Rebel election threats send Syrians fleeing

BEIRUT -- Thousands of people have fled government-held Syrian cities after opposition fighters warned they will attack during next week's presidential election to disrupt the vote, opposition activists said Friday.

The Syrian government presents Tuesday's election, in which President Bashar Assad is widely expected to secure a third seven-year term, as a means to end the 3-year-old conflict that has killed more than 160,000 people. The Syrian opposition and its Western allies have denounced the vote as a farce aimed solely at lending Assad a veneer of electoral legitimacy.

Civilians left the government-held northwestern city of Idlib, which is blockaded by rebels on three sides, after the Islamic Council, a military and civil body in rebel-held areas, ordered them to do so. The city, surrounded by rebels for more than two years, has witnessed frequent clashes.

Rebel fighters closed roads linking areas under their control with those in government hands in the city Friday after a deadline imposed by the council passed, said an activist in the area who goes by the name of Hasan Idilbi.

"The opposition is preparing for a strike to disrupt the elections," Idilbi said via Skype.

Members of the Islamic Council could not be immediately reached for comment.

Another activist based near Idlib named Bassil Asaad said thousands of people have fled, although he said he didn't expect a wide attack on Tuesday.

"I think it is only psychological warfare, although some rebels are warning they will turn it into a bloody day in Idlib," he said.

Abu Odai, a spokesman for a small rebel group known as the Rahman Brigade, said several rebel groups have said they will bombard the capital, Damascus, during the election, although he said his group will abstain.

"We will not target civilians," he said from a suburb of Damascus. "We will only target security offices that are far from residential areas."

In the northern city of Aleppo, rockets that slammed into pro-government neighborhoods killed at least 12 people and wounded more than 80, the state news agency said. Fighting over the past two years has cut Aleppo in two, leaving the east under opposition control and the west in government hands.

Meanwhile, an activist group said that crude bombs dropped by Syrian government forces on rebel-held parts of Aleppo have killed nearly 2,000 people so far this year.

The explosives -- known as barrel bombs -- are shrapnel-packed devices that Syrian forces roll out of helicopters over rebel-held neighborhoods.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights -- one of the main groups counting the dead in the war -- said Friday that barrel bombs have killed 1,963 people so far this year in Aleppo.

The Observatory also said that the al-Qaida breakaway group known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant abducted 193 Kurds from the village of Kabasin in Aleppo province Thursday. There was no immediate word on what prompted the move, but the Islamic State has long been engaged in a brutal fight with Kurdish militias in northeastern Syria and has taken Kurdish hostages in the past.

Also Friday, the U.S. State Department confirmed that the man known as Abu Hurayra al-Amriki, whom Syrian forces blamed for a suicide bombing last weekend, was an American citizen.

Al-Amriki means "the American." State Department spokesman Jen Psaki said in a statement that his real name was Moner Mohammad Abu-Salha.

Two senior law enforcement officials said Friday that he was of Middle Eastern descent, in his 20s and grew up in Florida. U.S. authorities became aware of his presence in Syria in the past year, they said.

Officials said they believe that Abu-Salha is the first American involved in a suicide attack in Syria.

One senior law enforcement official said the authorities believed that the attack occurred during the second visit Abu-Salha made to Syria to fight alongside Islamist militants who are battling Assad's government. He had been in Syria for a little more than a year on this trip, the official said.

All the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

Intelligence and counterterrorism officials have said about 100 Americans have traveled to Syria since the civil war there began, mainly to fight for one of the hundreds of rebel groups combating the Assad government. U.S. and European officials have expressed mounting fears that battle-hardened fighters returning from Syria could carry out attacks back home.

Officials said Friday that it is easy for U.S. citizens to get in and out of Syria -- and that many travel there for humanitarian reasons -- presenting a challenge in determining who might plan to carry out terror attacks when they return to the U.S.

The FBI, CIA, National Counterterrorism Center and Homeland Security Department recently created a special team of analysts to try to prevent American jihadists from returning home undetected.

Information for this article was contributed by Bassem Mroue, Matthew Lee and Zeina Karam of The Associated Press and by Eric Schmitt and Mark Mazzetti of The New York Times.

A Section on 05/31/2014

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