Iran backs Assad as Syrian forces choke off Aleppo

A Free Syrian Army fighter takes cover during clashes with Syrian Army in the Salaheddine neighbourhood of central Aleppo August 7, 2012. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic

ALEPPO, Syria (Reuters) - Syria's President Bashar al-Assad won a pledge of support on Tuesday from regional ally Iran as his forces tried to choke off rebels in the northern city of Aleppo.

Seeking to restore his authority after suffering the gravest setbacks so far in the 17-month-old uprising, culminating in the defection of his prime minister on Monday, Assad was shown on television meeting a senior Iranian official.

It was the first footage broadcast of the 46-year-old leader for two weeks, and came a day after Syria's new caretaker prime minister was televised chairing a hastily called cabinet session, possibly to rebut reports that other ministers had deserted along with premier Riyad Hijab.

Saeed Jalili, head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, said Iran would not let its close partnership with the Syrian leadership to be shaken by the uprising or external foes.

"Iran will not allow the axis of resistance, of which it considers Syria to be an essential part, to be broken in any way," Syrian television quoted Jalili as saying.

The "axis of resistance" refers to Shi'ite Iran's anti-Israel alliance with Syria's rulers - from the Alawite faith which is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam - and the Lebanese Shi'ite militant group Hezbollah, which fought a month-long war with Israel in 2006, with Iranian and Syrian support.

Damascus and Tehran have held Sunni Muslim Gulf Arab states and Turkey, all allies of the United States and European powers, responsible for the bloodshed in Syria by supporting the overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim rebels. Western powers sympathetic to the rebels are concerned that anti-Western Sunni Islamists could benefit from a victory for the anti-Assad forces.

Iran's Fars news agency reported that Jalili told Assad that Iran was prepared to provide humanitarian aid to Syria.

On a visit to Turkey, Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said he wanted to work with Ankara to resolve the crisis.

Iran has also expressed worry about the fate of more than 40 Iranians it says are religious pilgrims kidnapped by rebels from a bus in Damascus while visiting Shi'ite shrines.

Rebels say they suspect the captives were troops sent to help Assad. A rebel spokesman in the Damascus area said on Monday three of the Iranians had been killed by government shelling. He initially said the rest would be executed if the shelling did not stop but later said they were being questioned.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, without naming Iran or Sunni powers, warned against a descent into "sectarian warfare" and said Washington would not tolerate "sending in proxies or terrorist fighters" to "exploit" Syria's conflict.

REBEL AMMUNITION

In Aleppo, rebels trying to fight off an army offensive said they were running low on ammunition as Assad's forces tried to encircle their stronghold in the southern approaches to the country's biggest city.

Assad has reinforced his troops in preparation for an assault to recapture rebel-held districts of Aleppo after repelling fighters from most of Damascus.

"The Syrian army is trying to encircle us from two sides of Salaheddine," said Sheikh Tawfiq, one of the rebel commanders, referring to the southwestern Aleppo neighborhood which has seen heavy fighting over the last week.

Mortar fire and tank shells exploded across the district early on Tuesday, forcing rebel fighters to take cover in crumbling buildings and rubble-strewn alleyways.

Tanks have entered parts of Salaheddine and army snipers, using the cover of heavy bombardment, deployed on rooftops, hindering rebel movements.

Another rebel commander, Abu Ali, said snipers at the main Saleheddine traffic roundabout were preventing the rebels from bringing in reinforcements and supplies. He said five of his fighters were killed on Monday and 20 wounded.

But rebels said they were still holding the main streets of Salaheddine.

A fighter jet pounded targets in the eastern districts of Aleppo and shelling could be heard in the early morning, an activist in Aleppo said.

"Two families, about 14 people in total, were believed killed when a shell hit their home and it collapsed this morning," the activist said. The house was one street away from a school being used as a base by rebels, he said.

PREMIER DEFECTS

As Assad's forces battle to retake Aleppo, fighting has continued across the country. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which monitors the violence, said more than 270 people - including 62 soldiers - were killed in Syria on Monday, one of the highest death tolls in an uprising in which activists reckon at least 18,000 have died.

Sixty-four of those killed on Monday died in the city of Aleppo and its surrounding province, the Observatory said.

The president has suffered a series of blows in the last three weeks, from the bombing of his inner circle to the rebel gains in Aleppo, at border crossings and briefly in Damascus.

On Monday, Hijab denounced Assad's "terrorist regime" after fleeing the country.

The defection of Hijab, who like most of the opposition hails from the Sunni Muslim majority, was a further sign of the isolation of Assad's government around an inner core of powerful members of his minority Alawite sect.

Opposition figures, buoyant despite setbacks in recent weeks of fighting, spoke of an extensive and long-planned operation to spirit Hijab and his extended family over the Jordanian border.

A spokesman for U.S. President Barack Obama hailed Hijab's defection as a sign that the 40-year rule of Assad's family was "crumbling from within" and said he should step down.

Western leaders' repeated predictions of Assad's imminent collapse have so far proven premature, however.

The security forces have overwhelming superiority in firepower, which they have wielded against lightly armed rebels.

