Syria watch: News from Damascus
US Secretary pf State Colin Powell has joined Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in placing Syria in his cross hairs - mend your ways or you're next, is the message.
Damascus remains sanguine, however. Al-Jazeera correspondent Muhammad Khayr al-Burini reported yesterday on the arrival in Mosul of "new groups of Syrian volunteers for combat". al-Burini said: "Many of those volunteers crossed the borders through different ways without passing through border posts or using passports. The concerned Iraqi authorities are distributing them to a large number of positions to participate in the military operations".
Dr Haydar Haydar, writing on Sunday in al-Thawrah newspaper of Baghdad, took a swipe at Mr Rumsfeld's claims of Syrian collusion with Iraq. "He ignores so many statements he made before and during the aggression on Iraq claiming a quick, decisive and 'clean' end to the war . . . In fact, his accusations are meant to justify his forces' failure to accomplish what he had promised the American people. His forces' only achievements have been the destruction of civilian installations and homes, and the bombardment of markets, hospitals and archaeological sites in a savagery befitting the extremist, rightist Bush administration. Only the Zionist occupiers, who bestially commit horrific massacres, could rival the US forces."
Mr Rumsfeld didn't go down well with e-debaters using souria.com, a Syrian website whose war pages are headed "Aggression on Iraq". M.Rahme said the US Defence Secretary "may initiate a regional and international war". Rabih al-Nasri has no doubt but that the war is "all about American politics and oil". He writes: "They don't care about our brothers in Iraq, they just want to get oil and make George Bush look like a liberator when he is actually a murderer." Saad is fed up with the Arab response. "I am so disappointed from the Arab League and I think they can nothing but talk, SHAME ON YOU. I feel so sad, so humiliated, but I can nothing but watch and pray, so the least you guys can do is to act like men and do something to save Iraq . . ."
Body count: the toll mounts
The number of war casualties is mounting. Accurate figures are impossible to determine - not least because the Iraqi side, in particular, does not disclose believeable numbers, while simultaneously claiming incredible coalition losses.
The following is the best estimate to date:
US: 46 dead, 17 missing.
UK: 25 dead.
Iraqi: Unknown number of combatants dead but Baghdad claims at least 598 civilian deaths.
Journalists: 2 (Paul Moran, Australian cameraman, and Terry Lloyd, ITN reporter); 4 missing (two from ITN, two from Newsday, a New York newspaper).
Others: 5 Syrian workers killed returning to Syria on March 23rd when their bus was bombed by US and UK aircraft; unknown number injured.