Sana / Reuters

Syria's President Bashar Assad (R) sits during an interview with journalists from Argentina in Damascus in this handout photograph distributed by Syria's national news agency SANA on Saturday.

LIMA - Proposed peace talks for Syria would not curb "terrorism" in the country and it is unrealistic to think they would succeed, Syrian President Bashar Assad said in an interview published in an Argentine newspaper on Saturday. 

Speaking in Syria with the newspaper Clarin, Assad said he was doubtful that mediation the United States and Russia have proposed could settle a deadly conflict that has convulsed the country for two years. 

"There is confusion in the world between a political solution and terrorism. They think a political conference will halt terrorists in the country. That is unrealistic," he said in reference to insurgent groups seeking to unseat him. 

Rebels demanding Assad's resignation have also voiced skepticism about the proposed peace talks. 

Assad reiterated he would not resign and said peace talks would not make sense because the opposition was too fragmented to negotiate an agreement. 

"No dialogue with terrorists," he said.

Videotaped excerpts of the interview were posted on Clarin's website. 

The Syrian conflict started with mainly peaceful demonstrations against Assad, but turned into a civil war in which the United Nations says tens of thousands of people have been killed. 

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Islamist militants have emerged as the most potent of the anti-Assad rebels. 

On Friday, the outlook for talks appeared to hit snags. 

The United States chided Russia for sending missiles to the Syrian government, while France made clear it would oppose any meeting if Assad's regional ally Iran were invited. 

Russia's position is that Tehran should be part of any solution. 

Related: 

• NYT: Entire families executed in ruthless Syrian massacre

• 'Sheer savagery': Syrian rebel rips out soldier's heart, Human Rights Watch says

• NYT: Russia sends advanced missiles to aid Assad in Syria

Nine Turkish citizens were arrested Sunday in connection with the car bomb attacks that killed 46 people in a town near the Syrian border on Saturday.

The attacks, in the town of Reyhanli, were carried out by a group linked to Syria's intelligence service, Turkey’s deputy prime minister, Besir Atalay, told reporters.

However, Syria rejected Turkey's allegations that it was behind the bombs.

"Syria did not and will never do such an act because our values do not allow this. It is not anyone's right to hurl unfounded accusations," Syrian Information Minister Omran Zubi was quoted as saying on state media.

The car bombs increased fears that Syria's civil war was dragging in neighboring states despite renewed diplomatic moves towards ending two years of fighting in which more than 70,000 people have been killed.

Reyhanli, in the southern Hatay province, is in an area known to be home to many refugees. There are more than 300,000 Syrian refugees in Turkey, most of them in camps along the volatile border

It has also become a logistics base for rebels fighting Syria’s president Bashar Assad.

Turkey’s Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said those involved were thought also to have staged an attack on the Syrian coastal town of Banias a week ago in which at least 62 people were killed, Reuters reported.

"The attack has nothing to do with the Syrian refugees in Turkey, it's got everything to do with the Syrian regime," Davutoglu said in an interview on TRT television, Reuters said.

"We should be careful against ethnic provocations in Turkey and Lebanon after the Banias massacre," he said. 

Related: Turkey PM: Red line has been crossed

This story was originally published on Sun May 12, 2013 9:10 AM EDT

JERUSALEM - Israel sought to persuade Syrian President Bashar Assad on Monday that its recent airstrikes around Damascus did not aim to weaken him in the face of a more than two-year-old rebellion.

Officials say Israel is reluctant to take sides in Syria's civil war for fear its actions would boost Islamists who are even more hostile to Israel than the Assad family, which has maintained a stable standoff with the Jewish state for decades.

But Israel has repeatedly warned it will not let Assad's ally Hezbollah receive hi-tech weaponry. Intelligence sources said Israel attacked Iranian-supplied missiles stored near the Syrian capital on Friday and Sunday that were awaiting transfer to Hezbollah guerrilla group in neighboring Lebanon.

