The West and its Gulf allies have held their first direct talks with Syria's most powerful Islamist militias, according to a new report by Stacy Meichtry, Ellen Knickmetyer, and Adam Entous of The Wall Street Journal.

Previosuly the West largely ignored most Islamist factions, but the new tact is an attempt undercut the rising influence of al Qaeda and unite the rest of the opposition before January peace talks.

A Western diplomat told WSJ that in early November envoys from the U.S., the U.K., France, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and others met with senior members of rebel groups including Ahrar al-Sham, Suqoor al-Sham, and the Tawheed Brigade.

Those three brigades, which make up the bulk of the newly formed and Saudi-backed Islamic Front, collectively comprise a central part of the opposition.

The envoys aimed to heal rifts between the Islamic Front and moderate leader Gen. Salim Idris of the Supreme Military Council, which is the military wing of the opposition's Western-backed political umbrella group, the Syrian National Council.

The goal, according to Western diplomats, is to draw the powerful Islamist militias away from al-Qaeda affiliated groups Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). 

The below graphic is from September — rebels groups such as the Farouq Brigades have been marginalzied while others have emerged — but it gives and indication of how important the three main Islamic Front groups are to the opposition.

The WSJ notes that some Western officials remain wary about courting the Salafi-leaning alliance since their ultimate goal is to establish a Syrian state ruled by Islamic law, or Shariah, and they regularly fight alongside al-Nusra and ISIS. 

But one diplomat laid out the alternative: "We believe [the Islamic factions] are groups that, if we do nothing, may go toward more radicalization."

And Hassan Hassan of the National argues that the unification of seven of the most powerful rebel groups and their current quiet alliance with al Nusra works against the ISIS, which is the most radical and foreign group of all.

From The National: 

The closer relationship between the Islamic Front and Jabhat Al Nusra is a marriage of convenience, as the two groups increasingly view the Al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (Isis) as a menace.

... the Islamic Front and like-minded Salafi groups should be seen as an opportunity to counter Al Qaeda rather than a threat to Syria’s future. 

In any case, Western officials told the WSJ that they want to persuade some Islamists to support a Syria peace conference in Geneva on Jan. 22 "for fear that the talks won't yield a lasting accord without their backing."

That last objective may be a stretch given that the other side of the table, Bashar al-Assad's regime, asserts that he will remain president during any transition agreed upon in Geneva peace talks and considers most rebels to be terrorists. 

SEE ALSO: BBC Report Confirms Iranian Soldiers Are Running The Show In Syria

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MOSCOW (Reuters) — A unit of Russian security forces is training to fight Islamist militants battling in Syria on fears they may migrate from the Middle East conflict to join an insurgency in the North Caucasus, Chechnya's Kremlin-backed leader said.

The Kremlin is worried that Russian-born militants will return to join insurgents who want to carve out an Islamic state in Chechnya and other mostly Muslim provinces in the mountains on Russia's southern fringe.

Officials have said 400 Russians are fighting with al-Qaida affiliated groups in Syria, but experts estimate the numbers are much higher. Some Chechens, veterans of two post-Soviet wars against Russian rule, have emerged as leaders among Syrian rebels.

"These bandits post videos daily claiming that after Syria they will migrate to the North Caucasus and engage in terrorist and subversive activities," Chechnya's leader Ramzan Kadyrov said in a statement posted on the regional government's website late on Wednesday.

"We cannot sit quietly listening to these threats and wait for this plague to move toward Russia ... so the police and the republic's leadership are taking preventative measures."

A spokesman for Kadyrov refused to provide any more details on the steps being taken by law enforcement structures.

More than a decade after Moscow defeated a separatist revolt in Chechnya, it is fighting an insurgency that has shifted from a nationalist cause to an Islamist one and spread to other Caucasus mountain provinces. Rebels now launch near-daily attacks in Ingushetia, Dagestan and Kabardino-Balkaria.

Kadyrov, an ethnic Chechen who once fought with separatists but later switched sides and pledged loyalty to the Kremlin, has imposed an uneasy peace in the region, using tough methods.

Human rights groups accuse security services in Chechnya of carrying out kidnappings, torture and extrajudicial killings not only to quash insurgents but also to silence Kadyrov's critics. Kadyrov denies the accusations of abuse.

SOCHI OLYMPICS

Russia is cracking down hard on the insurgents ahead of its hosting of the 2014 Winter Olympics in February in Sochi, at the western edge of the Caucasus range.

Islamist Chechen rebel Doku Umarov, who leads militants seeking a Caucasus Emirate in Russia, urged his fighters in July to use "maximum force" to sabotage the Olympics.

A suicide bombing in October that killed seven people in Volgograd, a city north of Sochi, raised fears of further attacks. Twin suicide bombings in the Moscow subway in 2010 killed 40 and a bombing at a Moscow airport in 2011 killed 37.

President Vladimir Putin, who has staked his reputation on the Games' success, has said militants returning from Syria pose "a very real" threat and signed an anti-terrorism law this month to jail for up to six years any who come home.

Russia has been President Bashar al-Assad's strongest diplomatic backer during the conflict in Syria, and has frequently warned the West that Islamist militants are gaining increasing might among rebels fighting the government.

The new law makes relatives of militants financially liable for damage caused by attacks, an example of measures by Russian security forces to deter militants by putting pressure on their families.

"The terrorists in Syria must know what awaits them in Russia if they show up here," Kadyrov said.

Authorities in Chechnya have banned funeral ceremonies for anyone killed in Syria, and officially backed Muslim clerics cast the conflict as an internal political struggle, not a religious fight.

Kadyrov declared on his Instagram account last month that he had fired a senior immigration official in Chechnya because his daughter had joined Syrian rebels.

The defection from the wealthy and well-connected family highlights the attraction for Sunni Muslim youths in the North Caucasus of joining what they see as jihad in Syria.

(Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

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AMMAN (Reuters) — Armed with machine guns, black-clad al Qaeda fighters drove their pick-ups calmly into the northern Syrian town and took over its imposing agriculture ministry building.

They beheaded a sniper from a rival rebel unit, displayed his head in the main square and put roadblocks on major routes.

Not a shot was fired in the takeover, in which informants, including a preacher from a local mosque, played key roles.

The scene in Termanin, recounted by an activist who witnessed it last week, is being repeated in towns along the border with Turkey and at road junctions further inside Syria that have fallen out of President Bashar al-Assad's control.

Whether through weakness or a desire to focus on Assad, rebel units are making way for the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), an al Qaeda affiliate led by foreigners hardened by guerrilla warfare in Iraq, Chechnya and Libya.

The land grab has given radical jihadists a large territorial base in the heart of a Middle East convulsed by the civil war raging in Syria since 2011.

While constant conflict and shifting alliances mean Syria is a long way from becoming a center for global jihad, Western and Arab states backing moderate opponents of Assad are alarmed.

The ISIL is taking over supply lines to rebel areas and attracting members of less organized opposition units by its efficiency, undermining efforts by Washington to contain it ahead of talks in Geneva on a possible peace deal, opposition sources and Middle East security officials say.

As well as an end to Assad's rule, a key aim of such a deal would be to establish a government and moderate army capable of fighting off the ISIL, a Middle East-based diplomat said.

"Realistically it will be very difficult. We could be looking at a proxy sectarian war — whether Assad stays or goes — in which the ISIL will be a major player."

