Algeria, Turkey renew gas deal for 10 years






ALGIERS: Algeria and Turkey have decided to renew for 10 years from 2014 an agreement for Algeria to deliver four billion cubic metres of gas annually to Turkey, Energy Minister Youcef Yousfi said on Saturday.

The official APS news agency said it was "decided to extend the agreement by 10 years, with the possibility of increasing the volume of gas exported."

Algeria and Turkey signed a 20-year agreement in 1988 on the sale and purchase of four billion cubic metres of gas annually, and which came into effect in 1994.

Speaking after a meeting in Algiers with visiting Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yildiz, Yousfi told reporters that Algeria's Sonatrach and Turkey's Botas have "already decided on the conditions and terms of the new agreement."

Turkey's rising gas needs are expected to quadruple over the next 10 years.

"We have said we wish to increase our imports to six billion cubic metres a year. Everything will depend on Algeria's export capacity," Yildiz said.

- AFP/de



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Zee News editor seeks video-recording of police statement

NEW DELHI: Zee News editor Sudhir Chaudhary, whom police has sent notice to join investigations after the channel aired the interview of December 16 rape victim's friend, on Saturday moved court seeking his statement be video-recorded but the order was silent on his request.

The court asked the city police to proceed the case "in accordance with the law" and did not specially mention in its order whether Chaudhary's statement would be recorded or not.

Metropolitan Magistrate Namrita Aggarwal said: "I have heard the counsel for the accused. SHO police station Vasant Vihar is directed to proceed as per law."

Chaudhary has moved the application saying he has been asked to join the investigation and a case has already been registered against him.

Advocate Vijay Aggarwal, appearing for Chaudhary, submitted that police has sent notice to his client to attend investigation.

"The applicant has received notice for attending investigation at Vasant Vihar police station. He prays that his statement made under section 161 (3) CrPC (Criminal Procedure Code) be recorded by audio video electronic means."

"The interview of the male friend had highlighted the irresponsible attitude of police towards the victims, so how can the same police register the case again the channel and also investigate it. It cannot be a fair investigation," said Aggarwal.

Delhi Police have filed a case against Zee News for revealing the identity of the gang-rape victim by carrying an interview of her male friend who was the only witness in the case.

The case was filed against at Vasant Vihar Police Station under Section 228 (A) of the Indian Penal Code. The interview of male friend would lead to the identification of the victim in breach of a law entitling her to anonymity, police said.

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FDA: New rules will make food safer


WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration says its new guidelines would make the food Americans eat safer and help prevent the kinds of foodborne disease outbreaks that sicken or kill thousands of consumers each year.


The rules, the most sweeping food safety guidelines in decades, would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, to include making sure workers' hands are washed, irrigation water is clean, and that animals stay out of fields. Food manufacturers will have to submit food safety plans to the government to show they are keeping their operations clean.


The long-overdue regulations could cost businesses close to half a billion dollars a year to implement, but are expected to reduce the estimated 3,000 deaths a year from foodborne illness. The new guidelines were announced Friday.


Just since last summer, outbreaks of listeria in cheese and salmonella in peanut butter, mangoes and cantaloupe have been linked to more than 400 illnesses and as many as seven deaths, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The actual number of those sickened is likely much higher.


Many responsible food companies and farmers are already following the steps that the FDA would now require them to take. But officials say the requirements could have saved lives and prevented illnesses in several of the large-scale outbreaks that have hit the country in recent years.


In a 2011 outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe that claimed 33 lives, for example, FDA inspectors found pools of dirty water on the floor and old, dirty processing equipment at Jensen Farms in Colorado where the cantaloupes were grown. In a peanut butter outbreak this year linked to 42 salmonella illnesses, inspectors found samples of salmonella throughout Sunland Inc.'s peanut processing plant in New Mexico and multiple obvious safety problems, such as birds flying over uncovered trailers of peanuts and employees not washing their hands.


Under the new rules, companies would have to lay out plans for preventing those sorts of problems, monitor their own progress and explain to the FDA how they would correct them.


"The rules go very directly to preventing the types of outbreaks we have seen," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods.


The FDA estimates the new rules could prevent almost 2 million illnesses annually, but it could be several years before the rules are actually preventing outbreaks. Taylor said it could take the agency another year to craft the rules after a four-month comment period, and farms would have at least two years to comply — meaning the farm rules are at least three years away from taking effect. Smaller farms would have even longer to comply.


