MADRID/DAMASCUS — Syria's main opposition group pleaded Monday for weapons and urgent military intervention to defend civilians from bombardments by President Bashar Al-Assad's army. “We need a humanitarian intervention and we are asking for military intervention for the Syrian civilians,” Syrian National Council leader Abdel Basset Sayda said after meeting Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo. “I have the duty of asking for weapons that will allow us to defend against the Syrian armor and weapons that are killing civilians all the time,” he told a joint news conference. Sayda said the Syrian conflict had now killed 30,000 people and forced millions from their homes, including more than three million internal refugees and 250,000 who had fled the country. Another 100,000 had been detained. The SNC leader's appeal came as deadly car bomb tore through a mainly Christian Damascus suburb Monday while warplanes pounded Aleppo province, killing dozens of people. Violence continued as chief of the Red Cross headed to Damascus on a humanitarian mission. A government air strike on a home in the heart of Aleppo killed an entire family, including seven children, witnesses in Syria's second city said. The bodies of the children were laid out under fly-ridden blankets in the back of a yellow pick-up truck outside the northern city's main hospital before a hurried funeral. “This is all one family,” said tailor Hassan Dalati, who survived the raid on Al-Sultan street in the city of 2.7 million people. A fighter jet also struck in the nearby town of Al-Bab, killing at least 10 men, six women and two children, with more unaccounted for beneath the rubble of levelled homes, said the observatory. The pre-dawn raid on a building being used as a shelter followed repeated overflights by military aircraft during the night, residents said. “We were sleeping at home when the first bomb struck. I made a run for the door when a second blast buried me,” said a barely conscious survivor, peppered with shrapnel from head to foot. The army also pounded several districts of Aleppo city, the observatory said, more than six weeks after the start of what President Bashar Al-Assad's regime warned would be “the mother of all battles” in the commercial hub. The plight of refugees is expected to be among the top priorities of Peter Maurer, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross who was traveling to Damascus for a three-day visit. Maurer would “discuss pressing humanitarian issues” during meetings on Tuesday with President Assad, Foreign Minister Walid Muallem and other ministers, the ICRC said in a statement. “At a time when more and more civilians are being exposed to extreme violence, it is of the utmost importance that we and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent succeed in significantly scaling up our humanitarian response,” Maurer was quoted as saying. More than 26,000 people have been killed in Syria since the revolt began in March last year — more than two-thirds of them civilians, the observatory said.— Agencies
