ENNISKILLEN, Northern Ireland - Global leaders at the G-8 summit called for peace talks to resolve Syria’s civil war Tuesday, but made no mention of arming the rebels or what should happen to President Bashar Assad.

“We remain committed to achieving a political solution to the crisis based on a vision for a united, inclusive and democratic Syria,” said a final communique.

The document made no mention of Assad, whom Western leaders have said in the past said must step down as part of a resolution.

However, in an indication of some agreement, it did call on both sides to commit to “destroying and expelling” al-Qaeda-affiliated groups and removing “any other non-state actors linked to terrorism.”

President Barack Obama echoed that concern, saying it was important to build a strong opposition in Syria that could function if Assad loses power.

Isolated at the G-8, Russia's Vladimir Putin had clashed with other leaders over the conflict and resisted their attempts to get him to agree to anything that would imply Assad should step down or that Russia should tone down its support for Assad.

Obama and U.S. allies want Assad to cede power while Putin, whose rhetoric has become increasingly anti-Western since he was re-elected last year, believes that would be disastrous at a time when no clear transition plan exists.

Russia has been Assad's most powerful supporter as his forces struggle to crush an uprising in which an estimated 93,000 people have been killed since March 2011. He can also count on backing from Iran.

The United States, Turkey, and European and Gulf Arab states support the rebels, who have lost ground to Assad's troops in recent weeks.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, speaking on the summit sidelines, said earlier that Russia had refused to accept any mention of Assad's fate in the communique.

"This would be not just unacceptable for the Russian side, but we are convinced that it would be utterly wrong, harmful and would completely upset the political balance," Ryabkov said.

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Russia and the United States agree the warring sides should be brought together to discuss Syria's future at a peace conference possibly as soon as July. 

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper said the leaders’ talks on the issue had been more successful than anticipated, given the strong differences between Russia and the West.

"We have a very different outcome and much better outcome than I thought we were going to have," Harper told reporters. Before the summit, Harper had said he feared Putin's support for Syria would make a G-8 agreement difficult.

"I think this was a very significant move on the part of Mr. Putin and the Russians," he said.

The United Nations says 93,000 people have been killed in Syria and 1.6 million Syrians have fled abroad. Lebanon, the smallest of Syria's neighbors, has taken in more than half a million Syrian refugees.

Related:

• Obama and Putin cite differences on Syria but say they want violence to end
• Obama announces extra $300 million in aid for Syrians, refugees
• US military officials say help for Syria likely to escalate gradually

This story was originally published on Tue Jun 18, 2013 12:18 PM EDT

Anthony Devlin / Reuters

Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron and Russia's President Vladimir Putin hold a joint news conference in London on June 16, 2013. The two leaders met ahead of the G8 summit in Northern Ireland.

AMMAN/LONDON — Russian President Vladimir Putin, arriving in Britain ahead of an international summit set to be dominated by disagreement over the U.S. decision to send weapons to Syria's rebels, said the West must not arm fighters who eat human flesh.

In Syria, rebels fought back on Sunday against forces of President Bashar al-Assad and his Lebanese Hezbollah allies near Aleppo, where Assad has announced a campaign to recapture the rebel-held north after seizing a strategic town this month.

After months of deliberations, Washington decided last week to send weapons to the rebels, declaring that Assad's forces had crossed a "red line" by using nerve gas.

The move throws the superpower's weight behind the revolt and signals a potential turning point in global involvement in a two-year-old war that has already killed at least 93,000 people.

It has also infuriated Russia, Cold War-era ally of Syria, which has sold arms to Assad and used its veto at the U.N. Security Council to block resolutions against him.

Russia has dismissed the U.S. evidence that Assad's forces used nerve gas. The White House says President Barack Obama will try to lobby Putin to drop his support for Assad during this week's G8 summit hosted by British Prime Minister David Cameron.

After meeting Cameron in London, Putin said Russia wanted to create the conditions for a resolution of the conflict.

"One does not really need to support the people who not only kill their enemies, but open up their bodies, eat their intestines in front of the public and cameras," Putin said.

"Are these the people you want to support? Are they the ones you want to supply with weapons? Then this probably has little relation to the humanitarian values preached in Europe for hundreds of years."

The incident Putin referred to was most likely that of a rebel commander filmed last month cutting into the torso of a dead soldier and biting into a piece of one of his organs.

Both sides have been accused of atrocities in the conflict. The United States and other countries that aid the rebels say one of the reasons for doing so is to support mainstream opposition groups and reduce the influence of extremists.

DOUBTS OVER CONFERENCE

The U.S. plan to arm the rebels also places new doubt over plans for an international peace conference called by Washington and Moscow, their first joint attempt in a year to try to seek a settlement.