The new rules, which come exactly two years to the day President Barack Obama's signed food safety legislation passed by Congress, were already delayed. The 2011 law required the agency to propose a first installment of the rules a year ago, but the Obama administration held them until after the election. Food safety advocates sued the administration to win their release.


The produce rule would mark the first time the FDA has had real authority to regulate food on farms. In an effort to stave off protests from farmers, the farm rules are tailored to apply only to certain fruits and vegetables that pose the greatest risk, like berries, melons, leafy greens and other foods that are usually eaten raw. A farm that produces green beans that will be canned and cooked, for example, would not be regulated.


Such flexibility, along with the growing realization that outbreaks are bad for business, has brought the produce industry and much of the rest of the food industry on board as Congress and FDA has worked to make food safer.


In a statement Friday, Pamela Bailey, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the country's biggest food companies, said the food safety law "can serve as a role model for what can be achieved when the private and public sectors work together to achieve a common goal."


The new rules could cost large farms $30,000 a year, according to the FDA. The agency did not break down the costs for individual processing plants, but said the rules could cost manufacturers up to $475 million annually.


FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said the success of the rules will also depend on how much money Congress gives the chronically underfunded agency to put them in place. "Resources remain an ongoing concern," she said.


The farm and manufacturing rules are only one part of the food safety law. The bill also authorized more surprise inspections by the FDA and gave the agency additional powers to shut down food facilities. In addition, the law required stricter standards on imported foods. The agency said it will soon propose other overdue rules to ensure that importers verify overseas food is safe and to improve food safety audits overseas.


Food safety advocates frustrated over the last year as the rules stalled praised the proposed action.


"The new law should transform the FDA from an agency that tracks down outbreaks after the fact, to an agency focused on preventing food contamination in the first place," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.


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4 Dead After Aurora, Colo., SWAT Standoff













Four people were killed, including the gunman, during a hostage standoff this morning at a townhouse in Aurora, Colo., police said.


Police pumped tear gas into the home in an attempt to get the gunman to leave, and then went into the home and shot him, ABC News Denver affiliate KMGH-TV reported.


The three people found dead in the home are believed to be relatives of the shooter, Aurora Police Sgt. Cassidee Carlson told KMGH. A fourth person was found unharmed, she said.


Officers responded to the home after the first reports of gunshots came in around 3 a.m.








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The suspected gunman was found dead inside the townhome at 9 a.m., but police were not sure when he had been shot by officers or killed himself, she said.


"We're just getting in there with our crime scene detectives, so obviously we'll have to determine if it was our rounds or his rounds," Carlson said. "This is a big investigation, and a lot is entailed."


Carlson said neighboring residences were evacuated while the SWAT team attempted to resolve the standoff.


"We've evacuated several residences in the neighboring townhomes and in the immediate area where we believed would be the most dangerous," Carlson told KMGH-TV earlier today.


The Colorado town was the site of a movie theater massacre last July. A gunman opened fire during a midnight screening of "The Dark Knight Rises," killing 12 people and injuring 58 others.



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Abbas sees Palestinian unity as Fatah rallies in Gaza


GAZA (Reuters) - President Mahmoud Abbas predicted the end of a five-year split between the two big Palestinian factions as his Fatah movement staged its first mass rally in Gaza with the blessing of Hamas Islamists who rule the enclave.


"Soon we will regain our unity," Abbas, whose authority has been limited to the Israeli-occupied West Bank since the 2007 civil war between the two factions, said in a televised address to hundreds of thousands of followers marching in Gaza on Friday, with yellow Fatah flags instead of the green of Hamas.


The hardline Hamas movement, which does not recognize Israel's right to exist, expelled secular Fatah from Gaza during the war. It gave permission for the rally after the deadlock in peace talks between Abbas's administration and Israel narrowed the two factions' ideological differences.


The Palestinian rivals have drawn closer since Israel's assault on Gaza assault in November, in which Hamas, though battered, claimed victory.


Egypt has long tried to broker Hamas-Fatah reconciliation, but past efforts have foundered over questions of power-sharing, control of weaponry, and to what extent Israel and other powers would accept a Palestinian administration including Hamas.


An Egyptian official told Reuters Cairo was preparing to invite the factions for new negotiations within two weeks.


Israel fears grassroots support for Hamas could eventually topple Abbas's Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank.


"Hamas could seize control of the PA any day," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday.


The demonstration marked 48 years since Fatah's founding as the spearhead of the Palestinians' fight against Israel. Its longtime leader Yasser Arafat signed an interim 1993 peace accord that won Palestinians a measure of self rule.