Syria accused Israel of belligerence meant to shore up the outgunned anti-Assad rebels - drawing a denial on Monday from veteran Israeli lawmaker Tzachi Hanegbi, a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

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Interviewed on Israel Radio, Hanegbi said the Netanyahu government aimed to avoid "an increase in tension with Syria by making clear that if there is activity, it is only against Hezbollah, not against the Syrian regime."

Hanegbi noted Israel had not formally acknowledged carrying out the raids in an effort to allow Assad to save face, adding that Netanyahu began a scheduled visit to China on Sunday to signal the sense of business as usual.

The Assad government has condemned the airstrikes as tantamount to a "declaration of war" and threatened unspecified retaliation.

But Hanegbi said Israel was ready for any development if the Syrians misinterpreted its messages and was ready "to respond harshly if indeed there is aggression against us".

As a precaution, Israel deployed two of its five Iron Dome rocket interceptors near the Syrian and Lebanese fronts and grounded civilian aircraft in the area, although an Israeli military spokesman said the airspace would reopen on Monday.

Military analysts say Syria would be no match for Israel in any confrontation. But Damascus, with its leverage over Hezbollah, could still consider proxy attacks through Lebanon, where Israel's conventional forces fought an inconclusive war against the Iranian-backed guerrillas in 2006.

Related:

• Israel strikes Syrian military research center, US official says
• Analysis: Israel may be ready for more active military role in Syria
• Full Syria coverage from NBC News

This story was originally published on Mon May 6, 2013 4:22 AM EDT

NEWS ANALYSIS

ANTAKYA, Turkey -- War makes strange bedfellows. President Bashar Assad’s regime is in the unique position of being targeted both by Israel and supporters of al Qaeda.

It is hard to imagine more a diverse couple: Sworn enemies fighting against the same government.

Israel carried out a series of attacks on military targets in Damascus early Sunday, close to President Assad’s main compound, US officials told NBC News. A rebel spokesman said about 10 locations had been hit, adding: “They shook all of Damascus. There was still smoke in the air as the sun came up.”

Witnesses said they heard low-flying jets in the air, but only after the explosions began.  Witnesses also claim to have heard jets in Lebanon shortly before the raid.  Israel has not confirmed it carried out any attack.

Syrian state TV blamed Israel, and said it was helping the rebels it calls terrorists.

An Israeli source said Sunday’s targets included Iranian-made missiles bound for Hezbollah.

The rebel spokesman in Damascus said the rebels’ “spirits were lifted” by the pre-dawn raid, and that they resumed “intense attacks” on the regime in the capital on Sunday morning.

While there is no evidence that Israel is coordinating with the Syrian opposition, both are worried about what could happen as the civil war spins further out of control.

Israel specifically does not want Syria to hand over weapons, chemical or conventional, to Hezbollah.

Both Hezbollah – which is based in Lebanon, just north of Israel - and Iran are allies of Bashar Assad.

Israel and Hezbollah fought a bloody war in 2006.  But Israel doesn’t fully back the rebels either, especially not a powerful contingent of Islamic radicals. 

Israel does not want the Nusra front, which has pledged allegiance to al Qaeda, to obtain chemical weapons.  Neither does Washington.  Israel’s strategy thus far appears to be targeting threats as they come up and picking them off. 

If Israel sees weapons moving toward its border, it acts.  But many across the region are now wondering if this raid, larger in scale, is the start of a more active Israeli military role.  Has Israel decided that the longer the conflict drags on, the more risks there are regional stability?  Was this another surgical strike or the start of a new policy?  The answer may become clear in the coming days.

Related video: Syrian government used chemical weapons 4 times, rebels say

Bilal Hussein / AP

Pro-Syrian-government fighters from Lebanon stand guard at the border of the two countries on April 12. The head of Lebanon-based Hezbollah has threatened that his heavily armed group, backed by Iran, may become further involved in the battle against forces trying to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad.

