Syria news .... Dec 3 and last few days

From TheEconomist:
IT IS not difficult to see why António Guterres, the head of the United Nations' refugee agency (UNHCR) describes Syria as a "calamity with suffering and displacement unparalleled in recent history". More than 2.2m Syrians, or about a tenth of the population, are registered as refugees. Half of them are under the age of 18. On some days 6,000 cross the borders. Many more flee without registering. And more are likely to come, as the approaching winter makes life harder for the 6.5m Syrians displaced internally. That means that some 40% of the population are not living at home. Where do they all go?
Syria's refugees are predominantly spread across five countries in the region. Lebanon, Syria's tiny western neighbour, hosts the largest number, with 830,000 registered and possibly 1m in all, according to Lebanese officials. They subsist in villages because Lebanon's political leaders cannot agree on whether to set up camps. Turkey to the north and Jordan to the south house upwards of half a million Syrians each, in tented camps. Zaatari camp in Jordan is now the country's fourth-largest city. Iraq hosts 207,000 refugees. Egypt has 128,000 and other north African countries a further 17,000. Within Syria, the displaced often move from area to area as the violence changes location, sleeping in relatives' or kind strangers' houses, in schools, mosques or even caves.....

From JPost:
A suicide bomb attack at a Syrian defense ministry    office in central Damascus killed at least four people on Tuesday, state media and a monitoring group said.
The bomber detonated himself using an explosive belt at the office in the Jisr al-Abyad area in the capital's center, news agency SANA reported.
At least four people were killed and 17 wounded in the attack, state television said.....

Robert Spencer writing at PJMedia:
How 10-Year-Old Boys Learn to Slaughter Infidels in Syria “Slaughter him. Right. Because he is an infidel. Anyone who does not believe in Islam is an infidel.” The video is chilling a jihadist from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, al-Qaeda’s branch for those two countries, addresses a crowd of boys at a school in Syria, rallying them to jihad. The boys look to be about ten or twelve years old, and they eagerly participate in the lesson – which is all about how Muslims should wage war and slaughter infidels in order to defend Islam.
“The mujahideen are coming here, to Syria,” says the jihadist, telling the boys that they have come from “Egypt, from Chechnya, from Morocco, from the U.S., from Belgium, from China, from Russia, from Cameroon. … Who unites them?”

From AsiaNews:
The fate of the 12 Orthodox nuns  of the monastery of Santa Tecla in Maaloula , seized yesterday afternoon by a group of Islamist insurgents is still uncertain says Mgr . Mario Zenari , Apostolic Nuncio to Damascus speaking to AsiaNews.  "We have no other news - says the Vatican representative in Syria - since last night. We can confirm that the nuns were forced to leave the monastery and follow these armed people."
The 12 nuns of the monastery of St. Thecla were abducted yesterday afternoon . According to latest reports , the nuns were being marched by a contingent of Islamist rebels towards Yabrud , about 80 km north of the capital.

From NYTimes:
...The top United Nations human rights    official linked President Bashar al-Assad of Syria to war crimes and crimes against humanity for the first time on Monday, citing evidence collected by her panel of investigators over the course of the 33-month-old conflict in that country.
The four-member panel investigating human rights offenses in Syria has produced “massive evidence” of the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity, the official, Navi Pillay, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, told reporters here in Geneva. She went on: “They point to the fact that the evidence indicates responsibility at the highest level of government, including the head of state.”....

From Yahoo:
U.S. to Destroy Syria Arms At Sea. The United States will destroy the most dangerous of Syria's chemical weapon stockpile on a ship at sea, the world's chemical watchdog said on Saturday.
"The neutralisation operations will be conducted on a US vessel at sea using hydrolysis," the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons said in a statement.
"Currently a suitable naval vessel is undergoing modifications to support the operations and to accommodate verification activities by the OPCW," The Hague-based watchdog added...........