Hamas, which rejected the 1993 deal, fought and won a Palestinian parliamentary election in 2006. It formed an uneasy coalition with Fatah until their violent split a year later.


Though shunned by the West, Hamas feels bolstered by electoral gains for Islamist movements in neighboring Egypt and elsewhere in the region - a confidence reflected in the fact Friday's Fatah demonstration was allowed to take place.


"The success of the rally is a success for Fatah, and for Hamas too," said Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri. "The positive atmosphere is a step on the way to regain national unity."


Fatah, meanwhile, has been riven by dissent about the credibility of Abbas's statesmanship, especially given Israel's continued settlement-building on West Bank land. The Israelis quit Gaza unilaterally in 2005 after 38 years of occupation.


"The message today is that Fatah cannot be wiped out," said Amal Hamad, a member of the group's ruling body, referring to the demonstration attended by several Abbas advisers. "Fatah lives, no one can exclude it and it seeks to end the division."


In his speech, Abbas promised to return to Gaza soon and said Palestinian unification would be "a step on the way to ending the (Israeli) occupation".


(Editing by Dan Williams, Alistair Lyon and Jason Webb)



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Obama wins (again) as Congress tallies electoral votes






WASHINGTON: Congress certified Friday what the world has known for nearly two months -- President Barack Obama's re-election, which was made official through the counting of the Electoral College's votes.

Only then, after votes from each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia were tabulated, was Obama officially declared the winner over Republican Mitt Romney -- a quaint formality, perhaps, but also constitutionally required.

A relic of when Americans travelled on horseback and interstate communication was less than instantaneous, electoral law provides for long delays between the popular vote and the announcement of a result by a joint session of Congress.

In reality, the outcome was known on election night on November 6, but the US president is not directly elected by the popular vote -- at least not technically.

Instead, Americans in each of the 50 states, as well as the capital, cast their ballots to elect 538 electors: 332 representing Obama and 206 for Romney.

Vice President Joe Biden, who serves as president of the US Senate, presided over Friday's joint session of Congress, when legislators read out the tallies from each state.

"This announcement of the state of the vote by the president of the Senate shall be deemed a sufficient declaration of the persons elected president and vice president of the United States," Biden declared.

The count is steeped in American electoral tradition, one which sees the votes carried in a box from the Senate through the Capitol Rotunda to the House of Representatives, in a procession including Biden and the congressional leadership.

The total figure of electors, and how many are assigned from each state, depends on the population.

On December 17 -- the first Monday after the second Wednesday in December -- these delegates cast their votes in each US state.

Only around half the states require the electors to vote for the candidate they represent, but it is extremely rare for an elector to change candidates or abstain.

The last time there was a "faithless elector" was the year 2000, when District of Columbia Democrat Barbara Lett-Simmons abstained from voting for her party's candidate Al Gore, for whom she was expected to cast her vote, as a protest of the capital city's lack of voting representation in Congress.

Her abstention did not affect the election's outcome.

In the hypothetical situation where no candidate obtained a majority, the House of Representatives would be responsible for choosing a winner, with one vote per state delegation.

Meanwhile, plans were well underway for Obama's second inauguration: a private swearing in on January 20, followed by an immense public ceremony the following day.

- AFP/jc



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Software engineer gets first successful intestinal transplant

NEW DELHI: Himanshu's long wait for food has finally come true after more than two years' wait that involved being hospitalized 11 times, undergoing six surgeries and suffering from serious infections thrice.

Himanshu, a 30-year-old software engineer who has had better luck than the 23-year-old Delhi gang-rape victim Nirbhaya, has become India's first recipient of a successful intestinal transplant.

Had Nirbhaya lived long, she too would have ultimately needed one.

Back in 2009, Himanshu had complained of severe stomach ache. An emergency laparotomy was conducted and doctors found that he was suffering from thrombosis (blockage) of the main vein of his intestine (superior mesenteric vein) which resulted in loss of blood supply to most of his intestine.

Subsequently, 95% of his small intestine (usually six metres long) had to be removed, leaving him with just 28 cm of it. This saved his life, but also meant that he would never be able to eat solid food orally.

The small intestine is where 90% of the digestion and food absorption occurs. Chemical digestion with enzymes and bile acids take place here which breaks down food into a form that can be absorbed and then sent to various tissues of the body. Once broken down, the nutrients are absorbed by small intestines' inner walls into the blood stream.