After meeting Putin, Britain's Cameron said the divide between Russia and the West over Syria could be bridged, although they disagreed about who was at fault.

"What I take from our conversation today is that we can overcome these differences if we recognize that we share some fundamental aims: to end the conflict, to stop Syria breaking apart, to let the Syrian people decide who governs them and to take the fight to the extremists and defeat them."

Britain has not said whether it too will arm the rebels, but the issue is contentious even within Cameron's Conservative-led government. Nick Clegg, the deputy prime minister from his Liberal Democrat coalition partners, said: "We clearly don't think it's the right thing to do now, or else we would have done it."

Under its new posture, Washington has also said it will keep warplanes and Patriot surface-to-air missiles in Jordan, an ally whose territory it can use to help arm and train rebel fighters. Washington has 4,500 troops in Jordan carrying out exercises.

Washington has not ruled out imposing a no-fly zone over parts of Syria, perhaps near the Jordanian border, although it has taken no decision yet to do so.

Jordan's King Abdullah rallied his own armed forces on Sunday, telling military cadets: "If the world does not help as it should, and if the matter becomes a danger to our country, we are able at any moment to take the measures to protect the country and the interests of our people."

Washington hopes its backing will restore rebel momentum after Assad's forces seized the initiative by gaining the open support of Hezbollah, Lebanon's Iranian-backed Shi'ite militia, which sent thousands of seasoned fighters to aid Assad.

Just a few months ago, Western countries believed Assad's days were numbered. But with Hezbollah's support he was able to achieve a major victory this month in Qusair, a strategically located rebel-held town on a main route from Lebanon.

FIGHT FOR ALEPPO

Since then, the government has announced major plans to seize the north, including Aleppo, Syria's biggest city and commercial centre, largely rebel-held for nearly a year. The United Nations says it fears for a bloodbath in the north.

Rebels say they are fighting back against government offensives in the north. An opposition operations room in northern Aleppo said fighters had destroyed an army tank and killed 20 troops at Marat al-Arteek, a town where opposition sources say rebels are holding back an armored column sent to reinforce loyalists from isolated Shi'ite villages.

"Assad's forces and Hezbollah are trying to control northern rural Aleppo but they are being repelled and dealt heavy losses," Colonel Abdeljabbar al-Okeidi, a Free Syrian Army commander in Aleppo, told al-Arabiya Television.

He said Hezbollah had sent up to 2,000 fighters to Aleppo and the surrounding areas, but expressed confidence the opposition would prevail.

"Aleppo and Qusair are different. In Qusair we were surrounded by villages that had been occupied by Hezbollah and by loyalist areas. We did not even have a place to take our wounded. In Aleppo, we have a strategic depth and logistical support and we are better organized," he said. "Aleppo will turn into the grave of these Hezbollah devils."

Battles were also fought inside Aleppo itself, where thousands of loyalist troops and militiamen reinforced by Hezbollah have been massing and attacking opposition-held parts of the city, driving rebel fighters back.

Opposition activists said the army was also airlifting troops behind rebel lines to Ifrin, in a Kurdish area, which would give access for a bigger sweep inside the city.

"For a week, the rebel forces have been generally on the retreat in Aleppo, but the tide has started turning in the last two days," said Abu Abdallah, an activist in the area.

Hezbollah's support for Assad, a follower of the minority Alawite offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, against mainly Sunni Muslim rebels has increased fears of sectarian violence spreading into neighboring countries.

In Lebanon, security sources said gunmen had shot dead four Shi'ite Muslim men in an ambush in the Bekaa Valley close to the Syrian frontier. It was not clear who was behind the shooting.

Lebanon is still rebuilding from its own sectarian civil war, fought from 1975-1990. Fighting between Sunnis and Shi'ites was also behind most of the violence in Iraq in the decade after the U.S. invasion of 2003.

Additional reporting by Laila Bassam in Beirut, Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman and Guy Faulconbridge, Costas Pitas and Andrew Osborn in London

The United States could make a decision as early as this week on whether to arm Syrian rebels, U.S. officials said on Monday, as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry put off a Middle East trip to attend meetings on the subject.

However, the U.S. government has debated for months whether to provide weaponry to the rebels in their civil war against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's forces and has so far decided against.

One U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity stressed that while a decision on whether to start arming the rebels is possible as soon as this week, deliberations on the issue could easily take longer.

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Kerry put off a planned trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories to attend the White House meetings, an Obama administration source said.

What has changed in recent weeks is the tilting of the battlefield against the rebels as Lebanese Hezbollah has entered the fray on the side of Assad's forces, helping them to retake the strategic town of Qusair. .

