This is huge!!! The Syrian Prime Minster defected today and landed in
Jordan a couple of hours ago with his family. The Assad regime feared he
would defect sooner or later. His defection was followed by 2 cabinet
ministers and 3 high ranking army officers who landed with him in Jordan
at the same time.

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Source #1: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/08/20128691725705233.html

"I announce today my defection from the killing and terrorist
regime and I announce that I have joined the ranks of the freedom and
dignity
revolution. I announce that I am from today a soldier in this blessed
revolution," Hijab said in a statement read in his name by spokesman
Muhammad el-Etri.
Muhammad el-Etri, former PM Hijab's spokesperson, confirms that Hijab is safe in Jordan, along with ten family members.
He has urged more officials to defect from the Syrian government.
El-Etri said the defection was planned for "months", and was executed in collaboration with the Free Syrian Army.


Muhammad el-Etri, Riad Hijab's spokesperson has just been live on Al Jazeera.

He said that Hijab's defection had been being planned for "more than two
months", and was executed in collaboration with the Free Syrian Army. He
was given two options: to either take the office of prime minister or
be killed. He had a third option in mind: to plan his own defection in
order to direct a blow to the regime from within and today he is
declaring his defection and I believe he is the highest ranking official
in Syria [to do so] ... it is a one of a kind [defection] and it will
have grave repercussions on the regime and significant implications
after the departure of the regime and [for] the success of the
revolution."


The Associated Press news agency reports that three additional
cabinet ministers have defected today, according to a spokesman for the
rebel Free Syrian Army.Ahmad Kassim, a senior official with the
Free Syrian Army, said Monday that Hijab defected to Jordan along with
three other ministers. The other ministers' identities were not
immediately known.


Source #2: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/08/06/us-syria-crisis-idUSBRE8610SH20120806


(Reuters) -
Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab has been sacked, state television
reported on Monday, and an official source in Amman said he has defected
with his family to neighboring Jordan.
Syrian state TV announced
Hijab's dismissal as government forces appeared to prepare a ground
assault to clear battered rebels from Aleppo, the country's biggest
city.President Bashar al-Assad
appointed Hijab, a former agriculture minister, as prime minister only
in June following a parliamentary election which authorities said was a
step
towards political reform but which opponents dismissed as a sham."Hijab
is in Jordan with his family," said the Jordanian official source, who
did not want to be further identified.

Syrian
TV said Omar Ghalawanji, who was previously a deputy prime minister,
had been appointed to lead a temporary caretaker government on Monday.Earlier
in the day, a bomb blast hit the Damascus headquarters of Syria's state
broadcaster as troops backed by fighter jets kept up an offensive
against the last rebel bastion in the capital.The
bomb exploded on the third floor of the state television and radio
building, state TV said. However, while the rebels may have struck a
symbolic blow in their 17-month-old uprising against Assad, Information
Minister Omran Zoabi said none of the injuries was serious, and state TV
continued broadcasting.Rebels in
districts of Aleppo visited by Reuters journalists seemed battered,
overwhelmed and running low on ammunition after days of intense tank
shelling and helicopter gunships strafing their positions with heavy
machinegun fire.Emboldened by an
audacious bomb attack in Damascus that killed four of Assad's top
security officials last month, the rebels had tried to overrun the
Damascus and Aleppo, the country's commercial hub.But
the lightly armed rebels have been outgunned by the Syrian army's
superior weaponry. They were largely driven out of Damascus and are
struggling to hold on to territorial gains made in Aleppo, a city of 2.5
million.Damascus has criticized Gulf Arab states and Turkey
for calling for the rebels to be armed, and state TV has described the
rebels as a "Turkish-Gulf militia", saying dead Turkish and Afghan
fighters had been found in Aleppo.Paralysis
in the U.N. Security Council over how to stop the bloodshed forced
peace envoy Kofi Annan to resign last week, his ceasefire plan a distant
memory.The violence has already
shown elements of a proxy war between Sunni and Shi'ite Islam which
could spill beyond Syria's border. The rebels claimed responsibility for
capturing 48 Iranians in Syria, forcing Tehran to call on Turkey and
Qatar - major supporters of the rebels - to help secure their release.On
Monday, Syrian army tanks shelled alleyways in Aleppo where rebels
sought cover a helicopter gunship fired heavy machinegun fire.Snipers
ran on rooftops targeting rebels, and one of them shot at a rebel car
filled with bombs, setting the vehicle on fire. Women and children fled
the city, some crammed in the back of pickup trucks, while others walked
on foot, heading to relatively safer rural areas.ALEPPO GATEWAY