BEIRUT -- The leader of Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group said Tuesday that Syrian rebels will not be able to defeat President Bashar Assad's regime militarily, warning that Syria's "real friends," including his Iranian-backed militant group, were ready to intervene on the government's side.

Hezbollah, a powerful Shiite Muslim group, is known to back Syrian regime fighters in Shiite villages near the Lebanon border against the mostly Sunni rebels fighting to topple Assad. The comments by Sheik Hassan Nasrallah were the strongest indication yet that his group was ready to get far more involved to rescue Assad's embattled regime.

"You will not be able to take Damascus by force and you will not be able to topple the regime militarily. This is a long battle," Nasrallah said, addressing the Syrian opposition.

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"Syria has real friends in the region and in the world who will not allow Syria to fall into the hands of America or Israel."

Hezbollah and Iran are close allies of Assad. Rebels have accused them of sending fighters to assist Syrian troops trying to crush the two-year-old anti-Assad uprising, which the U.N. says has killed more than 70,000 people.

Deeper and more overt Hezbollah involvement in the Syrian conflict is almost certain to threaten stability in Lebanon, which is sharply split along sectarian lines, and between supporters and opponents of Assad. It also risks drawing in Israel and Iran into a wider Middle East war.

Nasrallah said Tuesday there are no Iranian forces in Syria now, except for some experts who he said have been in Syria for decades. But he added: "What do you imagine would happen in the future if things deteriorate in a way that requires the intervention of the forces of resistance in this battle?"

Hezbollah has an arsenal that makes the group the most powerful military force in Lebanon, stronger than the national army. Its growing involvement in the Syrian civil war is already raising tensions inside the divided country and has drawn threats from enraged Syrian rebels and militants.

Nasrallah also said his fighters had a duty to protect the holy Shiite shrine of Sayida Zeinab, named for the granddaughter of Islam's Prophet Muhammad and located south of Damascus.

He said rebels have captured several villages around the shrine and have threatened to destroy it.

"If the shrine is destroyed things will get out of control," Nasrallah said, citing the 2006 bombing of the Shiite al-Askari shrine in the Iraqi city of Samarra. That attack was blamed on al Qaeda in Iraq and set off years of retaliatory bloodshed between Sunni and Shiite extremists that left thousands of Iraqis dead and pushed the country to the brink of civil war.

In recent weeks, government troops have overrun two rebel-held Damascus suburbs and a town outside the capital. They also have captured several villages near the border with Lebanon as part of their efforts to secure the strategic corridor running from Damascus to the Mediterranean coast, which is the heartland of the president's Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam.

Related:

• Obama: 'Some evidence' Syria used chemical weapons
• Bomb blast in Syria's capital kills at least 13
• 6 killed as bomb targets Syria's prime minister

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AMMAN - Syrian forces and militiamen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad killed at least 85 people when they stormed a Damascus suburb after five days of fighting, opposition activists in the area said on Sunday.

There was no immediate confirmation of the activists' account of what they described as a "massacre," including of women and children, at Jdeidet al-Fadel. Syrian authorities have banned most independent media since the uprising began in 2011.

Syria's Sana state news agency said the military "inflicted big losses on terrorists in Jdeidet al-Fadel and destroyed weapons and ammunition and killed and wounded members of the terrorist groups."

Jamal al-Golani, a member of the Revolution Leadership Council opposition group, said the number of dead may be higher than 250 and that most of the victims were shot at close range, but the presence of army patrols made documenting all of them difficult.

"Jdeidet al-Fadel was militarily a lost cause from day one because it was surrounded by the army from every direction. There are almost no wounded because they were shot on the spot," he said.

NBC News has not confirmed the reports.

The killings happened over several days when pro-Assad forces stormed an area where there were up to 270 rebels, Golani said, adding that he had counted 98 bodies in the streets and 86 people who he said had been summarily executed in makeshift clinics where they were lying wounded.

