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Former Syrian Commander: Dozens of Soldiers Slaughtered Who Refused to Fire on Demonstrators
(Times of Israel) Micha and Natan Odenheimer - A man interviewed in Jordan by the Times of Israel on Tuesday who said he is a former commander in Syria's military intelligence directorate, claimed that the Assad regime ordered its commanders to "shoot to kill 5% of the participants in any given demonstration," in order to strike fear and create deterrence. When the soldiers under his command, mostly Sunnis, refused to kill unarmed civilians at a demonstration outside Damascus, they themselves were slaughtered by the army and intelligence services, and dozens of them were killed, he said. He also said Assad has been using Shiite fighters from Iran, Lebanon's Hizbullah militia, and Iraq's Mahdi Army of radical Shiite cleric Muktada al-Sadr to quell demonstrations and fight opposition forces.