SYRIA: Assad says military operation in dissident stronghold will end “very soon.”
Syria promised Wednesday to end its military operation in the southern city of Daraa, where its forces are besieging anti-government groups who sparked a wave of demonstrations.
The announcement came even as security forces made sweeping arrests elsewhere across the country.
President Bashar Assad said in published remarks that the operation would end “very soon.”
Daraa, near the Jordanian border, has been under siege since April 25, when Assad sent in the military, who cut off electricity and telephone service. Snipers have fired at residents who ventured outdoors and security forces shot holes in rooftop water tanks, vital for residents of the parched region.
About 50 people have been reported killed in Daraa over the past 10 days.
Also Wednesday, Syrian officials confirmed that they have detained journalist Dorothy Parvaz, her fiance said Wednesday. A former reporter in Seattle, Parvaz, 39, was working for Al Jazeera English.
YEMEN: Blast kills five soldiers, then firefight kills four civilians.
An explosion ripped through a military vehicle Wednesday in the south, killing five soldiers, and four civilians died in the ensuing firefight.
The blast hit the vehicle close to a busy market in a province known as a stronghold for the local branch of the militant group al-Qaeda. But military officials said they weren’t sure who the assailants were.
Extremists regularly attack soldiers in the lawless, impoverished country, which is also wracked by pro-democracy demonstrators calling for the ouster of their longtime authoritarian ruler, Ali Abdullah Saleh.
On Wednesday, tens of thousands gathered in Yemen’s chief cities, as they have for the past months to reiterate their demands that Saleh step down after more than 30 years in power.
More than 140 people have died since the protests began nearly three months ago.
BRITAIN: Foreign secretary says “Arab Spring” will have historic significance.
The pro-democracy risings shaking the Middle East may have a greater impact than the recent recession or the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the country’s foreign secretary said Wednesday.
Speaking to a white-tie audience at an Easter banquet in London’s luxurious Mansion House, William Hague said that 2011 had seen a confluence of events that would change the course of history.
“The eruption of democracy movements across the Middle East and North Africa is, even in its early stages, the most important development of the early 21st century, with potential consequences, in my view, greater than either 9/11 or the global financial crisis in 2008,” Hague said.
Hague predicted that the forces which led to what he called “the Arab Spring” would sweep across the globe — comparing it to the collapse of the Iron Curtain and saying that, if successful, it would lead to “the greatest advance for human rights and freedom since the end of the Cold War.”
But he said that challenges remained, and he argued for strong action to help support Arabs trying to emerge from under the shadow of authoritarian rule.
Denver Post wire services