The main focus of fighting in Aleppo has been the Salaheddine district, a
gateway into the city. One shell hit a building next to the Reuters
reporting team, pouring rubble on to the street and sending billows of
smoke and dust into the sky.State
television said Assad's forces were "cleansing the terrorist filth" from
the country, which has been sucked into an increasingly sectarian
conflict that has killed about 18,000 people and could spill into
neighboring states.The army
appeared to be using a similar strategy in Aleppo to the one used in
other cities where they subjected opposition districts to heavy
bombardment for days, weakening the rebels before moving in on the
ground, clearing district by district.Syria's
two main cities had been relatively free of violence until last month
when fighters poured into them, transforming the war. The government
largely repelled the assault on Damascus but has had more difficulty
recapturing Aleppo.Rebel
commanders say they anticipate a major Syrian army offensive in Aleppo
and one fighter said they had already had to pull back from some streets
after army snipers advanced on Saturday under cover of the fierce
aerial and tank bombardment."The
Syrian army is penetrating our lines," said Mohammad Salifi, a
35-year-old former government employee. "So we were forced to
strategically retreat until the shelling ends," he said, adding the
rebels were trying to push the army back again.Late
on Sunday rebels clashed with the army in Aleppo's south-eastern Nayrab
district, a fighter who called himself Abu Jumaa said. The army
responded by shelling eastern districts. There were also clashes on the
southern ring road, which could be a sign the army was preparing to
surround the city.RUINS

Once a busy shopping and restaurant district where residents would spend
evenings with their families, Salaheddine is now white with dust, broken
concrete and rubble.Tank shell
holes gape wide on the top of buildings near the front line, and homes
of families and couples have been turned into look-outs and sniper
locations for rebel fighters.Large
mounds of concrete are used as barriers to close off streets. Lamp
posts lie horizontally across the road after being downed by shelling.Civilians
trickle back to collect their belongings and check on their homes. Late
on Saturday a confused elderly man stumbled into 15th street as rebels
exchanged fire with the army."Get out of the way! Get off the street!" fighters shouted, grabbing him and taking him to shelter.

"I just wanted to buy some blackberry juice," he told the fighters, his
face reflecting confusion and horror at the damage to his street.
Instinctively, he took his personal ID out of his chest pocket to show
the rebels, a habit from the strict days of the Assad security
officials.During the day, others
emerged from damaged buildings. A couple stood shaking with fear at an
intersection a few meters from the fighting as a medic waved a car down
to take them to safety."Just to
hold power he is willing to destroy our streets, our homes, kill our
sons," wept Fawzia Um Ahmed, referring to Assad's determined
counter-offensive against the rebels."I can't recognize these streets any more."

Assad is a member of the Alawite faith, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam that has
dominated Syrian politics through more than 40 years of his family's
rule in a country that has a Sunni Muslim majority. He is supported by
Shi'ite Iran and by Lebanon's armed Shi'ite Hezbollah movement.The
Sunni-ruled Muslim Gulf Arab states have called for rebels to be armed
and Turkey has provided them with a base, angering Damascus and
prompting Syrian state television on Sunday to refer to the rebels as a
"Turkish-Gulf militia".It said the bodies of Turkish and Afghan fighters had been found in Aleppo, without giving details.

On Sunday Syrian rebels said they were checking the identities of the
captured Iranians to show that Tehran was involved in fighting for
Assad,
a rebel officer said.Iran says the captives were religious pilgrims
visiting holy sites in Syria, abducted from a bus in Damascus.

A senior Syrian intelligence officer defected to Jordan, Al Arabiya
television reported on Sunday. It said Yarub Shara was head of the
Damascus branch of Political Security, an intelligence organization
responsible for monitoring and suppressing dissent.In
Damascus, residents said the bodies of six Palestinians arrested during
a security sweep by the army in the southern Tadamon district were
discovered on Sunday. Another nine men were missing, they said. Accounts
from the capital could not be verified because the government restricts
access.(Additional reporting by Khaled Yacoub Oweis in Amman,; Yeganeh Torbati and Mirna Sleiman in Dubai; Writing by Dominic Evans; editing by David Stamp)

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