Welcome to Middle East Live.
The Assad government is due to announce whether it will observe a ceasefire over Eid al-Adha, amid widespread doubts about the initiative. Here's a roundup of the latest developments:
Syria
• Opposition activists expressed scepticism about the prospects for an unmonitored ceasefire over the Eid holiday beginning tomorrow, warning that the Assad regime was simply playing for time by indicating support for the truce. Abdelbaset Sieda, head of the opposition Syrian National Council, said: "This regime, we don't trust it, because it is saying something and doing something else on the ground." The Syrian government is due to consult with its generals over the plan.
• Rebel commanders have challenged international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi's claim that most rebel groups have agreed to the ceasefire, the LA Times reports. Colonel Qassim Saadeddine, commander of Free Syrian Army forces in Homs, said: "We will observe it as long as the regime does. Ee don't expect them to observe it for even one minute." Abu Firas, a spokesman for the opposition Revolutionary Council for Aleppo and Its Suburbs, said the Free Syrian Army had agreed to a cease-fire only on the conditions that the government release all detainees, withdraw its army from the city and end its siege of Homs — conditions that are highly unlikely to be met.
• The US has expressed its doubts about the prospects for even a temporary truce. Susan Rice US ambassador to the UN, tweeted: "Many are duly sceptical about prospects for even a temporary ceasefire, given Assad's record of broken promises." Britain's ambassador to the UN, Mark Lyall Grant, noted that the Syrian government had yet to confirm whether it would back the ceasefire a day before it was due to start.
• The US has denied Russian claims that it is supplying Stinger missiles to Syrian rebels. Russia's top military officer, Nikolai Makarov, said Russia's military had learned that rebel forces "have portable missile launchers of various states, including American-made Stingers." US Defence secretary Leon Panetta told reporters at the Pentagon that "I certainly don't know of us providing any such missiles in that area."
• There are signs everywhere of a retreating opposition in Bab al-Sebaa Street in Homs, according to the New York Times, in a rare report from the city, but it says the government's usual tactics of blunt bombardment won't work in the area.
The Syrian government has grown frustrated with its inability to crush the opposition forces, so it has adopted an unforgiving strategy of using tanks, artillery and aircraft to bomb and blast them into submission. That has worked in smaller places, like the village of Maarat al-Noaman, obliterated last week just after the opposition declared it "liberated."
But it cannot work here: the city is too large, too built up, so the government's soldiers are forced to fight on the ground, and find their way through these kinds of spaces.
Libya
• Libyan government forces have captured the town of Bani Walid, ending an eight-day battle that has cost at least 20 lives and left more than 200 wounded. The desert town, described by the government as Libya's last stronghold loyal to Muammar Gaddafi, has defied official control since January. Human Rights Watch has called for civilians to be protected in the town and for abuses by attacking forces to be prosecuted.
Sudan
• Sudan has warned that it has the right to retaliate after accusing Israel of carrying out an air strike on an arms factory, causing a huge explosion that killed two people. Ahmed Belal Osman, the Sudanese information minister, said that bombs from four aircraft struck a complex and triggered a blast that rocked the capital, Khartoum, before dawn on Wednesday.
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