That shift has made it less likely that a U.S. and Russian planned peace conference to bring the rebels and the government to the table would succeed in U.S. President Barack Obama's aim of a negotiated political transition to remove Assad from power.

Meanwhile, Israel's intelligence minister repeated a warning that Assad could prevail in the civil war because of backing from Iran and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

Yuval Steinitz, minister for international affairs, strategy and intelligence, was asked at a briefing with foreign journalists Monday whether recent successes by Assad's forces against outgunned rebels might herald victory for the Syrian leader.

"I always thought that it might be the case that at the end of the day Assad, with a very strong Iranian and Hezbollah backing, might gain the upper hand," Steinitz said. "And I think that this is possible and I thought that this is possible already a long time ago."

Steinitz, who is not a member of Israel's security cabinet but does have access to intelligence updates as well as Netanyahu's ear, said Assad's government "might not just survive but even regain territories" from the rebels.

DAMASCUS, Syria -- President Bashar Assad's forces are turning their sights on rebel fighters in two major cities -- Homs and Aleppo -- after capturing a strategic town in western Syria.

The latest battlefield success in Qusair, near the border with Lebanon, was partly due to Lebanese Hezbollah fighters' increasing role on Assad's side.

Government troops pressed ahead Thursday with an aggressive military offensive, seizing control of the village of Dabaa just north of the town.

Hundreds of rebel fighters who had been entrenched in Qusair for more than a year fled Wednesday after a punishing three-week assault, retreating to surrounding areas.

The regime's triumph in Qusair, a key crossroads town of supply lines between Damascus and western and northern Syria, showcased the potentially game-changing role of Hezbollah in Syria's civil war and was openly celebrated in the militant group's strongholds in Lebanon and in Damascus, the seat of Assad's power.

Syrian state-run media portrayed Qusair's fall as a turning point in the more than two-year civil war that has killed more than 70,000 people.

However, dozens of rebel fighter brigades have taken unquestioned control of huge swathes of territory in the country's north and east, setting up local councils and Islamic courts to administer affairs in towns and villages.

Kurds have all but carved out their own separate existence in the country's northeast.

Josef Holliday, of the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington think tank, said he believes Assad is not aiming for outright victory over the rebels in all of Syria.

"The objective is survival in what they (regime loyalists) consider the strategically important parts of Syria, with the majority of the population," he said.

Following the victory in Qusair, the regime's next targets are rebel-held areas in and around the city of Homs, a government official told The Associated Press.

As Syria's third-largest city and one-time epicenter of the uprising, Homs holds both strategic and symbolic importance for the regime.

In April 2011, one month after the uprising against Assad began, protesters gathered at central Clock Square in Homs, bringing mattresses, food and water in hopes of emulating Cairo's Tahrir Square during the Egyptian revolution.

The peaceful, mass protests eroded Assad's narrative that the uprising was the work of "terrorists" and "armed thugs," and were quickly put down. Since then, the predominantly Sunni city, with Christian and Alawite minorities, has come under crushing attack on numerous occasions.

"The (army) command has put forward a plan, which is being executed," said the government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to divulge details about ongoing military operations.

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He said the army was carrying out "quick, successive attacks" to secure the northern entrance of Homs city and seized the village of al-Khaldiyeh along the way Thursday. It also intends to regain the rebel strongholds of Rastan and Talbiseh, towns just north of Homs city.

Pro-regime media outlets have said government forces are preparing to move to retake the contested northern city of Aleppo next.

Aleppo, Syria's largest city and commercial hub, was overrun by rebels last summer, and remains one of the country's bloodiest battlegrounds as rebels and regime forces fight over it.

Hezbollah fighters were instrumental to the regime victory in Qusair, but it's not clear whether they will participate to the same extent in future battles deeper inside Syria.

Jeff White, of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the rebels were in for trouble, unless they improve their military and political command structure and get more weapons.

"The regime has laid down the challenge, and the rebels will have to respond, or they will have a bleak future ahead of them," he said.

The West, particularly the United States, has been reluctant to send more sophisticated weapons out of fear they might fall into the hands of Islamic extremists fighting in the rebel ranks, including members of Jabhat al-Nusra, which has sworn allegiance to al Qaeda.

A U.N.-sponsored international conference that was to bring representatives of the Assad government and the opposition together for negotiations has now been put off to at least July. 

Related:

• Syria's Assad claims victory in major battle, rebels say they are being massacred
• Israel hit by missiles from Syria as civil war flares in Golan Heights
• France is 'certain' sarin gas was used in Syria; UN condemns 'brutality' of conflict

Two missiles from Syria landed in Israel Thursday as fighting between President Bashar Assad’s forces and rebels raged on the Golan Heights.