LESSONS FROM LIBYA

Asked about the group's goals, an ISIL commander in the town of Armanaz in northern Syria who had fought in Libya said it is fighting for "the downfall of the tyrant Bashar" but also seeking to impose Islamic law.

Learning lessons from the 2011 war in Libya, he said ISIL was more determined to hold on to territory under its control.

"Our mistake as mujahideen is that we were preoccupied with fighting Gaddafi and did not pay enough attention to how to hold on territory," said the commander, who goes by the nickname al-Jazaeri, or the Algerian.

In a sign of concern over ISIL's gains, the United Arab Emirates, a staunch U.S. ally, convened a meeting last week for dozens of tribal leaders from the oil-producing region of east Syria bordering Iraq's Sunni heartland.

The ISIL and the Nusra Front, a smaller affiliate of al Qaeda seen as less intent on spreading jihadist ideology, occupy most oil fields in the eastern province of Deir al-Zor, although they lack the ability to operate the wells.

The UAE meeting aimed to gauge the possibility of setting up a force similar to the Sahwa movement that fought al Qaeda in Iraq and rolled back some of its influence, opposition sources said, although neither the tribes nor the Islamists appear ready for a sustained fight.

"There have been some clashes over oil but the ISIL has sought not to mess with the tribes. At the same time the tribes are seeing how the ISIL likes to chop heads and they too are not keen on a confrontation," one of the sources said.

GROWING POWER

Areas under ISIL control include towns across the northern Syrian provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, parts of the eastern provincial capital of Raqqa and, to a lesser extent, of central Syria and the southern province of Deraa.

In some of these it is trying to implement a rigid Islamist social agenda and has also won new recruits, attracted more by its effectiveness than its ideology, local activists say.

In the al-Rouge plain in Idlib, bordering Tukey, Hassan Abdelqader said ISIL has set up training camps for local recruits and has distributed head to toe veils in areas southeast of Idlib city to be worn by women there.

In al-Bab in Aleppo province, where Abu Mouawiya, an ISIL commander, is the effective governor, the group has enforced an Islamist school curriculum imported from areas under al Qaeda control in Yemen, activists said.

They said thousands of poor Sunnis from rural Idlib and rural Aleppo have joined the ISIL in the last few months, including fighters who had left Nusra and the Free Syrian Army — the Western-backed force that aims to unite moderate rebels.

A Free Syrian Army report prepared for the U.S. State Department and quoted by the Washington Post said the ISIL has a backbone of 5,500 foreign fighters, including 250 Chechens in Aleppo, and 17,000 recruited locally.

The local recruits are rural Sunnis, the majority group at the forefront of the uprising which grew from a crackdown on protests against four decades of rule by the Assad family.

The Assads are from the Alawite offshoot of Shi'ite Islam backed by Iran and Hezbollah, while the Sunni rebels are supported by Gulf heavyweights and Turkey, but inter-rebel clashes have blurred the conflict.

In some areas ISIL works with rivals from Nusra and the Western backed Free Syrian Army while in others it fights them. A new alliance comprising big Islamist brigades also has a mixed relationship with ISIL.

FLUID ALLIANCES

In southern Damascus, ISIL has joined Nusra and other brigades in defending opposition neighborhoods from advances by Assad's forces backed by Iraqi and Lebanese Shi'ite militia.

Just months before, ISIL had attacked Nusra positions, taking advantage of an air strike by Assad's forces that killed three Nusra commanders, local rebel sources said.

Nusra, ISIL and Free Syrian Army units also cooperate in the northeast, where they are fighting what they consider a land grab by Kurdish PYD militia. The PYD says it is defending the population against al Qaeda.

In areas along the border with Turkey in Aleppo and Idlib, where the presence of Assad's forces is limited, ISIL has been more assertive in taking over territory from the moderate Free Syrian Army and other hardline Islamist units.

Activist Firas Ahmad, who witnessed the takeover of Termanin, said it was typical.

"They have informants who identify a weak target in a town. They also capture the bakery and put roadblocks at the main roads, ensuring that they control food and movement."

This brings ISIL revenue as well as supplies destined for the other brigades.

"The executions are designed to make maximum impact," said Ahmad, pointing to amateur video showing the ISIL executing the leader and several members of Ghurabaa al-Sham, a moderate Free Syrian Army unit, in Atarib.

Members of a rebel-run police station near Hazano town were spared a similar fate after the station was stormed by ISIL, Ahmad said. "The police chief and staff surrendered as soon as the attack started and declared their allegiance to the ISIL."

Last month the ISIL took three pick-up trucks equipped with anti-aircraft guns that had crossed through the town of Atma, and came close to taking other trucks carrying thousands of U.S. supplied combat food rations, activists said.

An opposition figure who attended a meeting with U.S. officials about logistics said: "The Americans are furious at the degree of ISIL reach over supply lines. Privately they are blaming the Turks for opening their borders in such a way that facilitated the infiltration of al Qaeda."

Turkey has been an outspoken supporter of rebels fighting Assad and has assisted them by keeping its border open, but Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and other officials have strongly denied this amounts to support for his al Qaeda foes.

Abdallah al-Sheikh, an activist in Atma, said Turkish soldiers have been intercepting supply conveys and seizing them or turning them back in the wake of the recent ISIL advances.

"The end result is that the ISIL is harming the overall military struggle and doing Assad a service," Sheikh said, adding that signs of a popular backlash against ISIL and the group's interference in people's lives are beginning to emerge.

In the last few days, Sheikh said, the ISIL had been forced to withdraw from the nearby village of al Qah after armed skirmishes with local residents.

(Editing by Dominic Evans and Philippa Fletcher)

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AMMAN (Reuters) - Opposition activists again accused President Bashar al-Assad's forces of using poison gas in Syria's civil war on Thursday, and said victims had been discovered with swollen limbs and foaming at the mouth.

The activists told Reuters two shells loaded with gas hit a rebel-held area in the town of Nabak, 68 km (40 miles) northeast of Damascus, on a major highway in the Qalamoun region. They reported seven casualties.

Separately, the Syrian Revolution Coordinators Union also accused Assad's forces of using poison gas.

"We have documented nine casualties from poison gas used by the regime in neighborhoods Ivanka," it said on its Facebook page.

A nerve gas attack killed hundreds of people in rebel-held neighborhoods on the edge of Damascus on August 21. Each side blamed the other.

Assad subsequently agreed to give up his chemical weapons arsenal under a deal struck between Moscow and Washington that averted a U.S. attack on Damascus, and international inspectors have begun work on dismantling Syria's chemical weapons facilities.

Opposition groups have accused Assad's forces of using chemical weapons several times before and since the August 21 incident.

Reuters cannot verify reports in Syria due to reporting restrictions. It was not clear what kind of gas, if any, might have been used in Nabak and there was no immediate comment from Syrian authorities.

"Seven men are reported ill so far. They have swollen limbs and foam coming out of their mouths," said an activist calling himself Amer al-Qalamouni.

"No doctors have got to them yet because Nabak is under ferocious bombardment and there are very few medical staff left."

Amir Kazk, another activist in Nabak, said the two shells were part of a heavy barrage that hit theTariq al-Mashfa district near the center of the town. The source of the fire, he added, appeared to be an army barracks on a hill in the nearby Deir Attiya area.

