BEIRUT, Lebanon
— The United States closed its embassy in Syria on Monday and withdrew
all staff members there in response to escalating mayhem in the country and
what American officials called the Syrian government’s unbridled repression of
an 11-month-old uprising that has become the bloodiest conflict in the Arab
Spring revolts.
Word of the diplomatic changes came as opposition
groups reported that Syrian government forces shelled the battered city of Homs
for another day, striking a makeshift clinic and killing at least 17 people in
a mounting toll that has made the city the epicenter of the uprising, which
began last March. The city, Syria’s
third-largest, has emerged as an arena of some of the revolt’s worst violence,
with scores dead there in just the past few days.
Clearly laying the blame on Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, the State
Department said in a statement on its Web site that the United
States had “suspended operations of our embassy in Damascus,” and that
Ambassador Robert S. Ford “and all American personnel have now departed the
country.” It said the closing reflected “serious concerns that our embassy is
not protected from armed attack.”
 |
| The American embassy building in Damascus in January, 2011. |
The announcement did not signal a formal break in
American diplomatic relations with Syria
but was considered a strong signal that Obama administration officials believe
there is nothing left to talk about with Mr. Assad. His government has been
emboldened since an Arab League peace proposal for Syria
appeared to collapse in a diplomatic failure over the weekend at the United
Nations, where both Russia
and China
vetoed a Security Council resolution to endorse it.
“The deteriorating security situation that led to the
suspension of our diplomatic operations makes clear once more the dangerous
path Assad has chosen and the regime’s inability to fully control Syria,” the
State Department’s spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said in the statement.
The acrimonious demise of the effort on Syria
at the United Nations over the weekend led Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton to warn of the risk of all-out civil war there, and she reiterated the
American position that Mr. Assad must relinquish power. The State Department
announcement did not specify where the embassy staff had gone, but American
officials said they had relocated temporarily to neighboring Jordan.
The announcement said Ambassador Ford would “continue
his work and engagement with the Syrian people as head of our Syria
team in Washington.” It also said
American officials “continue to be gravely concerned by the escalation of
violence in Syria
caused by the regime’s blatant defiance of its commitments to the action plan
it agreed to with the Arab League.”
The bloodshed on Monday followed an onslaught this
weekend, when opposition groups said Syrian forces shelled Khaldiya and other
neighborhoods for several hours Friday and Saturday, killing more than 200
people in one of the deadliest days of the revolt.
The government has flatly denied the tolls quoted by
opposition groups. On Saturday, it said Homs
was quiet. State-run media blamed the violence Monday on “armed terrorist
groups” firing mortars within Homs,
an opposition stronghold.
Explosions could be heard over the phone when speaking
with residents. Videos smuggled out by activists showed a chaotic scene at a
clinic, as people rushed past doctors and medical staff, shouting, “Oh God.” In
one video, purporting to document the scene, blood smeared the sidewalk
outside. Another showed bloodied corpses.
Two opposition groups put the death toll at 17.
“People can’t leave their homes,” said Omar Shakir, an
activist in the city. “Where can they go? It’s the government’s punishment.
It’s revenge.”
Homs, in
western Syria
near the Lebanese border, has grown ever more militarized as the uprising
enters a more dangerous, violent and unpredictable phase. Defectors and armed
allies control several neighborhoods in the city and the government so far has
been unable to retake them. Defectors say they have mined entrances to two of
them — Baba Amr and Khaldiya — although there was no way to confirm their
claim.
Conditions in the city itself have worsened during an
unusually cold winter. Residents speak of trash piling up and electricity
supplies too intermittent to keep homes warm.
 |
| Syrian rebels gathered in an alley in Idlib, Syria, on Sunday. |
Though Homs
has proven the deadliest locale, government forces have kept up a campaign to
retake the suburbs of Damascus and
a northern region around the town of Idlib.
The state-run news agency said gunmen had killed three
soldiers and captured others at a checkpoint in Jabal al-Zawiyah, near Idlib,
which is a rugged region near the border with Turkey.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported a clash
there, saying that insurgents had killed 3 officers and 19 soldiers.
“We follow with great anxiety and irritation
developments in the field situation in Syria, and the escalation of military
operations in the city of Homs and rural areas of Damascus, and the Syrian
armed forces’ use of heavy weapons against civilians,” Nabil al-Araby, the
secretary general of the Arab League, said in a statement quoted by Reuters.
The escalation pushed “conditions toward a slide
towards civil war,” he said.