Doctors at Gurgaon's Medanta Medicity evaluated and counseled Himanshu for an intestinal transplant and put him on the waiting list.

Himanshu waited for two years before he got lucky with a matched organ. On November 24, 2012, doctors found a perfect match.

A 20-year-old patient who had passed away had the same blood group and was fit to donate.

Dr A S Soin, who headed the team of 30 doctors from Medanta which conducted the surgery, said, "During the surgery, we removed most of Himanshu's remaining small intestine and a part of the large intestine to make space for the new intestine. This was necessary as his abdominal cavity had shrunk due to the missing bowel over the past three years. The new small intestine was transplanted, joining the blood vessels to the recipient's and the ends of the new intestine to the existing proximal and distal bowel."

"I had to re-learn how to eat normally and understand the signals of satiety. Even the 'khichdi' given to me tasted divine," said Himanshu. He said that is now off TPN for the past 10 days, and can eat normally.

According to the doctors, joining the vessels was the first challenge as both the artery and the main vein of the intestine were clotted.

"This necessitated grafting of extra conduits to the aorta and the portal vein to construct new source of blood supply for the transplanted intestine. The joining of the blood vessels is always difficult in such cases due to the curled up nature of bowel which makes it likely for the vessel joints to twist, which can destroy the transplanted bowel rapidly. We kept the last 20 cm portion of the new intestine diverted to open on the abdominal wall to enable repeated endoscopy and biopsy of the intestine for possible rejection," said Soin.

Two weeks after the surgery, Himanshu was given food through a tube into his small intestine after which oral feeding was resumed.

According to Dr R Mohanka the main challenge after the surgery was the post-operative management since intestinal transplants reject easily, much more than any other organ.

This necessitated large doses of immune suppressant medication - approximately three times than used in liver transplants.

"This makes the chances of developing infection very high. Hence, a totally sterile, a zero-infection zone was provided for Himanshu's care. Another problem with such patients is the difficulty of differentiating rejection and infection since both produce the same symptoms. The differentiation is vital as the treatment of both conditions are different. A peculiar problem with intestinal transplants is that as soon as there is any inflammation, rejection or infection of the bowel, its wall becomes permeable to the bacteria that normally reside within the bowel, and these escape out into the abdominal cavity and blood-stream causing life-threatening systemic infection," he said.

Dr Randhir Sud added that they monitored the transplanted intestine for rejection by a special technique called magnification endoscopy which was conducted 14 times along with biopsies during his hospital stay.

"While the risk of rejection is lower now than in the first six weeks, it can develop later too. This means that this monitoring must continue for at least six months," he added.

According to Dr Soin, the most common causes of intestinal failure in adults are short bowel syndrome that results from extensive bowel removal due to blood clots in major veins or arteries of intestine, major abdominal trauma or, inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn's disease.

Many people with short bowel syndrome, like Himanshu, are dependent on TPN to supply their daily nutrition. Administered in the hospital or at home, intravenous nutrition usually requires a central venous catheter, which can lead to chronic/repeated infections.

Over time, the intravenous nutrition solution also carries risk of venous thrombosis and liver toxicity and jaundice.

If any of these complications occur, an intestinal transplant is considered, explained Soin. "My son had been on TPN for almost two years. It cost us close to Rs 40,000 to 50,000 per month. The transplant, through costly, has given us some hope for a better future," said J P Singh, the patient's father. Himanshu said he was feeling much better post-surgery, and could digest khichdi.

According to Dr Naresh Trehan, chairman of Medanta, about 2,000-2,500 people suffer intestinal failure annually in India, who need permanent TPN or intestinal transplant.

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FDA proposes sweeping new food safety rules


WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration on Friday proposed the most sweeping food safety rules in decades, requiring farmers and food companies to be more vigilant in the wake of deadly outbreaks in peanuts, cantaloupe and leafy greens.


The long-overdue regulations are aimed at reducing the estimated 3,000 deaths a year from foodborne illness. Just since last summer, outbreaks of listeria in cheese and salmonella in peanut butter, mangoes and cantaloupe have been linked to more than 400 illnesses and as many as seven deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control. The actual number of those sickened is likely much higher.


The FDA's proposed rules would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, to include making sure workers' hands are washed, irrigation water is clean, and that animals stay out of fields. Food manufacturers will have to submit food safety plans to the government to show they are keeping their operations clean.


Many responsible food companies and farmers are already following the steps that the FDA would now require them to take. But officials say the requirements could have saved lives and prevented illnesses in several of the large-scale outbreaks that have hit the country in recent years.