Video footage posted on YouTube by activists showed a man who said he had seen white smoke from the shelling, inhaled it and then passed out. Reuters cannot confirm its authenticity. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75nQnIKXf1k&feature=youtu.be)

Syrian forces have used a range of weapons in the civil war, including cluster bombs, incendiary bombs and improvised explosives. Rebels have also made their own weaponry.

(Reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis, Amman newsroom; Editing by Andrew Roche)

SEE ALSO: The West Has Totally Changed Its Strategy In Syria

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This is a striking photo by Ammar Abdullah of Reuters showing a little Syrian girl being taken from the site of a government airstrike: Unfortunately scene like this have been all too common since July 2012, when the regime of Bashar al Assad began bombing rebel-held areas across the country. The attacks have targeted bakeries, markets, hospitals, and schools in an attempt to disrupt civilian life under rebel rule.

Here's a recent video showing children being bombed while describing being bombed to a reporter:

More than 11,000 children have died in the 33-month civil war. More than 1 million Syrian children are refugees in neighboring countries while more than 4 million children inside the country are affected.

The air campaign has decimated the country's largest cities, especially Aleppo and Homs. Here is a photo from the Duma suburb outside the capital of Damascus: 

SEE ALSO: Syria's Air War Includes Dropping 'Napalm-Like' Bombs On Playgrounds

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The sectarian bloodbath in Syria is such a threat to regional security that a victory for Bashar al-Assad's regime could be the best outcome to hope for, a former CIA chief said.

Washington condemned Assad's conduct of the conflict, threatened air strikes after he was accused of targeting civilians with chemical weapons and has demanded he step down.

The United States is also supplying millions of dollars in "non-lethal" aid to some of the rebel groups fighting Assad's rule.

But Michael Hayden, the retired US Air Force general who until 2009 was head of the Central Intelligence Agency, said a rebel win was not one of the three possible outcomes he foresees for the conflict.

"Option three is Assad wins," Hayden told the annual Jamestown Foundation conference of terror experts.

"And I must tell you at the moment, as ugly as it sounds, I'm kind of trending toward option three as the best out of three very, very ugly possible outcomes," he said.

The first possible outcome he cited was for ongoing conflict between ever more extreme Sunni and Shiite factions.

The rebel groups are dominated by Sunni Muslims, while Assad is generally backed by Syria's Alawite, Shiite and Christian minorities.

And the second outcome, which Hayden deemed the most likely, was the "dissolution of Syria" and the end of a single state within the borders defined by a 1916 treaty between the French and British empires.

"It means the end of the Sykes-Picot (Agreement), it sets in motion the dissolution of all the artificial states created after World War I," he said.

The British diplomat Mark Sykes and a French counterpart Francois Georges Picot divided the Middle East into zones of influence that later served as the frontiers of independent Arab states.

A breakdown in the century-old settlement could spread chaos in Lebanon, Jordan and Iraq, Hayden warned.

"I greatly fear the dissolution of the state. A de facto dissolution of Sykes-Picot," Hayden said.

"And now we have a new ungoverned space, at the crossroads of the civilization.

"The dominant story going on in Syria is a Sunni fundamentalist takeover of a significant part of the Middle East geography, the explosion of the Syrian state and of the Levant as we know it."

Fighting erupted in Syria in early 2011, when Assad launched a crackdown on pro-democracy protests and has since evolved into a full-blown civil war that has claimed an estimated 126,000 lives.

Assad, backed by Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, is locked in combat with a diverse group of Sunni rebel factions which are increasingly dominated by hardline jihadist groups.

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Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) started its resurgence as the Americans drew down forces in Iraq in 2011.

If fact, since the moment Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki took over control of his country, in 2012, he began to lose control.

Headlines don't lie: Huge prison breaks, bombings, targeted strikes.

The numbers don't lie either.

Dr. Michael Knights, Lafer Fellow, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, submitted testimony on the state of AQI to the House Committee of Foreign Affairs Thursday.

Part of his testimony contained this disturbing set of statistics, which Knight refers to as "undeniable:"

Like Maliki, Knight points at Syria for the worsening situation in Iraq. Certainly, Syria's Civil War plays a role, but Maliki's sectarian politics haven't helped.

Six Senators sent a letter to Obama October 30 asking him to try and convince Maliki to take back the Sunni minority, which Maliki has largely ostracized (if not outright pursued).

Knight also thinks there needs to be a reunion, in part because it might bring the back about the same conditions which ousted Al Qaeda during the Iraq War:

Al-Qaeda in Iraq is also in danger of over-reaching, as it did in 2005-2006 when it sought to develop mini-caliphates in Iraqi towns and impose limits on Iraqi lifestyle, such as a ban on cigarette smoking. Iraqi Sunni Arabs are growing resentful of Al-Qaeda again as they grow more powerful: the movement is scaring Sunni Arab political leaders in Iraq, challenging tribal leaders for local control, and taxing growing numbers of Iraqis.

The stage is set for a return of the Sahwa and intelligence-led special operations, if the Iraqi government can embrace the opportunity.

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BEIRUT/GENEVA (Reuters) - It is a 15-minute drive from the five-star hotel that houses U.N. aid staff in Damascus to rebel-held suburbs where freezing children are starving to death.

Yet it is months since convoys from the United Nations and other agencies have delivered food or medical care to many such areas - prevented by a Syrian government accused of using hunger as a weapon of war against its people.

As the United Nations launched an annual appeal on Monday to help 16 million people affected Syria's civil war, divisions among world powers that have crippled peacemaking are also denying U.N. staff the power to defy President Bashar al-Assad's officials and push into neighborhoods now under siege.

"In government-controlled parts of Syria, what, where and to whom to distribute aid, and even staff recruitment, have to be negotiated and are sometimes dictated," said Ben Parker, who ran the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Syria for a year until last February.

"According to the Syrian government's official position, humanitarian agencies and supplies are allowed to go anywhere, even across any frontline," he wrote last month in the journal Humanitarian Exchange. "But every action requires time-consuming permissions, which effectively provide multiple veto opportunities." Fighting and rebel groups are also obstacles.

The United Nations appealed for $6.5 billion on Monday to help 16 million people affected by the Syrian civil war, including millions made hungry and homeless by the conflict soon entering its fourth year.

The world body estimates about a quarter of a million Syrians are living under siege as winter bites, most of them encircled by government forces, but also including 45,000 in two towns in the north that are besieged by anti-Assad rebels.

A binding Security Council resolution could formally oblige the authorities to let aid agencies into areas like the Damascus suburbs and the old city of Homs, where local doctors say children are dying of malnutrition. But divisions between Western powers, backing the rebels, and Russia, have paralyzed the world body over Syria since the conflict began in 2011.

As a result, international agencies are legally obliged to work with a government which aid workers say has used threats - say, to deny visas to foreign staff or hinder efforts to help millions of people outside besieged districts - as a way of muting criticism and discouraging attempts to break the sieges.

"It is a fundamental flaw in the international system that it is possible for a rogue state to hold its own people hostage," said a Western diplomat who works on aid issues.

"Syria ... can threaten access to its own population and say 'millions will starve if my instructions are not followed'.

"The reality is there is a risk of being thrown out," he said. "You have to look ultimately at what the moral obligation is to serve as many as you can."

