Red Cross teams allowed into battered Hama
Red Cross teams reached Hama for the first time in more than a month overnight, delivering food and other goods to the central Syrian city battered by a military crackdown on the antigovernment uprising. Activist groups reported the death toll for 11 months of unrest has surpassed 8000.
Hicham Hassan, an International Committee of the Red Cross spokesman in Geneva, said a joint team of the ICRC and Syrian Arab Red Crescent brought an emergency delivery of food and other items for 12,000 people. He told The Associated Press it was the first time the aid group has been able to enter Hama since Jan. 17.
The city has been hard hit by a government crackdown and villages and towns nearby frequently witness antigovernment protests and clashes between troops and military defectors.
In Moscow, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned against military intervention in Syria or an attack on its ally Iran in scathing criticism of the West. He said the West had backed the Arab Spring to advance its own interests in the region, and that instead of promoting democracy, the revolts had given rise to religious extremism.
Russia has been one of Damascus’ strongest supporters and, along with China, vetoed two UN Security Council resolutions backing Arab League plans aimed at ending the conflict and condemning the Syrian regime’s crackdown. Moscow has said it will block any UN resolution that could pave the way for a replay of what happened in Libya.
In that case, Russia abstained from a vote that cleared the way for months of Nato airstrikes that helped Libyans end Muammar Gaddafi’s regime.
Putin’s comments came after the US and its European and Arab allies met Friday at a major international conference on the Syrian crisis in Tunisia.
Syria said voters have approved a new constitution in a vote that the West has dismissed as a ‘‘farce’’ meant to justify deadly crackdowns on dissent.
Syrian state TV said that 89 per cent of voters approved the new document. Assad has presented the new charter as a step toward reform.