Syria's government is waging "a war of extermination" against its own people, the emir of Qatar said Tuesday, according to state media, hours after a failed four-day ceasefire during a Muslim holiday left hundreds dead. In strongly worded comments to the Al Jazeera Arabic network, Sheikh Hamad bin Jassem Al Thani also accused foreign powers of standing by while President Bashar al-Assad's forces carried out a slaughter. "What is happening in Syria is not a civil war but a genocide, a war of extermination with a license to kill by the Syrian government and the international community," he said, according to the official Qatar News Agency. Sheikh Hamad, who's also Qatar's foreign minister, said he had confidence in U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi -- but that his country did not trust Al-Assad's government. Brahimi had pushed for government forces and rebels to stop fighting during Eid al-Adha, a major Muslim holiday that began Friday and ended Monday. But it soon became clear the violence was continuing almost unabated. "When the Syrian government announced that it would comply with the truce, it also announced that its military would respond to anything that took place on the ground, and it was clear from this rhetoric that there was no truce," Sheikh Hamad said, according to QNA.