Kerry: US to double nonlethal aid to Syrian opposition

The working class district, one of several Sunni Muslim towns surrounding the capital that have been at the forefront of the uprising against Assad, is situated near hilltop bases for elite loyalist forces, who mostly belong to Assad's minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam that has dominated the country since the 1960s.

Abu Ahmad al-Rabi', an activist in the adjacent district of Jdeidet Artouz, said: "We documented 85 summarily executed, including 28 shot in a makeshift hospital after Assad's forces entered Jdeidet al-Fadel. We fear that the victims of the massacre are much higher."

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition monitoring group operating from London, said it documented 80 names of people killed, including three children, six women and 18 rebel fighters.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights said the International Committee for the Red Cross should be allowed to evacuate civilians from the district after credible reports of "extrajudicial killings and summary executions inside homes and tens of cases of sexual violence."

Syrian state television showed troops in a pickup truck patrolling the dusty town and several bodies of dead men in front of a building that appears to have been wrecked by gunfire. A Syrian commander described them as "terrorists."

Video footage taken by activists showed three bodies of young men lying next to each other in what appeared to be a makeshift clinic, all with apparent bullet wounds. 

In a pattern seen in other towns and neighborhoods overrun by Assad's forces, activists said shops in Jdeidet al Fadel were looted and torched.

Assad's forces have been accused of massacring hundreds of Sunnis in areas they stormed in Hama and Homs provinces and Damascus suburbs, while international rights groups say rebel forces have also committed atrocities, although on a smaller scale.

ZAATARI REFUGEE CAMP, Jordan - A sniper’s bullet ripped through Hazem Mahmoud’s back seven months ago in Homs, Syria. The 15-year-old has felt nothing below his waist since then. His legs are pale, wasted and scarred by sores.  One bites deep into his thigh.

“Before the war life was sweet,’’ Hazem said as he lay in a tin hut next to his sleeping sister. “Then the bombs and the shooting started. Now there are no hospitals in Syria, no one to help me.’’

Mohammad Hannon / AP, file

Refugees walk through water and mud in Zaatari refugee camp near the Syrian border in Mafraq, Jordan, on Jan. 8.

A wheelchair and a single suitcase are the family’s sole possessions in the camp. The family discarded everything else along the way.

Hazem is a boy the world has all but forgotten. At the Zaatari camp he is only one of thousands of desperate new arrivals on a recent morning. Only when we alert the United Nations staff is an ambulance summoned.

In the overcrowded camp, medical services are overwhelmed, and aid running dangerously short. Humanitarian officials estimate that more than 1.2 million Syrians have fled the country to escape the war between President Bashar Assad’s forces and the largely Sunni rebels trying to unseat him.

All the aid agencies complain they are approaching a funding crisis as big as the camp itself. Just one example: The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) provides the water for 120,000 refugees in Zaatari. Three hundred huge tankers lumber through the gates each day.

“This is for drinking, for washing, for the toilets, and yet we are not in a position to renew the contracts to keep that water coming,’’ says Simon Ingram of UNICEF.

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Many aid workers report tensions are mounting among the refugees; scuffles are common. Violent protests are no longer rare.

It doesn’t help that the huge sums promised by the international community have not been fulfilled. More than two-thirds of the funds needed to cover the basic needs of Syrian refugees have not materialized, United Nations officials say.

The result on the ground? Even food hand-outs might have to be cut, says Laure Chadraoui of the World Food Program.

"There is a lot of anger here. The assistance we provide helps hold that in. Take it away and the pressure cooker will explode,’’ she said.

Invisible wounds

Hazem and his family’s escape from Syria was both exhausting and miraculous.

After that his family – mother, father, sister and sister – moved from safe house to safe house, dodging Syrian army checkpoint.

Finally they were smuggled out of the city; first to Iraq and finally to Jordan.

The final stretch of the journey was 250 miles, with Hazem at times hoisted on his father’s back.

“What could I do, leave him to die?’’ said the father, who kept his face hidden around journalists.

The family’s story is one of thousands. Many times the wounds aren’t visible.