Hijab's defection was the latest sign of Sunnis abandoning Assad, but there has been no sign yet that members of his mainly Alawite ruling inner circle are losing their will to fight on.

(Additional reporting by Khaled Oweis, Mariam Karouny, Yara Bayoumy and Tom Perry in Beirut; Writing by Dominic Evans in Beirut; Editing by David Stamp and Alastair Macdonald)

In Aleppo, Syrian rebels show signs of strain

Syria's Assad returns to public eye with ally Iran

BEIRUT (AP) — Syrian President Bashar Assad made his first appearance on state TV in nearly three weeks Tuesday in a show of solidarity with a senior Iranian envoy even as the U.S. secretary of stateurged stepped up international planning for the regime's collapse.

The contrasts couldn't have been more vivid: Assad and Iran's Saeed Jalili vowing to defeat the rebels and their backers, while Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton predicted Assad's regime was quickly unraveling, with high-level defections such as his prime minister's switch to the rebel side.

It also highlighted Assad's deepening reliance on a shrinking list of allies, led by Tehran. Assad — seen on state TV for the first time since a July 18 bombing in Damascus killed four of his top security officials — used Jalili's visit to portray a sense of command and vowed to fight his opponents "relentlessly."

Jalili, the secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, promised Iran would stand by Syriaagainst its international "enemies" — a clear reference to the rebels' Western backers and others such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

While there were no public pledges of greater military assistance to Assad, the mission by Jalili appeared to reflect Iran's efforts to reassure Syria of its backing and ease speculation that Tehran also could be making contingencies for Assad's possible fall.

On a visit to South Africa, Clinton described Assad's regime as splintering from Monday's defection of Syria's prime minister, Riad Hijab, and other military and political figures breaking away in recent months. She urged international leaders to begin work on a "good transition plan" to try to keep Syria from collapsing into more chaos after Assad.

"I am not going to put a timeline on it. I can't possibly predict it, but I know it's going to happen as do most observers around the world," Clinton told reporters.

A post-Assad Syria presents a host of worrisome scenarios, including a bloody cycle of revenge and power grabs by the country's patchwork of factions. They include the Sunni-led rebels and Assad's minority Alawite community, an offshoot of Shiite Islam and part of its close bonds with Shiite power Iran.

A growing humanitarian crisis is already taking hold.

More than 1,300 Syrians fled to Turkey on Tuesday as rebels tried to expand their hold inside Aleppo, Syria's largest city, despite two weeks of withering counterattacks by Assad's troops. Close to 48,000 Syrians have already taken refuge in Turkey, which has served as a staging ground for rebels. Even more refugees have crossed into Jordan and Lebanon.

And at least 22,300 Iraqis who fled to Syria several years ago have streamed home in the past three weeks, said U.N. officials in Baghdad as they prepared for more refugees.

In Geneva, meanwhile, the World Health Organization said the fighting has severely hit Syria's health services, including closing down 90 percent of pharmaceutical plants in Damascus and other main cities and leaving critical shortages of medicine. WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic cited a Syrian Health Ministry report that 200 ambulances were lost in recent weeks to theft or clashes.

Aleppo-based activists said clashes were going on Tuesday near the historic city center. That suggested the rebels were making some inroads in Aleppo, which lies some 25 miles (40 kilometers) from the Turkish border.

Intense government bombardment of the Syrian town of Tal Rafaat closer to the border sent scores of people spilling into Turkey for safety, according to the activists.

A Turkish government official said 1,328 Syrian refugees had crossed the border Tuesday — nearly double the number of the previous day. The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with government rules.

Ahmad Saleh, a Tal Rifaat resident who fled to Turkey, said the town was shelled Monday from the nearby air base of Minnegh, killing at least two people. "We had to choose between dying in Syria and coming to Turkey," he said.

A video posted online by activists Tuesday showed a large group of Free Syrian Army rebels in military fatigues and carrying rocket-propelled grenades and automatic rifles. The fighters were seen announcing that they were joining the "Unification Brigade," the main group of rebels in Aleppo, to assist in the "liberation" of the city.

"They have Satan on their side, we have God on ours," one rebel shouted. "We are coming, Aleppo," shouted another. The authenticity of the video could not be independently verified.

Despite a ferocious crackdown, rebels in Syria have grown more confident and are using increasingly bolder tactics both in Aleppo and in the capital, Damascus.

In a daylight attack, rebels on Saturday abducted a group of 48 Iranians near Damascus, branding them as spies assisting in Assad's crackdown.

Iran says those captured when their bus was commandeered were pilgrims visiting a Shiite shrine on the outskirts of Damascus, and Jalili said Tuesday that Iran would spare no effort to secure their release.

"We believe that the abduction of innocent people could not be accepted by any rational person. We believe that the parties that support those terrorist groups to commit such disgraceful acts, are their partners," he said.

Meanwhile, Iran's Foreign Ministry said it holds the U.S. responsible for the fate of the abducted Iranians.

Iran's state IRNA news agency said the ministry summoned the Swiss envoy in Tehran late Monday to stress that Iran expects Washington to use its influence to secure the Iranians' release. The Swiss look after U.S. interests in Iran since Tehran and Washington have no diplomatic relations.