"TROJAN HORSE"

As far as Assad's government is concerned, said former U.N. Syria staffer Ben Parker, aid operations are "a Trojan horse to delegitimize the state, develop contacts with the opposition and win international support for military intervention".

To criticism that they should complain more loudly, aid workers speaking privately cited the case of a U.N. agency chief who ended a posting in Damascus last year after clashing with Syrian officials over access for aiddistribution. Syria had made clear that the official's visa would not be renewed.

An internal U.N. document seen by Reuters last month said visa applications for international staff were more likely to be turned down or put on hold in 2013 than to be approved.

It described Syrian bureaucracy hampering operations, as well as difficulties posed by fighting and a lack of cooperation from numerous, often rival, rebel groups across the country.

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said this month that both sides have blocked medical aid to the sick and wounded. "Where we haven't been particularly successful is in increasing our medical activities in Syria, which remain below our expectations," ICRC President Peter Maurer said.

"On both sides we are struggling with the argument that whatever medical aid is brought to one part or the other is interpreted as an indirect military support to the other side."

Syrians in areas where little or no aid is getting through say they feel abandoned and blame world powers for not only extending a war that has killed over 100,000 by backing warring parties but also failing to ease the impact on civilians.

An opposition activist in Damascus who uses the name Tariq al-Dimashqi and works in a field hospital in the besieged eastern suburbs of the capital says that he has seen no medicine or food from the United Nations for more than a year.

"The United Nations should do something to save civilians," he said. "They have to force the regime to end the siege."

Some medicines are smuggled in to the area, he said, but the hospital is very low on supplies.

CHILDREN DYING

Lack of access for independent agencies makes it hard to verify food and medical supplies in many areas. But opposition activists have posted video of the bodies of several skeletal children who local doctors say died of malnutrition.

In September, footage of the body of one-year-old Rana Obeid, ribs protruding and belly swollen, was accompanied by statements from doctors saying she was the sixth child to die from malnutrition in Mouadamiya, about a quarter-hour drive from the Four Seasons Hotel in Damascus.

More broadly, providing aid across a patchwork of front lines across Syria has proved a struggle. Of a population of 23 million, the United Nations says 2.3 million refugees have fled the country, taking the misery of the war into often fragile neighboring states, while 9.3 million need help inside Syria.

Two million of these are in areas that are hard to reach.

A 2013 U.N. appeal for $1.41 billion to finance aid work in Syria reached only 62 percent of its target. U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos launch the funding appeal for 2014 on Monday for more than four times as much money.

"This is the largest amount we have ever had to request at the start of the year," she said.

Twelve U.N. staff and 32 staff or volunteers of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent have been killed and 21 U.N. staff remain in detention, last month's U.N. document seen by Reuters says - without specifying which groups were holding them.

In a country in the grip of a population explosion before the war began, half of Syria's needy are children.

"The time will come that whatever aid you bring it is far too late and the scars on children will be far too deep to repair," said Maria Calivis, Middle East and Northern Africa director for the U.N. Children's Fund UNICEF.

This month the U.N. failed to deliver food to 600,000 out of its monthly target of 4 million, a goal never yet reached.

Of 91 public hospitals in Syria, 36 are not functioning and another 22 have been damaged, while almost half of the 658 ambulances have been stolen, burned or massively damaged, according to the World Health Organization (WHO).

The domestic drug industry - largely based in some of the areas hardest hit by fighting - collapsed in August 2012 and has virtually halted production, the WHO added. Rights groups say the Syrian air force has deliberately bombed hospitals.

The WHO said last month that polio, which is incurable and paralyses children within hours, had spread from the eastern city of Deir al-Zor to the major city of Aleppo and around Damascus. It is the country's first outbreak since 1999.

The WHO must work through the government and a vaccination drive has not reached all areas, although the agency says 600,000 people have been reached in contested areas.

"The pressure has to be kept on" for access for medical supplies, said Elizabeth Hoff, the WHO representative inSyria.

"POOR" RESPONSE

Lebanon-based public health researchers Fouad Fouad and Adam Coutts criticize the local and international response:

"The outbreak and now spread of Polio Type I in Syria represents more than just a breakdown of a public health system during a time of conflict," said Coutts.

"It is symptomatic of a humanitarian response in which public health has been neglected and which remains underfunded and poorly coordinated."

Fouad said more than 70 percent of medical staff have left Syria due to the crisis and that no data is being collected on mental health inside Syria. Mental health care is a neglected area and a "heartbreaking" challenge, the WHO's Hoff said.

Leishmaniasis, a disease transmitted by sand flies which causes sores on the skin, is spreading so fast it has earned the local nickname the "Aleppo boil".

In Aleppo, once Syria's most populous city, Fouad said no one had had heart surgery in more than a year: "This is not a new crisis. This is not the first conflict," he said.

"The U.N. should be doing better."

Peggy Hicks, the head of advocacy for lobby group Human Rights Watch, said that U.N. efforts have lately made some modest progress in eliminating bureaucratic obstacles to aid.

"But with winter fast approaching, these grudging steps by Syria are nowhere near enough," she said.

"The U.N. should keep emphasizing that the real test is a change in the situation on the ground, particularly for the 280,000 Syrians in besieged towns."

On October 2, the U.N. Security Council urged the Syrian government in a non-binding statement to allow immediate cross-border aid deliveries. U.N. aid officials said that access has improved somewhat since then.

U.N. aid chief Amos said this month that there had been "modest progress" with Damascus, such as issuing 50 visas for international staff and permitting the setting up relief hubs to store and distribute supplies. But U.N. convoys from Turkey are still forbidden and besieged communities are still blocked off.

Last week, the U.N. announced that Damascus had approved a first airlift to Syria from Iraq to supply the mainly Kurdish northeast, though snow has so far delayed the start of flights. [ID:nL6N0JP29I] The breakthrough followed secret talks chaired by Amos with countries including Syria's allies Iran and Russia.

Hicks at Human Rights Watch said more should still be done to press world powers to demand humanitarian access in Syria.

"There is always room for more vocal engagement," said Hicks. "I think there is more room for explicit movement and to pressure the Security Council to act on their words."

(Additional reporting by Dominic Evans; Editing by Alastair Macdonald and Peter Graff)

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Dr. Abbas Khan was a 32-year-old orthopedic surgeon and father of two from London. Last year, he traveled to Aleppo, Syria to help civilians wounded in the brutal civil war that had engulfed the country. He intended to start working in a field hospital but was arrested by forces loyal to President Bashar al Assad within 48 hours of being in the country.

Dr. Khan was reportedly never charged with a crime, and for months his fate remained unclear. When his mother eventually found him, he had been kept in an underground cell with no windows for eight months and routinely beaten. "He was like a skeleton and could barely walk," his mother, Fatima Khan, told the Daily Mail.

His family urged the U.K. government to intervene in the case, but the country currently has no consular ties with Syria, making negotiations difficult.

Today, a Twitter account run by Dr. Khan's brother announced that the surgeon had died in his cell:

1/3 Dear All, I sorrowfully inform you of the news that Dr Abbas Khan was killed yesterday. An innocents life was taken meaninglessly.

