• Heavy fighting breaks relative lull in Damascus

    Goran Tomasevic / Reuters

    A Free Syrian Army fighter throws a hand grenade inside a Syrian army base during fighting in Damascus on Sunday.

    By Khaled Yacoub Oweis, Reuters

    Heavy fighting erupted in and around Damascus on Wednesday as rebels battled President Bashar Assad's forces, breaking a lull in the conflict, opposition activists and Syrian state media said.

    Assad's forces also came under attack in the east of the country, where a suicide car bomb struck a military intelligence compound in the city of Palmyra, causing dozens of casualties, they said.

    Authorities in Damascus closed the main Abbasid Square and the Fares al-Khoury thoroughfare as fighters attacked roadblocks and fortifications with rocket-propelled grenades and mortars.

    Accounts of intense fighting were reported by a number of news agencies, including Al Arabiya News and The Associated Press, in addition to state and activist media.

    "The areas of Jobar, Zamalka, al-Zablatani and parts of Qaboun and the ring road have become a battleground," activist Fida Mohammad said from the district of Qaboun.

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    A look back at the conflict that has overtaken the country.

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    Another activist said an army tank stationed at the main al-Kabbas roadblock on the ring road had been destroyed. Residents reported explosions across the east and north of the capital.

    In Jobar, a working-class Sunni Muslim area adjacent to Abbasid Square, mosque speakers chanted "God is Greatest" in support of opposition fighters who attacked roadblocks in the neighborhood, activists said.

    They said tanks stationed on the edge of the central district of Midan, just outside the walls of Old Damascus, shelled southern districts of the city.

    Syrian state television said: "Our noble army is continuing its operations against the terrorists in Irbeen, Zamalka and Harasta and Sbeineg, destroying the criminal lairs."

    Assad's symbols of power came under attack in Palmyra, 140 miles northeast of Damascus, on the main road to the oil-producing east of the country.

    A bomb destroyed part of the back wall of the military intelligence compound near the Roman-era ruins in the city and then a suicide car bomber drove through, detonating the vehicle and destroying parts of the facility, activists in Palmyra said.

    They said it was not immediately clear how many people had been killed in the blast and clashes which followed. Video footage, which could not be immediately verified, showed a large cloud of thick smoke rising in the city.

    "The first car bomb struck at around six in the morning. The second one, which caused the larger explosion, broke through into the compound 10 minutes later," activist Abu al-Hassan said from the city.

    He said tanks stationed in the compound fired shells in response into an adjacent residential neighborhood, killing several civilians.

    Roadblocks across the city also came under attack.

    The state news agency said two "suicide terrorists" blew up cars packed with explosives near a garage in a residential district, killing and wounding several people. Among those killed was a woman, it said.

    Street demonstrations against Assad's rule erupted in Palmyra at the beginning of the revolt almost two years ago. But the army has since tightened control of the city, which is situated near a major oil pipeline junction.

    After a failed uprising in the 1980s led by the Muslim Brotherhood against the rule of Assad's father, the late President Hafez Assad, thousands of rebels were executed in a military jail in Palmyra.

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  • Turkey fires on Syria after another Syrian shell hits its territory

    By NBC wire services

    Updated at 9 a.m. ET: Another mortar shell from Syria struck Turkish territory on Saturday, prompting a fourth day of retaliatory artillery fire from Turkey, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.


    The mortar landed in a rural area near the village of Guvecci, during intense fighting between the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad's regime and the rebels in Syria's Idlib province across the border.

    No one was hurt by the mortar, but Turkish troops near Guvecci immediately responded with "counter-fire," the agency said.

    Mourning, sighs of relief in Turkish town shelled by Syria

    NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin reports from the border between Turkey and Syria where small farming communities take the brunt of spillover violence, making life unbearable. 

    The latest shelling came a day after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called on Syria not to test Turkey's "limits and determination."

    Turkish artillery has been responding to shelling from Syria since Wednesday, when a mortar landed at a Turkish border town, killing five civilians.

    Turkey strikes targets in Syria after mortar attack kills 5

    Turkey's parliament on Thursday also voted to allow cross border military operations in Syria, further raising tensions between the neighbors that were once close allies.

    The Hatay governor's office said the round fired from Syria on Saturday landed on empty land about 50 yards inside Turkey.

    "It is assessed that the shell was fired by Syrian Arab Republic security forces at opposition forces along the border," a statement on its website said.  "There was no loss of life in the incident. The Guvecci border post retaliated in kind with four rounds from 81 mm mortars."

    The Dogan news agency said another mortar round from Syria landed around 50 yards from an observation tower near Guvecci around 11 a.m. and smoke rose from the area. There were no immediate reports of casualties or retaliation but a response was expected.

    Separately, the governor's office warned people in the area not to go out on balconies or spend time in open places, Dogan said. It said the Red Crescent was offering psychological support to people in the area.

    There were two similar incidents in Hatay on Friday.

    "Those who attempt to test Turkey's deterrence, its decisiveness, its capacity, I say here they are making a fatal mistake," Erdogan said in a bellicose speech to a crowd in Istanbul on Friday afternoon.

    "We are not interested in war, but we're not far from war either. This nation has come to where it is today having gone through intercontinental wars," he said. 

