Syrian regime, rebels largely ignore United Nations' humanitarian appeal, envoy says

UNITED NATIONS The U.N. humanitarian chief bluntly told the Security Council on Friday that its recent appeal for humanitarian access in Syria has made little difference and implored the world body to exert more pressure on the warring parties to allow the delivery of aid to millions of people trapped in the conflict.

The message from Valerie Amos further laid bare how ineffective the Security Council has been in addressing Syria's 2 1/2-year-old civil war amid divisions between the United States and other Western powers, which support some of the rebel groups, and Russia, which supports the regime of President Bashar Assad.

Diplomats had characterized the humanitarian appeal three weeks ago as a hopeful step toward overcoming the paralysis. It came immediately after the council's first binding resolution on Syria that ordered the elimination of its chemical weapons.

Unlike the weapons resolution, which threatened consequences for noncompliance, the humanitarian statement was nonbinding. Amos said the Syrian regime and rebel groups have largely ignored it.

"As we deliberate, people continue to die unnecessarily," said Amos, the undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs. "I call upon the members of the council to exert influence and take the necessary action to stop this brutality and violence."

She said the U.N. has not been able to reach 2.5 million people trapped in besieged areas, many of whom have not been reached for nearly a year.

The U.S. and British ambassadors said they were horrified by Amos' presentation and that council members should urgently consider further action.

U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power said Amos told council members that Syrian government officials have been telling the U.N. that authorities have "done nothing to lift senseless bureaucratic hurdles that hinder delivery" of aid.

"This is simply appalling," Power said in a statement to The Associated Press. "Council members with influence on the parties, particularly the regime, must do more to make a difference on the ground."

British Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant said that if the council's statement "is not being taken seriously, than obviously it behooves us to look at stronger vehicles, including a resolution."

The United Nations has "not had any major breakthrough" in its discussions with Syrian authorities to lift obstacles for humanitarian workers trying to reach vulnerable towns, Amos said. She said 100 visas for U.N. staff and other workers are still pending, and humanitarian convoys and missions continue to require written approval.

"There is simply no reason why humanitarian staff, whose only interest is to help those in desperate need, have not been granted visas to scale up our operations," Amos said.

She said key humanitarian routes are increasingly cut off by the fighting, and kidnappings of aid workers are rising. One humanitarian convoy was ready to go last week, but the U.N. couldn't find enough drivers because they feared for their lives.

Amos also said both Syrian government forces and rebel groups - now estimated to number up to 2,000 - have ignored the Security Council's call to protect civilians and continue to establish military positions in populated areas. Every day, she said, both sides indiscriminately attack schools, hospitals and power plants and even medical personnel.

"No one is taking their obligations under international humanitarian law seriously," she said.

Amos later told reporters that she asked council members "to consider a number of different measures" to ensure the implementation of its recommendations, but she declined to discuss specifics.

Meanwhile, Syrian troops killed at least 40 opposition fighters in an ambush Friday near Damascus, leaving their bloodied bodies strewn on rocks near a dried-out lake along with scattered rifles and ammunition.

Assad's forces backed by Lebanese Hezbollah gunmen also seized control of a rebel ammunition supply route on a highway linking the capital to its eastern suburbs - part of a blistering government offensive to bolster its position amid an international push for peace talks.

Assad's forces have been gaining ground in rebel-held areas around the capital, the seat of his power, and have made progress against outgunned and fragmented fighters in several areas.

On Friday, the state-run news agency SANA said 40 rebels died in the ambush near Otaiba, adding that soldiers seized a large arms cache, including anti-tank rockets.

The area is part of a region known as Eastern Ghouta, which was the scene of a horrific chemical weapons attack in August believed to have killed hundreds.

The state-run Al-Ikhbariya television station broadcast footage showing more than a dozen bodies near the largely dried-out Otaiba lake, some wearing flak jackets strapped with ammunition. Automatic rifles and hand grenades lay nearby.

"Eastern Ghouta is a graveyard of terrorists," read a scroll on the broadcast.

An unidentified Syrian army officer in the area told Al-Ikhbariya that there were foreign fighters among the dead and that the ambush followed an intelligence tip.

"It was a highly accurate operation," the officer said. "We will be moving from one victory to another."

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group that tracks Syria's crisis, said at least 24 fighters, some of them foreign, were killed in the ambush. It gave no further details.

The offensive coincides with an international push for a peace conference to be held in Geneva. Both sides want to bolster their position on the ground ahead of the talks, expected next month. No final date has been set, however, and it is unclear whether the sides will reach an agreement on the agenda.

The Supreme Military Council, which brings together a collection of loosely-knit rebel brigades under the emblem of the Free Syrian Army, said Friday it refused to sit down with Syrian officials involved in killing Syrians. Comments carried by the Syrian National Coalition, the group's political wing, also dismissed the proposed talks for lacking a way to reach concrete results.

In other violence, a car bomb blew up near a mosque in the village of Wadi Barada outside of Damascus shortly before Friday prayers ended. The Observatory said 40 people were either killed or wounded in the blast. SANA said the car blew up as it was being rigging with explosives. The agency said a number of people were killed.

The ambush near Damascus came hours after Assad's forces captured the town of Hatitat al-Turkomen south of the city, securing a key highway that links the capital with the Damascus International Airport. The area was scene to heavy fighting in the past.

North of Damascus, rebels and government forces clashed for a fifth consecutive day in the Christian town of Sadad, trapping hundreds of residents. Al-Qaeda-linked groups captured a checkpoint earlier this week that gave them control of the western part of the town.

Archbishop Silwanos Al-Nemeh said up to 3,000 civilians were trapped amid the exchange of fire. He appealed for international organizations to help civilians flee the area.

"The situation is dire and we are worried about a massacre inside," he told the AP by telephone from near Homs.

Meanwhile, Syrian helicopter gunships attacked several areas of the rebel-held northern town of Safira, southeast of the heavily contested city of Aleppo, the country's largest. A military complex near the town is believed to include an underground facility for chemical weapons production and storage.

France-based Doctors Without Borders said 130,000 people have fled Safira this month. A statement from the group said 76 people had died in the town itself.

In another development Friday, Norway turned down a U.S. request for Norwegian authorities to receive the bulk of Syria's chemical weapons for destruction, saying it doesn't have the capabilities to complete the task by the deadlines set by an international chemical watchdog.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Boerge Brende said his country could not find a port that could receive the required amount of chemical agents and didn't have the capacity to treat some of the waste products resulting from the destruction of the munitions.

The United Nations has set a mid-2014 deadline for the destruction of Syria's arsenal - a deadline Brende said was too tight for Norway.

It was unclear whether Norway's decision could delay compliance with the deadline for the destruction of weapons.

On Friday, the OPCW said its inspectors visited a site on Thursday and verified that all of its previous chemical weapons-related equipment has already been dismantled. This brings to 19 the total number of sites visited by OPCW inspectors, of 23 that have been disclosed by Syria.

The Syrian conflict has triggered a humanitarian crisis on a massive scale, killing more than 100,000 people, driving nearly 7 million more from their homes.