The Obama administration said Tuesday that Russia is sending attack helicopters to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime and is warning about a dramatic escalation in the Arab country’s 15-month conflict.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said the delivery represents the “latest information.” She said the U.S. is concerned as the helicopters “will escalate the conflict quite dramatically.”
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Speaking at the Brookings Institution, a liberal-oriented research and policy organization, Clinton called instead for Moscow to help the U.S. push forward a political transition plan for Syria.
There was no immediate response from Russia. Russia has consistently said it would not condone the use of outside forces to end the conflict and has said that it would not supply arms that would aid the government in quelling the uprising.
Meanwhile, in Syria, angry crowds blocked U.N. observers from reaching an embattled rebel-held town, hurling stones and metal rods at the monitors’ vehicles. Their vehicles came under fire as they drove away from Haffa, but the source of the gunfire was not clear, the U.N. said.
None of the observers was injured.
The situation in Haffa has raised alarm over the past eight days, and there are concerns civilians are stuck in the area while the regime and rebel fighters battle for control. Washington said Monday that regime forces may be preparing a massacre in rebel-held Haffa — a village about 20 miles from Assad’s hometown of Kardaha.
It’s not clear why the crowd wanted to prevent the observers from entering, but the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said earlier that resident of a nearby village was trying to block the observers.
Citing a network of sources on the ground, the Observatory said the residents were mostly regime loyalists.
Calls to the area did not go through Tuesday. The government restricts journalists from moving freely, making it nearly impossible to independently verify accounts from either side.
Also Tuesday, Syrian forces pelted the eastern city of Deir el-Zour with mortars as anti-government protesters were dispersing before dawn Tuesday, killing at least 10 people, activists said.
The offensives were part of an escalation of violence in recent weeks that has brought more international pressure on President Bashar Assad’s regime faces over its brutal tactics against the opposition. The U.N. accused the government of using children as human shields in a new report. It said children have been victims of detention, torture and sexual violence.
Amateur video of the mortar attack on Deir el-Zour showed some of the dead in a street as survivors screamed in panic and tried to remove their bodies. Other videos showed some of the wounded receiving treatment at a hospital. The Local Coordination Committees activist group and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 10 people died in the shelling.
Both sides of the 15-month-old revolt to oust Assad have ignored an internationally brokered cease-fire that was supposed to go into effect April 12 but never took hold. The U.S. and its allies also have shown little appetite for getting involved in another Arab nation in turmoil.
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