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Red Crescent official shot dead in Syria

GENEVA - The head of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent in the northern town of Idlib was shot dead on Wednesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

“We just learned a few minutes ago of the death of Mr. Abdulrazak Jbero, head of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent branch in Idlib. Mr. Jbero was on his way by car from Damascus to Idlib. He was shot. Circumstances are still unclear,” Beatrice Megevand-Roggo, head of ICRC operations for the Near and Middle East, told Reuters in Geneva.

“Regardless of the circumstances, the ICRC condemns this very severely,” she said. “The lack of respect for medical services is still a great issue in Syria.”

Jbero, a Syrian national, was also vice president of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, having previously served as its first president, ICRC spokesman Hicham Hassan said.

Syrian state television blamed “terrorists” for the killing saying that Jbero had been “assassinated” in Khan Sheikhoun district.

A volunteer of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent was killed last September in the flashpoint central town of Homs when an ambulance came under fire, injuring three other volunteers, according to the ICRC, the only international agency deploying aid workers in Syria. Gulf Arab monitors headed out of Syria on Wednesday after their governments said they were “certain the bloodshed and killing of innocents would continue”, and the Arab League pursued U.N. support for a plan to end President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

More than 5,000 people have been killed during the 10-month-old uprising against Assad, the United Nations said last month.