BEIRUT - Deadly attacks hit the center of Damascus and a major Syrian border crossing into Turkey on Tuesday as President Barack Obama strongly suggested that he would not be rushed into military entanglements in the Syrian conflict, where evidence of chemical-weapons use has raised the possibility of a U.S. intervention.
The attacks in Syria, which killed at least 13 people in the capital and at least five at the Bab al-Hawa crossing in northern Syria, happened a day after an attempted assassination of Syria’s prime minister in central Damascus from a bomb aimed at his motorcade. The prime minister, Wael Nader al-Halqi, survived the attack but at least five others, including a bodyguard, were killed, Syria’s state news media reported.
In Washington, Obama said at a news conference that despite a U.S.
intelligence assessment last week that there was evidence that chemical weapons had been used in Syria, the evidence had not yet surpassed his “red line” for a change of U.S. strategy regarding the conflict, in which President Bashar Assad is fighting to stay in power against an increasingly violent insurgency.
“We don’t know how they were used, when they were used, who used them; we don’t have chain of custody that establishes what exactly happened,” Obama said. “And when I am making decisions about America’s national security and the potential for taking additional action in response to chemical-weapon use, I’ve got to make sure I’ve got the facts.”
Senior officials said later Tuesday that the White House is considering supplying weapons to Syria’s opposition.
Obama has not decided whether to provide arms, these officials said, and it is still unclear what kinds of weapons the United States would supply to the insurgency.
In a statement Tuesday evening, the spokesman for the National Security Council, Caitlin Hayden, said, “Our assistance to the Syrian opposition has been on an upward trajectory.”
The president, she said, “has directed his national security team to identify additional measures so that we can continue to increase our assistance.”
Saudi Arabia and Qatar already are funneling arms to the rebels, while Britain and France favor lifting a European Union arms embargo to assist Syria’s opposition.
The United States is the largest donor of humanitarian assistance to civilians of the 2-year-old Syrian conflict and has called on Assad to resign in a negotiated political transition, but the Obama administration previously has resisted requests to provide the rebels with weapons.
Republican Sens. John Mc-Cain of Arizona and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina have been vocal critics of Obama’s approach in Syria, and Tuesday they said the president was trying to “defend the indefensible” with his remarks on chemical weapons.
The senators said the U.S. has a wide range of military options short of sending troops into Syria and called on Obama to “articulate exactly” the nation’s strategy and goals.
ASSAD REGIME REACTS
Syria’s United Nations ambassador said Tuesday that the use of chemical weapons is not only “a red line” but also “a blood line” that cannot be tolerated and again demanded a U.N. investigation of an alleged chemical-weapons attack in Aleppo that the government blames on rebels.
Bashar Ja’afari said at a news conference that his government has bodies and other proof that chemical weapons were used in Khan al-Assad in Aleppo on March 19. The rebels blame the government for the attack.
Ja’afari said Damascus is demanding details of another alleged chemical-weapons attack that Britain and France said was carried out by the government in Homs on Dec. 23 before it will even consider allowing U.N. experts to conduct an investigation in that city.
He disclosed that Qatar also sent a letter to the U.N. “claiming the use of chemical weapons in other parts of Syria,” without giving dates or locations.
Pressed by reporters, Ja’afari declined to confirm that Syria has chemical weapons. “The Syrian government has always emphasized that the Syrian government will not use, if it possesses any, chemical weapons on its own people,” he said.
He added, “The use of chemical weapons in Syria and elsewhere in the world is not only a red line, it’s a purple line, it’s a blood line, and nobody is tolerated or will be tolerated to use such horrific weapon of mass destruction.”
Ja’afari blamed opponents of the Syrian government, which he didn’t name, for launching “a campaign of incitement” that has included “trumped-up charges and fraudulent accusations against Syria” as well as a media, diplomatic and political campaign.
He said it was similar to the campaign leading to the Iraq war in 2003, when the United States and Britain claimed Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. The claim proved to be false.
“What happened in Iraq is still alive in our minds,” he added.
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi backed up Ja’afari’s assertion that opposition groups could have used chemical agents, and demanded a U.N. probe.
Meanwhile, Turkish border authorities decontaminated a group of wounded Syrians as they entered Turkey, and hospital staff members wore protective equipment to treat them because some claimed they may have come under a chemical attack in Syria, an official said Tuesday.
However, there was no indication that chemical weapons were used against them, and the hospital near the border with Syria soon returned to normal operations, an aide to the governor of Hatay province said.