— Free Dr Abbas Khan (@FreeDRABBASKHAN) December 17, 2013

2/3 He was the best brother I could have ever asked for and I know no one with a purer heart than him. His release was due to be this week

— Free Dr Abbas Khan (@FreeDRABBASKHAN) December 17, 2013

3/3 I thank you all for your love and support. We still need your help. Abbas is not home. Help us bring him home for the burial he deserves

— Free Dr Abbas Khan (@FreeDRABBASKHAN) December 17, 2013

The Syrian government told the BBC that Dr. Khan killed himself in his cell, and that could be true — his family had feared that "real possibility he may want to harm himself" after so many months of isolation and so much physical abuse.

In a sad twist, he was reportedly due to be freed this week. George Galloway, a British MP who has ties to the Middle East, was planning on flying to Damascus on Friday to bring Dr. Khan home.

"Last week I received a call from the foreign minister telling me that the president had asked him to contact me to come to Damascus to bring Dr Khan home before Christmas,"Galloway told ITV News. "Obviously this had to be kept confidential but the family were kept fully informed. I was in the process of booking a flight for this Friday when I got the appalling news."

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In September Russian Foreign Minister said evidence that on August 21 Syrian rebels used the nerve agent Sarin in the East Ghouta suburb of Damascus is "available on the Internet."

On Monday Russia's U.N. envoy told the U.N. Security Council that the attack was "staged" and a "large-scale provocation," citing Seymour Hersh's recent claim that top American officials knew that the Syrian opposition had mastered Sarin production and should have been suspected of executing the attack.

Experts quickly debunked Hersh's article, noting that it ignored key information about the attack and relied on questionable sourcing.

Hersh's account is just the latest specious theory pushed by Moscow, which are as irreconcilable with each other as they are with publicly available information of the attack.

It's important to note that actual debate of the facts may not be the Kremlin's goal. After the UNSC meeting, Britain's U.N. ambassador Mark Lyall Grant tweeted: "Russia uses Giant Squid Defence - squirt lots of ink in attempt to muddy waters on regime culpability. Doesn't work."

Furthermore, according to this stellar Wall Street Journal report on the attack, Russian knew that the Syrian government was gassing Ghouta as it was happening.

From WSJ:

Calls came in to the presidential palace from Syrian allies Russia and Iran, as well as from Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group whose fighters were inadvertently caught up in the gassing, according to previously undisclosed intelligence gathered by U.S., European and Middle Eastern spy agencies.

So it seems Russia is going to back Assad no matter what, even if that means peddling the latest conspiracy theory regarding the most egregious use of weapons of mass destruction in the 21st century.

And it seems to being working since the subsequent chemical weapons deal has re-legitimized Assad. Russia, the U.S., and China are now working with Syria to transfer the chemical stockpiles that Assad's regime has acknowledged.

SEE ALSO: The Chemical Weapons Deal Is A Huge Gift To Assad, Russia, And Iran

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GENEVA (Reuters) - Syrian activists and other citizens have vanished into secret detention as part of a "widespread campaign of terror against the civilian population" by the Damascus government, U.N. investigators said on Thursday.

The state-run practice of enforced disappearances in Syria — abductions that are officially denied — is systematic enough to amount to a crime of humanity, they said in a report.

Some armed groups in northern Syria, especially the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), have also begun to abduct people into incommunicado detention and denied their captivity, tantamount to the crime of enforced disappearances, it said.

ISIL has also sought ransoms or prisoner exchanges, which constitute separate war crimes, it added.

But most witnesses have identified Syrian intelligence officers, soldiers and pro-government militias as having snatched people whose fate remains unknown, according to the independent investigators led by Brazilian Paulo Pinheiro.

In a separate report, London-based Amnesty International said Islamist militants were perpetrating "a shocking catalogue of abuses" in secret jails across northern Syria, including torture, flogging and killings after summary trials.

It said that ISIL, one of the most powerful jihadi groups to emerge from Syria's almost three-year-old conflict, is operating seven clandestine prisons in rebel-held areas.

Detainees are held for reasons ranging from suspected theft to offences against Islam such as smoking or sex outside marriage. Others are seized simply for challenging ISIL authority or belonging to rival armed groups, it said.

"Those abducted and detained by ISIL include children as young as eight who are held together with adults in the same cruel and inhuman conditions," said Philip Luther, Amnesty's Director for the Middle East and North Africa.

WIDESPREAD RIGHTS ABUSES

Human rights abuses have been rife in Syria's civil war, with forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assadresponsible for many of the worst ones, according to the United Nations.

Urging world powers to halt the flow of arms to ISIL and other armed groups accused of war crimes and other abuses, Amnesty said Turkey in particular should prevent jihadi fighters and weapons crossing its border intonorthern Syria.

Gulf Arab states that back the anti-Assad rebels and are viewed as a main source of funding for the radical armed groups should also cut off flows of arms and equipment, Amnesty said.

The dominance of ISIL and other hardline rebel groups has eclipsed more moderate, Western-backed rebels,fracturing the military campaign against Assad and prompting Western alarm that al Qaeda is building a stronghold in northern Syria.

ISIL, along with some other Islamist groups, rejects next month's planned peace conference in Switzerland that is due to bring Assad's government and his opponents to the negotiating table for the first time since the conflict erupted in 2011.

At one ISIL prison on the Euphrates river in Aleppo province the local Sharia court judge appears wearing an explosives belt and issues verdicts after hearings lasting no more than a few minutes, Amnesty quoted former detainees as saying.

On at least one occasion, he was reported to have joined in the flogging of a prisoner after sentencing him.

Amnesty said several children had received severe floggings and on one occasion a father had to listen to his son's screams in a nearby room. Two detainees said they witnessed a child of about 14 receive 90 lashes at aRaqqa prison.

Another child of about the same age, who ISIL accused of stealing a motorcycle, was repeatedly flogged over several days.

"Flogging anyone, let alone children, is cruel and inhuman, and a gross abuse of human rights," said Luther.

"After years in which they were prey to the brutality of the Assad regime, the people of Raqqa and Aleppo are now suffering under a new form of tyranny imposed on them by ISIL, in which arbitrary detention, torture and executions have become the order of the day."

(Additional reporting by Dominic Evans; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

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The regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is in the midst of an unprecedented bombing campaign in Aleppo, Syria's largest city and one of the oldest in the world.

Syrian Air Force jest have been dropping bombs — including steel barrels packed with explosives and shrapnel — on the country's former commercial and industrial hub for four straight days.

Here's an unsettling photo showing the aftermath of a strike on Wednesday:

Rebels believe that the super intense air campaign, which is causing many civilians to flee to the countryside, could be the setup to a government ground offensive against the opposition-held half of the city. 

Assad has waged an air campaign against rebel-held towns since July 2012. The jet and helicopter attacks — which have also included incendiary bombs— have targeted bakeries, markets, hospitals, and schools in an attempt to disrupt civilian life under rebel rule.

The intended effect is to "let the population taste a nightmare version of freedom which would conceivably lead many people to choose Assad's rule as the lesser evil," Victor Kotsev of the Asia Times explained in January.

The plan has undoubtedly worked.

