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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
The head of one of Syria's most powerful rebel groups has been killed in an airstrike east of Damascus.
Syrian rebels and the government said Friday that Zahran Alloush, founder1 of the Army of Islam, was killed in a raid that targeted the group's headquarters in Eastern Ghouta, a suburb of Damascus.
Alloush's death is a significant blow to the armed opposition2, bolstering3 President Bashar al-Assad ahead of new peace talks scheduled for early 2016.
The strike, which also killed other senior members of the group, came days after the United Nations passed a resolution endorsing4 a path to peace in Syria.
The Army of Islam was to have participated in that process. But it is regarded by the Syrian government and its most powerful ally, Russia, as a sectarian terrorist group that differs little from more extremist groups like the Islamic State.
Top Syrian Opposition Leader Killed in Airstrike
Unconfirmed initial reports suggested Russian planes carried out the airstrike that killed Alloush.
Alloush, who was in his mid-40s and had studied Islamic law in Saudi Arabia, was released from a Syrian prison in 2011 as part of an amnesty and then joined the revolt against the government.
His group defended an area that has faced repeated and indiscriminate air raids by the government. His forces, in turn, have fired indiscriminate mortar5 salvos at areas in Damascus, killing6 and wounding scores of civilians7.
Although Alloush’s forces have battled extremist groups such as the Islamic State, he also had issued statements that appeared sympathetic to Jabhat al-Nusra, the al-Qaida franchise8 in Syria and al-Qaida's late leader, Osama bin9 Laden10.
Army of Islam
In a recent interview with The Daily Beast, a U.S.-based news and opinion website, Alloush distanced himself from Jabhat al-Nusra, claiming he supported only Abu Maria al-Qahtani, one of al-Nusra’s Sharia advisers11. "We saw that Qahtani was showing a moderate face and we wanted to encourage those efforts," he said. "Now al-Nusra has different Sharia advisers, and ours have many disagreements with them, ideologically12 and intellectually."
Despite the name of his organization, Alloush denied the group wants to spread Sharia in its areas of control. But he had plenty of criticism about democracy.
"The democracy of Assad, the pluralism of the Baath and the Islamism of ISIS are a few examples. The Western double standards are also applied13 to democracy. While democracy is used to serve people’s interests in the West, democracy is manipulated in our countries to bring villains14 to rule as agents for outside powers," he said.
"We believe that the future of Syria after Assad should be governed by a technocratic15 body which has the skills and the qualifications. We do not believe that Syria should be ruled by sectarian or partisan16 rule, but by a technocratic body that represents the diversity of the Syrian people. We do not see ourselves as Islamic. We are Muslims."
Alloush was also critical of the policies of the Obama administration toward the Syrian crisis.
"America is a powerful country and it can play a major role to end the Syrian conflict if it wants," he said. "But the current administration refuses to play this role and acts with cold blood when it comes to Syria. It has failed to respond effectively to Assad’s massacres17, and we saw that obviously when Assad crossed the 'red line' on the use of chemical weapons. America was able to stop the chemical attacks, but it didn’t care.
"Even if the administration didn’t want to intervene directly, it is still able to support the real revolutionary groups which are capable of toppling Assad and at the same time defeating ISIS. Instead, it is promoting weak groups and supporting them just to say, ‘We are doing something for Syria.' "
Peace talks
This week, the United Nations announced that it would hold peace talks in Geneva early next year.
Geneva was the site of two rounds of U.N.-brokered peace talks early last year between Assad's government and rebels who have been fighting him since March 2011.
Those negotiations18 ended with little progress, and momentum19 for a peace deal evaporated while the conflict became more complex with the addition of Islamic State militants20 seizing large portions of eastern Syria. But in recent months, the push for peace has been renewed, including several international meetings bringing together world powers with a commitment to get the warring sides talking again.
Diplomats21 such as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry have promoted ending the civil war as the most important step in defeating Islamic State fighters and bringing stability to the region.
The U.N. Security Council adopted a resolution last week expressing support for a Syrian-led political process, facilitated by the U.N., with the goal of establishing a transitional government in six months and holding elections in 18 months.
The conflict has killed more than 250,000 people and forced half the country's population to flee Syria as refugees or move to another part of the country to escape the fighting.
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1 Founder | |
n.创始者,缔造者 | |
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2 opposition | |
n.反对,敌对 | |
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3 bolstering | |
v.支持( bolster的现在分词 );支撑;给予必要的支持;援助 | |
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4 endorsing | |
v.赞同( endorse的现在分词 );在(尤指支票的)背面签字;在(文件的)背面写评论;在广告上说本人使用并赞同某产品 | |
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5 mortar | |
n.灰浆,灰泥;迫击炮;v.把…用灰浆涂接合 | |
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6 killing | |
n.巨额利润;突然赚大钱,发大财 | |
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7 civilians | |
平民,百姓( civilian的名词复数 ); 老百姓 | |
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8 franchise | |
n.特许,特权,专营权,特许权 | |
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9 bin | |
n.箱柜;vt.放入箱内;[计算机] DOS文件名:二进制目标文件 | |
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10 laden | |
adj.装满了的;充满了的;负了重担的;苦恼的 | |
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11 advisers | |
顾问,劝告者( adviser的名词复数 ); (指导大学新生学科问题等的)指导教授 | |
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12 ideologically | |
adv. 意识形态上地,思想上地 | |
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13 applied | |
adj.应用的;v.应用,适用 | |
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14 villains | |
n.恶棍( villain的名词复数 );罪犯;(小说、戏剧等中的)反面人物;淘气鬼 | |
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15 technocratic | |
adj.由技术专家官员组成的;受技术官僚影响的 | |
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16 partisan | |
adj.党派性的;游击队的;n.游击队员;党徒 | |
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17 massacres | |
大屠杀( massacre的名词复数 ); 惨败 | |
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18 negotiations | |
协商( negotiation的名词复数 ); 谈判; 完成(难事); 通过 | |
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19 momentum | |
n.动力,冲力,势头;动量 | |
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20 militants | |
激进分子,好斗分子( militant的名词复数 ) | |
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21 diplomats | |
n.外交官( diplomat的名词复数 );有手腕的人,善于交际的人 | |
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