    The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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  • UN chief says Syria hasn't fully complied with peace plan

    REUTERS/SANA/Handout

    A handout photograph released by Syria's national news agency SANA, shows Moroccan Colonel Ahmet Himmiche (3rd L), leader of the first U.N. monitoring team in Syria, during a visit with his team to one of Damascus' suburbs, one of the locations of protests against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad April 18.

     

    By Reuters

    UNITED NATIONS -- Syria has not fully complied with its obligations to withdraw troops and heavy weapons from towns and has yet to send a "clear signal" about its commitment to peace, the U.N. chief told the Security Council in a letter obtained by Reuters on Wednesday.

    Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said an expanded U.N. monitoring mission for Syria would be comprised of "an initial deployment" of up to 300 unarmed observers who would supervise a fragile week-old ceasefire between forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and opposition fighters seeking to oust him.

    "The Syrian Government has yet to fully implement its initial obligations regarding the actions and deployments of its troops, or to return them to barracks," he told the council.

    "Violent incidents and reports of casualties have escalated again in recent days, with reports of shelling of civilian areas and abuses by Government forces," he said. "The Government reports violent actions by armed groups."

     

    "The cessation of armed violence is therefore clearly incomplete," Ban said, adding that both sides say they are committed to ending the "violence in all its forms."

    Diplomats on the 15-nation council say Ban's report and a briefing they will receive from U.N.-Arab League mediator Kofi Annan's deputy Jean-Marie Guehenno on Thursday at 9:00 a.m. ET will be crucial in determining whether the conditions are right for deploying a U.N. monitoring mission to Syria.

    Correspondent Neil Connery has travelled to the city of Al-Qusayr, near Homs, where he has discovered that Syrian forces and tanks still occupy the area.

    Ban said such a force would be helpful in securing an end to all fighting though it was essential the conditions be right for deployment.

    "Developments since 12 April underline the importance of sending a clear message to the authorities that a cessation of armed violence must be respected in full, and that action is needed on all aspects of (Annan's) six-point (peace) plan," he said.

    Diplomats' wives urge Syrian first lady: 'Stop your husband'

    "At the same time the very fragility of the situation underscores the importance of putting in place arrangements that can allow impartial supervision and monitoring," he said.

    An advance team of monitors in Syria had visited the town of Deraa and "enjoyed freedom of movement" there, Ban said. However, he noted that "the team's initial request to visit Homs was not granted, with officials claiming security concerns."

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  • Tripoli airport closed after militias clash

    By msnbc.com staff and news services

    TRIPOLI - Tripoli's airport closed Saturday night after armed men in the vehicles of Libya's new national army tried to take control of of the installation from a powerful militia, according to reports.

    It was the latest in a series of clashes between the rival militias which, in the absence of a fully-functioning central government, have wielded real power on the streets in Libya since a revolt forced out former leader Moammar Gadhafi.

    Mukhtar Al-Akhdar, commander of the airport's security force and head of a militia unit from Zintan, south-west of Tripoli, which controls the international airport, told Reuters on Sunday that a convoy of vehicles approached a checkpoint about 3 km (2 miles) from the airport.

    He said the armed men in the convoy said they had come to take over security, and a gunfight then broke out.

    "No one was killed. We have only two people injured on our side," Al-Akhdar told Reuters. "These people were using national army vehicles. When we asked (acting army chief of staff Khalifa) Haftar about it, he said he did not know these people."

    NTC military spokesman Ahmed Bani did not comment on the details of the incident but said: "There is no political or other problem. The problem is now sorted out."

    Hours earlier, Libya's president, Mustafa Abdul Jalil, begged for all sides to work for reconciliation, The Guardian reported.

    Also Sunday, a team of U.S. weapons experts disposed of some 1,300 pounds (600 kilograms) of ordnance deep in the sand just outside Tripoli.

    "Our goal is to help the Libyan people to secure these loose arms," said U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Andrew Shapiro, who was on hand to watch along with the U.S. ambassador.

    There have also been concerns following Libya's eight-month civil war about the massive amount of weapons and munitions that have gone missing, many of them taken from arms depots scattered about the country.

    Shapiro said that since September, American experts have disabled around 5,000 shoulder-fired missile launchers — weapons that Western and Libyan officials have expressed concerns about because they pose a threat to civil aviation.

    Separately, the head of the Libyan national army was ambushed at a checkpoint in the capital, the newspaper reported. The general's jeep escaped and two militiamen were later arrested, the Guardian quoted a spokesman as saying.

    Power vacuum
    Libya's central government is becoming slowly more assertive and signaling that it is time for the militias -- which emerged from the seven-month war to end Gaddafi's rule -- to hand over to the new national police and army.

    Tripoli city council has given militias from other towns until December 20 to return home. The council chief said if they do not meet the deadline, all roads in the city will be blocked, except to defense and interior ministry vehicles.

    Most militia leaders say publicly that they are ready to hand over to central institutions as soon as they receive the order to do so from the NTC.

    But the national police and army are only just beginning to function. Some of the militias believe if they withdraw, that will leave a vacuum that will be filled by rival militias, in particular the powerful Islamists.

    Tripoli international airport has already been a flashpoint for tensions. Late last month, armed men from Zintan briefly detained Abdel Hakim Belhadj, the Islamist leader of one of Tripoli's most powerful militias, as he tried to catch a flight.

    Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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