Here's Homs, Syria's third largest city and one of the first to rise up against Assad:

Here's a strike on the town of Yabroud, a rebel stronghold located about 49 miles north of the capital Damascus (impact at 0:45):

And here's another photo from Aleppo on December 9:

SEE ALSO: Assad's Air War On Syrian Civilians Has Reached Barbaric Proportions

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European Union leaders are making moves to close the door on immigrants after more than 72,000 people entered the EU illegally in 2012, including a fivefold rise in Syrians, to 8,000. 

Reuters has published a map of showing westward migration routes of Syrian asylum seekers that indicates two worsening problems for Europe.

First, the number of Syrian asylum applicants to the EU spiked from to 2011 to 2012 — and more are coming as the war drags on into its third year and Syria's neighbors become overcrowded.

About 3.2 million Syrians will be registered as refugees by the end of 2013, and that figure rising to more than 5.2 million next year as 120,000 Syrians who seek shelter in neighboring countries every month.Second, a new report by jihadist expert Aaron Zelin states that there are up to 1,937 fighters from Western Europe in Syria.

There has been a surge of fighters since the August 21 chemical attack by Syria's government, and Zelin notes that "the basic attraction of going to Syria will remain" as the sectarian conflict continues.

From Zelin:

Western Europeans now represent up to 18 percent of the foreign fighter population in Syria, with most recruits coming from France (63-412), Britain (43-366), Germany, (34-240), Belgium (76-296), and the Netherlands (29-152). 

As the war grinds on, Syria's destruction will be increasingly felt in Europe as Syrians — and battle-tested European fighters — head toward Europe.

SEE ALSO: These US Maps Put The Devastating Syrian Refugee Crisis Into Perspective

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The United States on Monday condemned Syria's ruling regime over the bloody aerial assault on the city of Aleppo, which has left several hundred people dead including dozens of children.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said Washington deplored the attacks on civilian areas by Syrian government forces, accusing the military of using barrel bombs and SCUD missiles "indiscriminately."

"The United States condemns the ongoing air assault by Syrian government forces on civilians, including the indiscriminate use of SCUD missiles and barrel bombs in and around Aleppo over the last week," Carney said.

"The attacks over the weekend killed more than 300 people, many of them children. The Syrian government must respect its obligations under international humanitarian law to protect the civilian population."

The White House spokesman also called on all parties in the Syrian conflict to "reach a comprehensive and durable political solution to end the crisis in Syria."

Syrian warplanes have killed more than 300 people, including 87 children, in eight days of bombing in Aleppo, just a month before planned peace talks, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of activists and witnesses on the ground.

The vicious air campaign has seen regime aircraft drop barrels of TNT onto rebel-held neighborhoods -- a tactic widely condemned as unlawful -- flooding hospitals with victims, according to activists, medics and others.

The attacks come as President Bashar al-Assad's forces have advanced on several fronts in recent weeks while Western nations have been preoccupied with Syria's chemical disarmament and preparing for January peace talks.

Assad's opponents say the bombing is aimed at demoralizing their supporters and turning them against the insurgents.

A security source told AFP the army had adopted the tactic because of a lack of ground forces, and argued the heavy civilian toll was because the rebels -- branded "terrorists" by the regime -- are based in residential areas.

Aleppo, the former commercial hub, has been split between opposition and government forces since a massive rebel assault in July 2012.

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LONDON (Reuters) - The Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad has received substantial imports of Iraqi crude oil from an Egyptian port in the last nine months, shipping and payments documents show, part of an under-the-radar trade that has kept his military running despite Western sanctions.

Assad's government has been blacklisted by Western powers for its role in the two-and-a-half year civil war, forcing Damascus to rely on strategic ally Iran - itself the target of Western sanctions over its nuclear program - as its main supplier of crude oil.

A Reuters examination based on previously undisclosed commercial documents about Syrian oil purchases shows however that Iran is no longer acting alone. Dozens of shipping and payment documents viewed by Reuters show that millions of barrels of crude delivered to Assad's government on Iranian ships has actually come from Iraq, through Lebanese and Egyptian trading companies.

The trade, which is denied by the firms involved, has proven lucrative, with companies demanding a steep premium over the normal cost of oil in return for bearing the risk of shipping it to Syria. It also highlights a previously undisclosed role of Egypt, Iraq and Lebanon in Assad's supply chain, despite those countries' own restrictions on assisting his government.

Both the Syrian national oil company that received the oil, Sytrol, and the Iranian shipping operator that delivered it, the National Iranian Tanker Co (NITC), are on U.S. and EU sanctions lists barring them from doing business with U.S. or European firms, cutting them off from the U.S. and EU financial systems and freezing their assets.

Although firms outside the United States and EU are not subject to their sanctions, companies that do business with firms on sanctions lists risk themselves being blacklisted: Washington and Brussels regularly add companies and individuals from third countries to their sanctions lists if they are found to deal with companies already listed.

At least four firms from third countries that were added to the U.S. Treasury's sanctions list for Iran when it was last updated on December 12 were punished specifically "for providing material support to NITC", the Treasury said.

"We have been very focused on targeting Iranian attempts to aid the Assad regime through economic as well as military means," said a Treasury Department spokesman. He declined to comment on the specific activities described in the documents reviewed by Reuters but said companies and individuals had been added to the sanctions list for similar types of activity.

The cache of documents describing the trade between March and May this year was shown to Reuters by a source on condition of anonymity. Many details were corroborated by a separate Middle Eastern shipping source with long-standing ties to the Syrian maritime industry. Publicly available satellite tanker tracking data, provided by Thomson Reuters, parent company of Reuters, was used to confirm the movements of ships.

The documents refer to at least four shipments by four tankers named Camellia, Daisy, Lantana and Clove, each of which is operated by Iran's NITC and, say the documents, carried Iraqi oil from Egypt's Mediterranean port of Sidi Kerir to Syria.

According to the documents, Beirut-based trading firm Overseas Petroleum Trading (OPT) invoiced Syria for arranging at least two of the shipments and was involved in a third, while a Cairo-based firm, Tri-Ocean Energy, was responsible for loading Iraqi oil into at least one.

Both OPT and Tri-Ocean denied any involvement in the Syria trade, declining to offer an alternative explanation for what the documents and ship tracking data show.

An EU country government source said Tri-Ocean is already under scrutiny by the United States for suspected violations of sanctions against Iran, giving no further details. The U.S. Treasury spokesman declined to comment on specific investigations.

Iran's NITC declined to comment.

There was no evidence that the Iraqi or Egyptian governments were involved in shipping Iraqi oil through Egypt's port, as crude can change hands after first being exported.

Iraq has been criticized in the past by Western countries for allowing deliveries of supplies and weapons from Iran to Syria to pass through its airspace. Iraq's oil ministry did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The Iraqi government controls exports of crude from the country and has tried to restrict traders from re-selling its oil.

A representative of the Arab Petroleum Pipeline Company, which is known as SUMED and owns and operates Egypt's Mediterranean port of Sidi Kerir where the oil tankers loaded, had no comment. SUMED is half owned by the Egyptian state oil company EGPC and half by a group of four other Arab countries.

Tarek El-Molla, the chairman of EGPC, said that Egypt had banned state companies from dealing with Iranian oil and shipping firms, and that he was unaware of shipments to Syria.

El-Molla said a tanker flying the Iranian flag would not be able to berth at Sidi Kerir. The four NITC-operated tankers involved in the shipments have all been renamed within the past few years and were flying Tanzanian flags at the time they loaded in Egypt, a tactic Reuters has previously reported has been used by Iran to mitigate the impact of sanctions on its shipping since sanctions against Tehran were tightened in 2011.