In a 2011 outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe that claimed 33 lives, for example, FDA inspectors found pools of dirty water on the floor and old, dirty processing equipment at Jensen Farms in Colorado where the cantaloupes were grown. In a peanut butter outbreak this year linked to 42 salmonella illnesses, inspectors found samples of salmonella throughout Sunland Inc.'s peanut processing plant in New Mexico and multiple obvious safety problems, such as birds flying over uncovered trailers of peanuts and employees not washing their hands.


Under the new rules, companies would have to lay out plans for preventing those sorts of problems, monitor their own progress on those safety efforts and explain to the FDA how they would correct them.


"The rules go very directly to preventing the types of outbreaks we have seen," said Michael Taylor, FDA's deputy commissioner for foods.


The FDA estimates the new rules could prevent almost 2 million illnesses annually, but it could be several years before the rules are actually preventing outbreaks. Taylor said it could take the agency another year to craft the rules after a four-month comment period, and farms would have at least two years to comply — meaning the farm rules are at least three years away from taking effect. Smaller farms would have even longer to comply.


The new rules, which come exactly two years to the day President Barack Obama's signed food safety legislation passed by Congress, were already delayed. The 2011 law required the agency to propose a first installment of the rules a year ago, but the Obama administration held them until after the election. Food safety advocates sued the administration to win their release.


The produce rule would mark the first time the FDA has had real authority to regulate food on farms. In an effort to stave off protests from farmers, the farm rules are tailored to apply only to certain fruits and vegetables that pose the greatest risk, like berries, melons, leafy greens and other foods that are usually eaten raw. A farm that produces green beans that will be canned and cooked, for example, would not be regulated.


Such flexibility, along with the growing realization that outbreaks are bad for business, has brought the produce industry and much of the rest of the food industry on board as Congress and FDA has worked to make food safer.


In a statement Friday, Pamela Bailey, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the country's biggest food companies, said the food safety law "can serve as a role model for what can be achieved when the private and public sectors work together to achieve a common goal."


The farm and manufacturing rules are only one part of the food safety law. The bill also authorized more surprise inspections by the FDA and gave the agency additional powers to shut down food facilities. In addition, the law required stricter standards on imported foods. The agency said it will soon propose other overdue rules to ensure that importers verify overseas food is safe and to improve food safety audits overseas.


Food safety advocates frustrated over the last year as the rules stalled praised the proposed action.


"The new law should transform the FDA from an agency that tracks down outbreaks after the fact, to an agency focused on preventing food contamination in the first place," said Caroline Smith DeWaal of the Center for Science in the Public Interest.


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Pharmacy Blames Cleaners in Meningitis Outbreak


Jan 4, 2013 11:41am







ap meningitis door vial nt 130104 wblog Meningitis Outbreak: NECC Blames Cleaners

Credit: Minnesota Department of Health/AP Photo


The pharmacy at the heart of the fungal meningitis outbreak says a cleaning company it hired should share the blame for the tainted steroid injections that caused more than 600 illnesses in 19 states, killing 39 people.


Click here to read about the road to recovery for fungal meningitis victims.


The New England Compounding Pharmacy, which made the fungus-tainted drugs, sent a letter to UniFirst Corp., which provided once-a month cleaning services to the Framingham, Mass., lab, “demanding” it indemnify NECC for the meningitis outbreak, according to a UniFirst filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.


“Based on its preliminary review of this matter, the company believes that NECC’s claims are without merit,” UniFirst wrote in its quarterly filing.


The New England Compounding Center recalled 17,000 vials of tainted steroid injections on Sept. 26 before recalling all drugs and shutting down on Oct. 6.


The Food and Drug Administration investigated NECC’s lab and found that a quarter of the steroid injections in one bin contained “greenish black foreign matter,” according to the report.  The FDA also identified several cleanrooms that had bacterial or mold overgrowths.


UniFirst’s UniClean business cleaned portions of the NECC cleanrooms to NECC’s specifications and using NECC’s cleansing solutions, UniFirst spokesman Adam Soreoff said in a statement. It provided two technicians once a month for about an hour and a half.


“UniClean was not in any way responsible for NECC’s day-to-day operations, its overall facility cleanliness, or the integrity of the products they produced,” Soreoff said. “Therefore, based on what we know, we believe any NECC claims against UniFirst or UniClean are unfounded and without merit. ”


Click here for our fungal meningitis outbreak timeline, “Anatomy of an Outbreak.”


NECC was not immediately available for comment.


