Interview with Syrian Opposition Pres.
Twenty-one U.N. peacekeepers detained by
Syrian rebels this week could soon be released, representatives for the
United Nations and a Syrian opposition group said Friday.
"All the parties" have
agreed to a release of the 21 held since Wednesday, and the U.N.
peacekeeping agency has dispatched a team to help collect them, U.N.
spokeswoman Josephine Guerrero said.
But the effort was called off Friday due to darkness, and the team will try again on Saturday, Guerrero said.
Rebels had detained the
peacekeepers, identified by the Philippine government as Filipino, in a
Syrian village near the Golan Heights.
Syrian opposition coalition President Moaz al-Khatib said Thursday that the rebels took the peacekeepers for their own safety due to fighting there. The peacekeepers reportedly are unharmed.
The release is contingent
on a cease-fire between government forces and rebels around the village
of Jamlah, where the peacekeepers are said to be held, the group said.
Government forces shelled the area Friday, according to the Syrian National Coalition, the principal Syrian opposition group.
The rebels will hold
Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime responsible "for any harm that
would happen to the U.N. employees," a statement from the coalition
said.
Late Friday, a man who
said he was one of the peacekeepers told the Arabic news network
Al-Arabiya via Skype that he expects to be released Saturday.
"The reason for the
delay is the shelling," he told Al-Arabiya. "We were about to be
released this evening, but the shelling resumed. All 21 peacekeepers are
safe and treated well."
it could not independently verify the authenticity of the interview.
Earlier this week, a
video posted on the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights' YouTube website
showed six of the peacekeepers sitting in a room. CNN couldn't
immediately verify the authenticity of the video.
In it, one peacekeeper gives a statement to the camera:
"We are here safe in
this place. We are here because while we are passing through position
(unintelligible) to Jamlah, there were bombing and artillery fires. This
is why we stopped and, civilian people tell us, for our safety, and
distributed us in different places to keep us safe. And they give us
good accommodation and give us food to eat and water to drink."
The rebels have said the
peacekeepers entered the village near the Israeli-occupied Golan
Heights, an area where peacekeepers should not be and where intense
fighting has been raging for days between rebels and government forces.
The rebels initially
said they suspected the peacekeepers were trying to aid their enemy --
the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
The United Nations said the peacekeepers were on a "regular supply mission."
Two other videos that rebels posted on YouTube present the rebels' point of view.
In one, a rebel insists that the peacekeepers will be held until al-Assad's forces withdraw from the village of al-Jamlah.
The other video shows
rebels walking near several U.N. trucks. "This U.N. force entered Jamlah
village to assist the regime ... and (the U.N. is) claiming that they
are here just to stop the clashing," a rebel says.
Members of the U.N. Security Council condemned the detention of the peacekeepers.
The unrest in Syria
began in March 2011, when al-Assad's government began a brutal crackdown
on demonstrators calling for greater political freedoms.
The protest movement
eventually devolved into an armed conflict, one that has devastated
cities and towns around the country and spurred more than 720,000
Syrians to flee to neighboring nations,
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