The Iranian Embassy in Turkey said Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi was traveling Tuesday to Turkey, where he was to meet with his Turkish counterpart to discuss Syria and the abducted Iranians.

Syrian rebels claimed three of the Iranian captives were killed on Monday during shelling by government forces in Damascus and its suburbs, and threatened to kill the remaining Iranians unless the army stopped its bombardment.

"The Syrian regime is responsible for anything that happens to the Iranians," a representative of the Baraa Brigades, which claimed responsibility for the group's abduction, told The Associated Press on Skype.

The representative's claim that three were killed could not be independently verified. An official at the Iranian Embassy in Damascus said he had no information on the subject.

___

• by Kristina Chew
• August 7, 2012

Written by Terry Collins

RICHMOND, Calif. (AP) — A major fire at one of the country’s biggest oil refineries that sent scores of people to hospitals with breathing problems will push gas prices above $4 a gallon on the West Coast, analysts said Tuesday.

The fire, which sent plumes of black smoke over the San Francisco Bay area, erupted Monday evening in the massive Chevron refinery about 10 miles northeast of San Francisco.

It was out early Tuesday, although officials were still conducting a controlled burn.

The West Coast is particularly vulnerable to spikes in gasoline prices because it’s not well-connected to the refineries along the Gulf Coast, where most of the country’s refining capacity is located, analysts say.

Chevron’s refinery is particularly big and important to the market, said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at Oil Price Information Service.

It produces about 150,000 barrels of gasoline a day — 16 percent of the West Coast’s daily gasoline consumption of 963,000 barrels, according to Kloza.

With inventories of gasoline in the region already low compared with the rest of the country, pump prices in California and elsewhere on the West Coast will soon average more than $4 per gallon, Kloza said.

“It’s a very key refinery,” he said.

Chevron spokesman Lloyd Avram said he did not have an update on when the refinery could be restarted and declined to comment on what kind of impact the shutdown might have on the gasoline market.

Price Futures Group oil analyst Phil Flynn said pictures of the fire suggested it would not be back on line soon.

Flynn predicted motorists would see higher prices at the pump almost immediately.

“I’m hearing five to 10 cents, but I think it’s probably going to be double that,” he said.

The fire began around 6:15 p.m. Monday, about two hours after a vapor leak of hydrocarbons similar to diesel, said Heather Kulp, a Chevron spokeswoman.

“At approximately 6:30 p.m., the volume increased and personnel evacuated the area,” she said at a news conference Tuesday. “The hydrocarbon vapor then ignited and a fire occurred.”

Kulp said there were no explosions, and staff at the refinery initiated an emergency response immediately after the fire started. The cause is under investigation.

Smoke and flames from the fire could be seen for miles.

State workplace safety investigators had cordoned off the entire crude unit on Tuesday, and no one was being allowed to enter without approval from the state, said Erika Monterroza, a spokeswoman for California’s Division of Occupational Safety and Health, or Cal/OSHA.

“Investigators have notified us that Chevron’s emergency response was excellent,” Monterroza said. “Everyone was evacuated and Chevron set up an exclusion zone to keep people out of the area.”

Doctors Medical Center in San Pablo, a town near the refinery in Richmond, said 181 people sought help complaining of eye irritation and breathing problems. The hospital said most of the patients were released after being seen.

Kaiser’s Richmond Medical Center said it had assessed and treated more than 200 people with respiratory concerns in its emergency department. No patients were admitted to the facility, said Jessie Mangaliman, a spokesman for Kaiser Permanente.

Residents said they heard loud blasts around the time the fire broke out, although Chevron officials could not confirm those reports.

Daniela Rodriguez, 23, told the Contra Costa Times that she heard a “big boom” and about an hour passed before she received an automated call from Contra Costa County to remain indoors.

“I was feeling kind of nauseous and light-headed” from the smell, she told the newspaper.

The blaze in the refinery’s No. 4 Crude Unit was contained in about five hours, Chevron said in a statement on its website.

Three employees suffered minor injuries and were treated at the scene, according to Kulp.

Randy Sawyer, chief environmental and hazardous materials officer for the county’s health services agency, said any kind of smoke can be toxic but added: “In this smoke, there can also be all kind of byproducts that can be toxic.”

The agency had four teams of inspectors testing air quality, Sawyer said.

Trisha Asuncion, a hazardous materials specialist with the county, told the San Francisco Chronicle that no hazardous compounds had been detected in the air.

County health officials used automated calls to warn residents of Richmond, San Pablo and the unincorporated community of North Richmond to stay inside, turn off heaters, air conditioners and fans, and cover cracks around doors with tape or damp towels. The order was lifted later Monday night.

Bay Area Rapid Transit also shut down three train stations near the plant for several hours.

To the south, Oakland police issued a community advisory suggesting residents of the North Oakland Hills area close all windows and doors and turn off air conditioners.

A fire at the refinery in January 2007 injured two workers and spewed low levels of sulfur dioxide and other toxins into the air. County officials said then that it was not enough to harm the health of nearby residents.

The 2007 fire shut down the refinery for most of that year’s first earnings quarter.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press