ASSAD'S BEIRUT OIL DEALER

Syria imported up to 17 million barrels of crude oil between February and October, of which roughly half came directly from Iran and half from Egypt's Sidi Kerir port, according to the Middle Eastern shipping source. The cache of documents reveals that at least half of the oil from Egypt's port was Iraqi crude.

Lebanese oil trading firm OPT arranged the shipments with Syria's internationally blacklisted state-owned oil company, Sytrol, operator of the one functioning refinery still under Assad's control. The documents show the firm invoicing Sytrol for almost $250 million for two deliveries of Iraqi crude it had arranged in March and May to Syria's Banias refinery.

In a letter to Sytrol's marketing manager dated April 4 of this year, OPT asked for a payment advance of around $50 million and detailed previous deals with the Syrian state oil company.

"Our company (OPT) has and continues to secure the state's needs in oil and oil derivatives in the recent period and was able to secure this despite major difficulties and challenges," said the letter from an OPT official,Abdelhamid Khamis Abdullah, whose name appears frequently in the correspondence. It was not possible to ascertain his exact role at the company.

The letter states OPT had already provided Sytrol with almost 5 million barrels of crude, diesel, and cooking fuel. The price for each barrel of Iraq's Basra Light crude in the invoices is between $15 and $17 above the official Iraqi price at that time, equivalent to an extra $15 million for each tanker.

OPT denied being involved in selling oil to Syria.

"We dispute all what you mentioned in your below emails," an OPT employee said in an email, without providing a name. The company offered no alternative explanation for the documents.

Egyptian oil firm Tri-Ocean Energy, which has brokered deals for OPT in the past, loaded at least one cargo of Iraqi crude onto an Iranian tanker that was delivered into Syria by OPT at the end of May, according to the documents, which say the oil was delivered to Syria on the Iranian tanker Clove on May 26.

Tri-Ocean's senior trading director Ali Tolba denied in an email that his company supplied Syria with crude or had loaded Iraqi oil onto Iranian tankers. He and Tri-Ocean's CEO, Mohammed el-Ansary, did not respond to a request from Reuters to review the documents seen by Reuters. Syria's Sytrol did not respond.

THE MILITIA MONEY MAN

Sytrol has used a blacklisted businessman close to Assad as intermediary to transfer money to OPT, according to the documents. In a letter from OPT to Sytrol on March 14 of this year, OPT requested payment through Ayman Jaber.

Jaber, who runs a company called Al Jazerra, is himself on U.S. and EU sanctions lists, which means firms or individuals doing business with him can themselves be added to the lists. When it listed Jaber a year ago, the U.S. Treasury accused him of coordinating state-sponsored pro-Assad militia groups known as Shabiha in the port of Latakia.

"Please could you pay the value of approximately $130 million plus 1.8 percent transfer fee into the account of Mr.Ayman Jaber, the head of Al Jazerra, at the central bank so he can transfer it into our accounts abroad," OPT wrote. In another letter three weeks later, OPT confirmed receipt of around 375 million euros from Al Jazerra, transferred from the account of Ayman Jaber.

At least two other firms mentioned in the documents had names and logos similar to companies based in the EU, which would be directly subject to European sanctions forbidding them to deal with Sytrol or NITC. In both cases, European head offices denied any relationship with Syrian offices using their names.

Some of the documents confirming the arrival of the oil in Syria were stamped or signed by a shipping agency called Med Control Syria. Jhony Matnious, a manager at the company in Damascus, told Reuters by email that the crude imports were Iranian through a government agreement between Damascus and Tehran.

Med Control has a head office in Greece, which lists Syria as a branch office on its website with the same address, logo, phone number and email as in the documents. A manager there denied any relationship with the Syria office: "We had an agency agreement in Syria but it was never active and we never had any business in that country," said Sam Papanikolas.

Documents showed some shipments were certified by a quality control firm called Inspectorate, owned by Paris-based firm Bureau Veritas. A Bureau Veritas spokeswoman in Paris said Inspectorate had previously employed a subcontractor in Syria but had stopped since October 2011, and any certificates this year would have been issued without the firm's knowledge.

After leaving Iraq, the crude oil was delivered to Sidi Kerir on the 200 mile SUMED pipeline, which runs from the Red Sea to the port west of Alexandria, where it was loaded onto Iranian ships.

According to Reuters AIS Live ship tracking data, which monitors the location of oil tankers via satellite, the four ships each sailed north towards Syria. Each ship switched off its satellite signals just before the delivery date in Syria, then reappeared on satellite tracking shortly after. In some cases the satellite data also contains information about cargo weight, which confirms that the cargo was unloaded while the ships' signals were shut off.

"Aiming to cut off a regime from oil supplies is very very difficult," said Ayham Kamel, Middle East and North Africa analyst at Eurasia Group consultancy in London said. "Especially as the regime still has a few allies."

(Additional reporting by Anna Yukhananov in Washington, Jessica Donati in Kabul, Jonathan Saul and Lin Noueihed in London, Laila Bassam in Beirut, Maggie Fick and Shadia Nasralla in Cairo, Ahmed Rasheed and Sylvia Westall in Baghdad, Amena Bakr in Doha and Daniel Fineren in Dubai; Editing by David Sheppard and Peter Graff)

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This morning, a powerful explosion ripped through downtown Beirut, killing five including a former cabinet minister and wounding scores.

Live audio of the explosion appears to have been captured during an interview on Future TV, a major Lebanese station founded by assassinated former PM Rafik Hariri. Via Washington Post correspondent Loveday Morris, here's what it looked like:

The conflict in Syria has begun bleeding into Lebanon, with attacks being carried out on both foes and allies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Here's a shot of the carnage:

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BEIRUT (Reuters) - Security concerns and bureaucracy have caused President Bashar al-Assad's government to miss Tuesday's deadline for the removal of deadly toxins from Syria under an international effort to remove its chemical arsenal, the global chemical weapons agency said.

Bad weather and a complex multinational procurement effort for equipment have also delayed the operation, an official from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said.

Syria agreed to abandon its chemical weapons by next June under a deal proposed by Russia and hashed out with the United States after an August 21 sarin gas attack that Western nations blamed on Assad's forces.

Damascus agreed to transport the "most critical" chemicals, including around 20 tonnes of mustard nerve agent, out of the Mediterranean port of Latakia by December 31 to be safely destroyed abroad away from the war zone.

The Special Coordinator of the OPCW-UN Joint Mission, Sigrid Kaag, told Reuters in Damascus on Monday that the OPCW is "comfortable in the knowledge that all the work is about to be completed" but she did not say how long the delay will last.

Kaag said on Sunday the deadline will not be met, citing technical delays, and she said on Monday there had been delays at customs without elaborating further.

The Syrian government is responsible for the safe packaging, transport along roads to Latakia - including the main highway from the capital - and removal of chemical weapons.

Government forces took back control this month of the highway linking Damascus to the coast which is needed to transport the toxins. Rebel were ousted from three towns along the road but activists say convoys moving along it will remain vulnerable to rebel ambushes.

Kaag said the Syrian government has repeatedly voiced a number of security concerns. Damascus "needs to plan for any eventuality in the journey from different sites to Latakia and in Latakia itself," she said.