Ibrahim, a serious-faced boy of 13, says he dreams of joining his four brothers who fight with the rebel army.

His nightmares are more real, about the day his home was bombed and he saw his friend shot dead.

“He was just in front, it could easily have been me,’’ Ibrahim said.

There is help. Ibrahim attends a school funded by UNICEF and a therapist helps him deal with his terrifying memories.

Doctors will not be able to help Hazem walk again. The news is not good when he was finally taken to Jordanian medical center in the camp. His spinal cord is severed, a doctor says.

“If we had a chance to treat when this first happened, maybe we could have helped. But it’s too late now,’’ said Dr. Ahmad A’Sanah.

Hazem at least will live, when so many have died. But what kind of life among the refugees of Zaatari is hard to imagine.

Related:

Human Rights Watch: Syrian planes have killed 4,300 civilians since July

Iraqi al Qaeda and Syria militants announce alliance

Syrian rebels ask US to shoot down Assad's warplanes

The Syrian regime has carried out indiscriminate and sometimes deliberate airstrikes against civilians that have killed at least 4,300 people since last summer and that amount to war crimes, an international human rights group said Thursday.

Human Rights Watch said Syrian fighter jets have deliberately targeted bakeries, bread lines and hospitals in the country's northern region.

Parts of northern Syria — especially areas along the border with Turkey — have in the past months fallen under the control of rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad, including several neighborhoods of the northern city of Aleppo, the country's largest urban center.

"The aim of the airstrikes appears to be to terrorize civilians from the air, particularly in the opposition-controlled areas where they would otherwise be fairly safe from any effects of fighting," Ole Solvang of the New York-based group told The Associated Press.

These attacks are "serious violations of international humanitarian law," and people who commit such breaches are "responsible for war crimes," the group said.

Aleppo Media Center AMC via AP

A citizen's image authenticated by The Associated Press shows homes destroyed in what was said to be a government airstrike and shelling in Aleppo, Syria, on Thursday. A rights group has accused Syria of indiscriminate and even deliberate airstrikes against civilians.

Solvang led the HRW team that inspected 52 sites in northern Syria and documented 59 unlawful attacks by the Syrian Air Force. At least 152 people were killed in these attacks, according to an HRW report released Thursday.

In most of the strikes, the regime planes appear to have had no military target in sight, such as armed opposition supporters or rebel headquarters, when they dropped their weapons on civilian areas, the group said.

The 80-page HRW report said that across Syria, more than 4,300 civilians have been killed in attacks by Assad's jets since last July.

The report is the most comprehensive study of Syrian air force operations since last summer, when Assad's forces started to rely heavily on fighter jets to repel rebel advances and reverse their territorial gains.

Officials in Damascus could not immediately be reached for comment on the report.

The opposition now controls large swaths of northern Syria, and last month captured their first provincial capital, the city of Raqqa. Opposition fighters also control whole districts of Aleppo and some key infrastructure in the east, including oil fields and dams on the Euphrates River.

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While the rebels have made major gains, they often cannot hold on to the territory because of the regime's superior air power. The continued threat from the air has also stalled efforts to effectively govern rebel-held areas, allowing opposition leaders from the Western-backed alliance only brief excursions into areas under rebel control.

For its part, the Syrian National Coalition has been marred by severe divisions in its ranks since its formation late last year in Qatar, and its leaders are mostly seen as disconnected from the myriad rebel forces fighting inside Syria.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met with opposition leaders in London on Wednesday to discuss ways to step up aid to rebels fighting to topple the regime in Damascus.

The United Nations says that more than 70,000 people have been killed in Syria's 2-year-old conflict. It started with peaceful protests against Assad's rule, inspired by other Arab Spring uprisings, but following a harsh regime crackdown descended into full-blown civil war.

Related:

Iraqi al Qaeda and Syria militants announce alliance

Syrian rebels ask US to shoot down Assad's warplanes

Rebels claim Assad forces fired chemical weapon