Operation Ostrava: Month 14, Week 1, Day 4.

With the situation in Syria at such a critical stage it looks like I'm going to have to miss giving an update on Libya this week. Also I should correct a mistake I've been making in previous posts. Local time in Syria is three hours ahead of Greenwich MeanTime (GMT) not two. The reason for my error is that I went to the trouble of looking it up on a proper chart in a proper atlas which was clearly wrong. From now on I'm sticking to Wikipedia - it's more accurate.

With the Syrian government ceasefire today (11/4/12) in it's second day fighting has continued across the country because the Saudi Irregular Army (SIA) are yet to move to ceasefire. At around 08:00local/05:00GMT Syrian and SIA troops clashed with small arms close the border with Turkey and some rounds found their way into a refugee camp within Turkey. This incident actually highlights the problem with how the conflict in Syria is being reported. As soon as the incident happened the world's media starting telling a torrid tale of a Syrian sniper in a watch tower ruthlessly opening fire on refugees. This story persists even after the Turkish authorities have confirmed that it was just stray gunfire and the sniper in the watch tower never existed. There have also been credible reports of Syrian forces mounting raids in Deraa. However these appear to be arrest missions which are not prohibited by the ceasefire. In fact one of the main objectives of any credible peace plan would be to encourage the Syrian government to move away from widespread shelling/mortar fire towards arrest and detention.

More worryingly though there have been reports of mortar fire/shelling in Quasari, Latakia and Jabal al-Sharqi. However the only report to provide enough detail to allow it to be corroborated is of mortar fire in Homs. Here approximately 12 volleys of 82mm mortars were fired between 07:00local/04:00GMT and 08:00local/05:00GMT. Local residents have provided short videos that purport to show the attack which look very similar videos that were produced purporting to show yesterday's (10/4/12) attacks but this is what you would expect from videos showing similar attacks in a similar location at a similar time of day. Of course the SIA have access to this type of weapon and have previously shown that they are prepared to attack themselves for propaganda purposes. However assuming the attack was carried out by Syrian forces I think we're looking at the same rogue mortar battery that was active yesterday rather then a force-wide disregard for the ceasefire. The Syrian government still need to get that battery under control though.