"This is a very complex management exercise over and above the fact that it is a chemical weapons program that has to be destroyed at a time that a country is at war," she said.

Despite the delay, Kaag said "progress is very strong" and there is "a clear determination by all parties to achieve success."

(Reporting by Oliver Holmes in Beirut and Kinda Makiyeh in Damascus, Editing by Angus MacSwan)

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Violence in Iraq surged in 2013 to its worst level in five years, figures released Wednesday showed, fuelled by discontent among the Sunni Arab minority and the civil war in neighbouring Syria.

Bombs tore through markets, cafes, football fields and mosques, militants assaulted prisons, police stations and other government facilities, and families were killed in their homes.

And while Iraqi security forces carried out widespread operations targeting militants, they have yet to curb the violence, and the mass arrests they sometimes make may ultimately contribute to the problem.

"One has to go back to 2008 to find comparable levels of violence," Iraq Body Count, a Britain-based NGO that tracks violence in Iraq, said in a statement.

"In 2008, however, that was a declining total from the much higher levels of 2006-2007, with the second half of 2008 less violent than the first," IBC said.

"In 2013, the trend is in the opposite direction, with around two thirds of the deaths occurring in the second half of the year," it said.

"If current violence levels continue unabated throughout the coming year, then 2014 threatens to be as deadly as 2004, which saw the two sieges of Fallujah (by US forces) and Iraq’s insurgency take hold."

Death tolls vary widely, but all point to a sharp rise in violence.

IBC said it recorded 9,475 civilian deaths in Iraq in 2013, compared to 10,130 in 2008, while Iraqi government figures indicated 7,154 people died in 2013 violence, including security forces and militants, while 8,995 were killed in 2008.

Tolls for intervening years were much lower, sometimes less than half the 2013 figures.

The United Nations meanwhile said 7,818 civilians and police were killed in 2013, even more than the 6,787 in 2008.

“This is a sad and terrible record which confirms once again the urgent need for the Iraqi authorities to address the roots of violence to curb this infernal circle,” UN envoy Nickolay Mladenov said in a statement.

In 2013, militants repeatedly targeted civilians but also hit targets that should have been highly secure.

In July, for instance, militants carried out coordinated assaults on the Abu Ghraib and Taji prisons near Baghdad, freeing hundreds of inmates and leaving dozens of people dead.

Tensions rising since 2012

Two main factors have fuelled the spike in violence, experts say.

One is widespread discontent among Iraq's minority Sunni Arab community, members of which say they are marginalised by the country's Shiite-led government and unfairly targeted by heavy-handed security tactics.

Sunni anger has made it easier for militant groups to recruit and operate, while eroding the public's cooperation with security forces.

Anti-government protests broke out in Sunni-majority areas of Iraq at the end of 2012 and continued for over a year.

On April 23, security forces moved on a protest site near the northern town of Hawijah, triggering clashes in which dozens died, sparking a wave of revenge attacks and sending death tolls soaring.

"Tensions have been gradually rising since late 2012, but the storming of the anti-government protest camp in April and subsequent killing of protesters prompted a violent backlash by armed members of the Sunni community," said John Drake, a security specialist with risk management firm AKE Group.

"Radical Islamists have taken advantage of this by escalating their attacks, gradually eroding the effectiveness of the security forces," he said.

On Monday, security forces tore down the country's main anti-government protest camp west of Baghdad. Clashes broke out in the area as the camp was removed, and continued into Wednesday.

The Syrian conflict has also played a role in the heightened violence, with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, an Al-Qaeda linked group, launching attacks in both countries.

"The rise in fighting in neighbouring Syria has given (militants) a strategic boost. They now have the opportunity to create some sort of a safe-zone crossing the border of the two countries in which they can operate with minimal interference from the authorities," Drake said.

"This will allow them to conduct training, build bombs, raise funds and gather recruits, allowing them to bolster their power and prepare for more" attacks.

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The Syrian Electronic Army, an anonymous group of hackers sympathetic to the regime of al-Assad, seems to have gained access to the official Skype blog and left behind an anti-spying post.

Here's a brief rundown on the Syrian Electronic Army and here's what the compromised Skype blog post looks like:

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With special machinery installed in the hold of this American cargo ship, the MV Cape Ray is poised to embark on an unprecedented mission to destroy Syria's lethal chemical agents at sea.

At a shipyard in Virginia, the 650-foot (197.5-meter) ship from the Maritime Administration's reserve fleet has been outfitted with two portable hydrolysis systems designed to neutralize the most dangerous chemicals in Syria's arsenal.

"I'm waiting for my sailing orders," said Captain Rick Jordan, clad in overalls and a construction helmet.

The US officer told reporters he expects to get the green light to set off "within about two weeks."

Under a deal brokered by Russia and the United States, Syria was supposed to remove its key chemical weapons components by the end of 2013.

But the country's raging civil war, logistical problems and bad weather have held up plans to move chemical agents out of Syria to the port of Latakia, according to the joint UN-Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) mission overseeing the effort.

The most dangerous elements used for mustard gas and the nerve agent sarin are supposed to be loaded soon onto cargo ships and escorted to Italy by Danish and Norwegian naval vessels.

In waters off Italy, about 700 tonnes of chemical agents will then be loaded onto the Cape Ray, according to Frank Kendall, Pentagon undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.

The US ship will then head out to an undisclosed location in the Mediterranean to begin the task of neutralizing the chemical agents.

Inside the cavernous vessel, all is ready to accommodate a 35-member crew and 63 specialists overseeing the hydrolysis operation, as well as a security team.

The hold of the ship resembles a mostly empty warehouse with a giant white tent housing a filtration system.

Inside the plastic tent are two storage tanks, each containing a cistern where the lethal agents will be mixed with water and other chemicals.

While destroying chemical weapons at sea is without precedent, the technology employed has been around for decades, according to Adam Baker, a chemical engineer with the US military's Edgewood Chemical Biological Center.

"It is essentially the same chemical process that we've used for our chemical weapons stockpile," Baker said. "We just scaled it down into a transportable form."

The hydrolysis process is supposed to render the lethal agents into a sludge similar to industrial toxic waste.

On the outside of the tent, huge green pipes run through a forest of valves and six enormous gray cisterns, where the resulting material from the hydrolysis will be stored and measured for toxicity.

The "residue" from the operation, which will amount to 1.5 million gallons (5.7 million liters), will then be transferred to white cisterns mounted on a lower deck.

Private firms will handle the disposal of the hazardous material, and the OPCW has launched an appeal for offers from contractors. Some 42 firms have already expressed an interest.

French human rights and environmentalist group Robin de Bois has warned the extraordinary plan carries numerous risks as the 36-year-old ship has only a single hull and no transverse partitions in case the ship suffers a leak or a fire.

But the ship's captain said the double hulls are used for oil tankers or other cargo vessels. In this case, the chemicals are already confined in hermetically sealed containers.

"Safety is our first order of business," said Kendall. "We are dealing with hazardous material, there's no doubt about it."

The neutralization work at sea is due to take about 45 to 90 days, according to the Pentagon.

Much will depend on the weather and conditions at sea.

The ship is designed to absorb rough seas but "if it becomes unmanageable, we'll have to shut down production," Jordan said.

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