The House of Representatives subpoenaed Barry Cadden, who owns NECC,  to a hearing in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 14. He declined to testify when members of Congress pressed him on his role in ensuring that the drugs his company produced were safe and sterile.


“On advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer on the basis of my constitutional rights and privileges including the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States,” he said at the hearing.


Members of Congress also questioned whether the FDA could have prevented the outbreak.


Compounding pharmacies, which are intended to tailor drugs to individuals with a single prescription from a single doctor, are typically overseen by state pharmacy boards rather than the FDA because they are so small. However, in 2006, the FDA issued a warning letter to NECC, accusing it of mass-producing a topical anesthetic cream, and jeopardizing another drug’s sterility by repackaging it.




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Syria rebels in push to capture air base


AZAZ, Syria (Reuters) - Rebels battled on Thursday to seize an air base in northern Syria, part of a campaign to fight back against the air power that has given President Bashar al-Assad's forces free rein to bomb rebel-held towns.


More than 60,000 people have been killed in the 21-month-old uprising and civil war, the United Nations said this week, sharply raising the death toll estimate in a conflict that shows no sign of ending.


After dramatic advances over the second half of 2012, the rebels now hold wide swathes of territory in the north and east, but are limited in exerting control because they cannot protect towns and villages from Assad's helicopters and jets.


Hundreds of fighters from rebel groups were attempting to storm the Taftanaz air base, near the northern highway that links Syria's two main cities, Aleppo and the capital Damascus.


Rebels have been besieging air bases across the north in recent weeks, in the hope this will reduce the government's power to carry out air strikes and resupply loyalist-held areas.


A rebel fighter speaking from near the Taftanaz base overnight said the base's main sections were still in loyalist hands but insurgents had managed to infiltrate and destroy a helicopter and a fighter jet on the ground.


The northern rebel Idlib Coordination Committee said the rebels had detonated a car bomb inside the base.


The government's SANA news agency said the base had not fallen and that the military had "strongly confronted an attempt by the terrorists to attack the airport from several axes, inflicting heavy losses among them and destroying their weapons and munitions".


Rami Abdulrahman, head of the opposition-aligned Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which monitors the conflict from Britain, said as many as 800 fighters were involved in the assault, including Islamists from Jabhat al-Nusra, a powerful group that Washington considers terrorists.


Taftanaz is mainly a helicopter base, used for missions to resupply army positions in the north, many of which are cut off by road because of rebel gains, as well as for dropping crude "barrel bombs" of explosives on rebel-controlled areas.


"WHAT IS THE FAULT OF THE CHILDREN?"


Near Minakh, another northern air base that rebels have surrounded, government forces have retaliated by regularly shelling and bombing nearby towns.


In the town of Azaz, where the bombardment has become a near nightly occurrence, shells hit a family house overnight. Zeinab Hammadi said her two wounded daughters, aged 10 and 12, had been rushed across the border to Turkey, one with her brain exposed.


"We were sleeping and it just landed on us in the blink of an eye," she said, weeping as she surveyed the damage.


Family members tried to salvage possessions from the wreckage, men lifting out furniture and children carrying out their belongings in tubs.


"He (Assad) wants revenge against the people," said Abu Hassan, 33, working at a garage near the destroyed house. "What is the fault of the children? Are they the ones fighting?"


Opposition activists said warplanes struck a residential building in another rebel-held northern town, Hayyan, killing at least eight civilians.


Video footage showed men carrying dismembered bodies of children and dozens of people searching for victims in the rubble of the destroyed building, shouting "God is greatest". The provenance of the video could not be independently confirmed.


In addition to their tenuous grip on the north, the rebels also hold a crescent of suburbs on the edge of Damascus, which have come under bombardment by government forces that control the center of the capital.


On Wednesday, according to opposition activists, dozens of people were incinerated in an inferno caused by an air strike on a petrol station in a Damascus suburb where residents were lining up for precious fuel.


The civil war in Syria has become the longest and bloodiest of the conflicts that rose out of uprisings across the Arab world in the past two years.


Assad's family has ruled for 42 years since his father seized power in a coup. The war pits rebels, mainly from the Sunni Muslim majority, against a government supported by members of Assad's Shi'ite-derived Alawite minority sect and some members of other minorities who fear revenge if he falls.


The West, most Sunni-ruled Arab states and Turkey have called for Assad to leave power. He is supported by Russia and Shi'ite Iran.


(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman and Dominic Evans in Beirut; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Ruth Pitchford)



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