DAMASCUS EXPLOSION
The violence in Syria on Tuesday at first centered around a booby-trapped car in Damascus that exploded near the back door of a building that used to house the Ministry of Interior, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an organization based in Britain, with a network of local anti-government activists in Syria. State television said the dead were all civilians.
It was not clear whether any individual was targeted, and no group immediately claimed responsibility. The government blamed its armed opponents, while the opposition Local Coordinating Committees blamed the government, as has often happened in a war in which information is a weapon and each side seeks to demonize the other.
Later at the Bab al-Hawa crossing into Turkey, Syrian activists and residents on the Turkish side said Syrian warplanes bombed refugee encampments on the Syrian side. The Syrian Observatory uploaded video on the Internet to corroborate the assertion, showing the aftermath of an explosion. In the Turkish town of Reyhanli, near the crossing, residents said they believed at least five people on the Syrian side were killed and a flock of sheep destroyed.
An array of disparate groups are seeking to topple Assad, including the blacklisted Nusra Front, which recently pledged allegiance to al-Qaida and has claimed responsibility for bombings in the capital and other attacks that have killed civilians. Other rebel groups say they reject such tactics.
The government has been on a campaign recently to persuade the United States and its allies to slacken their support for the uprising, arguing that it empowers violent extremist Islamist groups. The opposition contends that groups like Nusra gained prominence only after rebel fighters seeking to topple Assad family rule were unable to win significant military support from the West, while extremists had willing donors.
As the violent civil war in Syria enters its third year and Assad’s opponents try to inch closer to Damascus, the city has witnessed increasingly frequent explosions. These have included powerful bombings that have targeted government officials, others whose targets appear random and occasional rebel mortar rounds that sail into the center.
Far more devastating has been the relentless bombardment of rebel-held suburbs - and other areas around the country - by security forces using artillery and airstrikes. More than 70,000 people have died in the conflict.
The leader of Lebanon’s Hezbollah militant group said Tuesday that Syrian rebels will not be able to defeat Assad’s regime militarily, warning that Syria’s “real friends,” including his Iranian-backed militant group, were ready to intervene on the government’s side.
Hezbollah, a powerful Shiite Muslim group, is known to back Syrian regime fighters in Shiite villages near the Lebanon border against the mostly Sunni rebels fighting to topple Assad. The comments bySheik Hassan Nasrallah were the strongest indication yet that his group was ready to get more involved to rescue Assad’s regime.
Hezbollah and Iran are close allies of Assad. Rebels have accused them of sending fighters to assist Syrian troops fighting the rebels.
Meanwhile, another Syria ally, Russia, has banned its airlines from flying over Syria after a civilian plane was reported to have come under an unspecified threat in Syrian airspace. The ban was announced Tuesday by the state air transport agency, Rosaviatsiya.
Also Tuesday, the Italian newspaper La Stampa said its correspondent in Syria had been missing for about 20 days. The Turin newspaper’s website said 62-year-old Domenico Quirico, an experienced war reporter, entered Syria on April 6 from Lebanon. La Stampa said it has been working with the Italian Foreign Ministry in an effort to find him, but so far with no results.
The violence in Syria has been accompanied by an increasingly dire humanitarian crisis affecting Syrian refugees. Oxfam, a British charity, warned in a report Tuesday that the 6.8 million internally displaced Syrians need immediate assistance and that the funds currently available are not sufficient to deal with a crisis of such magnitude.
The United Nations has received only half of the money that was pledged, according to Oxfam.
In neighboring Jordan, Col. Zaher Abu Shihab, who directs the largest refugee camp at Zaatari near the two countries’ border, said 45,865 Syrian refugees have so far been voluntarily repatriated since August.
Some refugees have complained of the harsh environment at the camp. Sporadic protests have demanded improvements. About 300 to 400 Syria refugees ask daily to go back to Syria, Abu Shihab told the official Petra news agency late Monday.
Jordan hosts more than half a million displaced Syrians, with about one-fifth inside Zaatari. Abu Shihab said the camp intends to improve conditions, installing more trailers to replace tents to house the refugees.
Information for this article was contributed by Mark Landler, Hania Mourtada, Rick Gladstone, Anne Barnard, Sebnem Arsu and Neil MacFarquhar of The New York Times; by Mike Dorning, Peter S. Green and James Rowley of Bloomberg News; and by Peter James Spielmann, Edith M. Lederer, Zeina Karam, Barbara Surk, Bassem Mroue, Ryan Lucas, Suzan Fraser of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 05/01/2013