his fourth since pro-democracy demonstrations erupted in March, leading to a crackdown that has prompted calls from the West for him to step down.
He will give an interview "about the situation in Syria, the continuing process of reforms, the repercussions of American and Western political and economic pressures and a vision of the future for Syria in the current regional and international context," state news agency SANA said.
On Saturday, tanks rumbled into the central city of Homs, one day after 34 anti-regime protesters were killed, activists said, adding a sense of urgency to the UN team's mission.
Two more people were killed and several others wounded in Rastan, a town between Homs and the flashpoint city of Hama, when security forces opened fire to disperse a demonstration, an activist said.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights earlier put the death toll from Friday's crackdown on anti-regime protests at 34, with most of the victims in the Homs area.
Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011
Copyright APP (Associated Press of Pakistan), 2011
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