Filipino peacekeepers in Syria set to be freed

An image grab taken from a video uploaded on YouTube on Thursday, March 7, 2013, allegedly shows six uniformed members of the United Nations Disengagement Force (UNDOF), who have been seized by rebels the previous day, speaking at an undisclosed location. Syrian rebels held hostage 21 UN Filipino peacekeepers patroling the sensitive armistice line with Israel for a second day, defying a chorus of international condemnation and calls for their release. AFP PHOTO/YOUTUBE

DAMASCUS—A group of 21 Filipino UN peacekeepers seized by Syrian rebels on the Golan are expected to be freed Saturday during a two-hour truce between the insurgents and government forces, a watchdog said.

“An agreement has been reached between the Syrian regime and the United Nations to stop the bombing between 10 a.m. (0800 GMT) and noon (1000 GMT) on Saturday, in order to allow the evacuation of the 21 peacekeepers,” Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP late Friday.

“A Red Cross delegation should accompany the UN team to the area” to evacuate the peacekeepers, the Britain-based watchdog said.

In the Philippines, a military spokesman said the government still expects its members of the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) to be released despite shelling late on Friday that prevented an earlier handover.

A UN convoy that entered the Syrian village of Jamla to pick up the group pulled out when the Syrian army shelled the area.

Army spokesman Colonel Randolph Cabangbang said in Manila on Saturday that the shelling had since stopped.

“After the shelling the two parties (UN and the rebels) resumed coordinating the arrangements for their release,” Cabangbang told Agence France-Presse.

“The planned venue of the handover was not actually shelled. It was the route that they planned to take.”

On Wednesday, the rebel Yarmuk Martyrs brigade claimed the capture of the Filipinos and said they would hold them until troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad withdrew from the Jamla area, east of the ceasefire line with Israel.

Armed Forces of the Philippines spokesman said that the government had confirmation from the ground that the hostages were safe.

“They are being kept (by the rebels) in a safe area,” Colonel Arnulfo Burgos said.

In New York, UN peacekeeping spokeswoman Josephine Guerrero said efforts to secure their release will resume Saturday.

“Arrangements were made with all parties for the release of the 21 peacekeepers,” she said “but due to the late hour and the darkness it was considered unsafe to continue the operation. Efforts will continue tomorrow.”

UN peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous said the Jamla village where the soldiers are being held came under “intense shelling” on Friday.

That was denied by Syrian UN Ambassador Bashar Jaafari, who said Syrian forces were doing “everything in order to bring back safely the peacekeepers.”

US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland accused the Syrian regime of “making it impossible for UN negotiators to get in there and try to resolve it.”

The Filipinos, members of UNDOF monitoring the armistice line between Syria and Israel that followed the 1973 Arab-Israeli war, were abducted just a mile to the Syrian side of the line.

The rebels are demanding that Syrian troops move 20 kilometres (12 miles) back from Jamla.

The Observatory said the rebels were also demanding that the International Committee of the Red Cross “guarantees the safe exit from the strife-torn area of Jamla of civilians,” Abdel Rahman said.

Concern has been mounting that the abduction might prompt more governments to withdraw their contingents from the already depleted UN mission.

Israeli officials warned that any further reduction in UNDOF strength risked creating a security vacuum in the no-man’s land between the two sides on the strategic Golan Heights, which it seized in the 1967 Six-Day War.

World powers remain at loggerheads over the way forward for Syria, with Western governments firm in their demand for Assad to quit, and China and Russia equally firm in their opposition to any imposed regime change.

“You know that we are not in the regime-change game,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated on Friday. “We are against interference in domestic conflicts,” he told the BBC.

French President Francois Hollande said “the Russians still need to reach out and convince Bashar al-Assad to stand aside.”

On Friday the Syrian army pounded rebel areas in the central city of Homs with warplanes and tanks, the Observatory said, as protesters demonstrated against the army offensive.

At least 121 people were killed in violence in Syria on Friday, the Observatory said, in a conflict the UN says has killed more than 70,000 people in nearly two years.