Red line in Syria has been crossed. Gas attack kills hundreds.
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The syrian civil war subreddit is collating information at we speak. Reports are coming in of over 280 dead at the moment in response to a gas attack north of Damascus.
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There has been persistent shelling from Assad loyalist neighborhoods down onto Zamalka below it. One video of such volleys of indiscriminate fire captured the essence of the situation, so I took frames of the video and stitched them into a panorama with a wider field of view than what the video provided[1].
The neighborhood with what most likely is howitzers is al-Assad,[2] and I say howitzers due to the neighborhood being military housing for the military artillery base north of it. This is very striking to what was documented to happen on the other side of Damascus to the west, where another set of military housing was scene wanton violence.
In Jdaidat Artouz civilians were taken by Assad's military officers and lynched to death in a heap at the military family housing block either in or near the town (Jdaidat Artouz or Moadamiyet al-Shams). Video taken by some of the offenders shows the victims unloaded from a military truck being struck while shouted at by military and civilian persons. Later video shows the the pile of victims mostly motionless. Even later video shows them being further crushed with a tractor, throats slit.
Both cases have the military feeding off victim populations as if they were supermarket meat, there for picking and abuse. With offenders deployed from military housing. The latter case documented by the offenders themselves.
[1] http://i.imgur.com/XM85Q1q.jpg
[2] http://wikimapia.org/#lang=en&lat=33.551696&lon=36.378479&z=...
From January 27 2012 in Zamalka Syria: http://youtu.be/M6GyEm3_uqA
As Assad called in regular military forces, even before "National Defense" militias, the crowds in the streets were gunned at, chased down, killed.
Here is an image I stitched from video showing a BMP chasing people in the streets during Assad's "referendum" when the pretense of elections were used to kill more[1].
This brings me to Zamalka[2], this neighborhood is in Rif Dimashq which is the Governorate just outside of where Damascus is located. During the time just before the military was unleashed upon civilian centers, there was massive swells of demonstrations, mainly in more rural areas of Syria like Talbisah. For a short while Assad was able to shrug off the start of military action in these rural areas as his core supporters are from neighborhoods like those ringing Damascus. The enemy was simply banging on the gates, never mind the enemy being civilians. Now Assad's forces been bolstering Homs in sectarian slaughter while even letting ardent neighborhoods come under fire.
Alawite citizens are being shipped in to areas purged of Sunnis in Homs. Repeat, population cleansing, dispersant, resettling[3].
So it seems that Assad is burning areas even closer to Damascus than Jobar, while setting up an Alawite shield for the wealthiest supporters towards Latakia in the west. Not good.
Some more on Talbisah, here is a very good account that uploaded videos from the early phases of demonstrations to bitter battles against the military base that neighbored the residential neighborhood. Watching the videos from oldest uploaded to newest is a painful descent into madness[4].
[1] http://i.imgur.com/prkBmh.jpg
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamalka
[3] http://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/syrian-army-ren...
[4] http://www.youtube.com/user/talbisah/videos?flow=grid&view=0...