The Israel Defense Forces said that a “closed military zone” was declared near the Quneitra border crossing in response to the fighting. People were not being allowed inside the area and locals were warned not to work in the fields.

EPA

Smoke caused by shelling rises on the Syrian side of the border with Israel, near the Quneitra crossing in the Golan Heights, on Thursday.

No one was injured on the Israeli side, but two wounded Syrians who came to the border were taken to hospitals in Israel, an IDF spokeswoman said.

“There were two projectiles that landed earlier in open areas in the north and central Golan Heights near the border of Israel and Syria,” she said.

“Initial reports suggest … the missiles were the result of the domestic situation in Syria,” she added, saying the “assumption at the moment” was they had not actually been fired at a target in Israel.

She said the closed zone was set up because of the “internal fighting within Syria.”

“Agricultural workers have been instructed not to work in fields in that area” at the moment, she said. Outsiders such as journalists would not be allowed to enter the zone.

The spokeswoman declined to comment on whether Israeli troops were being moved toward the border.

An IDF source said that “we maintain routine security operation in the area” when asked the same question.

The border is guarded by a United Nations’ peacekeeping force and its operations chief Herve Ladsous confirmed there had been fighting in the area, Reuters reported.

"Yes there was shooting," Herve Ladsous told reporters during a visit to Paris.

"We are following events in the Golan Heights, which is a very sensitive region, with particularly close attention," he added.

Ladsous added that the 1,000-strong United Nations Disengagement Observer Force had taken measures to ensure the safety of its personnel but stressed that its involvement was not called into doubt by the incidents.

He said the region had been "extremely confrontational" in the past year. "We are doing everything we can to reduce risks. We have closed posts that were too exposed, reinforced our equipment and vehicles, and our activities are more static," he said.

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Activists told Reuters earlier on Thursday that rebels had taken the Quneitra crossing, which is manned by the United Nations force and is the only passage between Syria and Israel.

"There are heavy explosions and fierce clashing ongoing in the area," said Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Ladsous did not confirm that the crossing had been captured.

Austria's chancellor, however, announced Thursday that the country was withdrawing its 380 members of the peacekeeping force because of the fierce fighting, Reuters reported.

"Freedom of movement in the area ... no longer exists. The uncontrolled and immediate danger to Austrian soldiers has risen to an unacceptable level," Chancellor Werner Faymann and his deputy Michael Spindelegger said in a joint statement.

The violence also spilled over into Lebanon overnight, Reuters reported. Lebanon's national news agency said 11 rockets had hit the town of Baalbek, a stronghold of the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah, which has thrown its weight fully behind Assad's war effort. 

Ahmed Shalha / Reuters

A resident stands in front of his house in Baalbek, Lebanon, on Thursday after it was hit by a rocket.

The White House on Wednesday condemned the assault on the Syrian town of Qusair by Syrian government forces, who worked with Lebanese Hezbollah allies to take control from rebel fighters.

"The United States condemns in the strongest possible terms the Assad regime's assault on Qusair, which has killed untold numbers of civilians and is causing tremendous humanitarian suffering," White House spokesman Jay Carney said in statement.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Related:

• Syria's Assad claims victory in major battle, rebels say they are being massacred
• France is 'certain' sarin gas was used in Syria; UN condemns 'brutality' of conflict
• More NBC News coverage of Syria

This story was originally published on Thu Jun 6, 2013 7:12 AM EDT

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LONDON -- A 33-year-old Michigan woman who converted to Islam was among Westerners killed in Syria while fighting alongside rebels, according to reports on Friday.

The family of Nicole Mansfield of Flint were informed of her death by the FBI on Thursday afternoon, her aunt told Reuters.

She was killed alongside a British man, Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, told The Times newspaper.

Syrian state television showed what appeared to be Mansfield's passport and driving license. It also showed the British man and said he was born in London in 1990, ITV News said.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said Friday that the State Department did not yet have "precise information," adding: "I know there were reports of an American woman killed there. ... We have to follow up."

Britain’s Foreign Office said it was checking the reports. "We are aware of the claims," it said in a statement. "We have no verification, but are seeking information. The UK has warned for some time against all travel to Syria."

The victims were taking photographs of military positions near the Turkish border when they were ambushed by government troops, Rahman said.

Mansfield’s aunt, Monica Mansfield Speelman, told Reuters: "I'm just devastated. Evidently, she was fighting with opposition forces."

Speelman said Mansfield, a single mother of an 18-year-old daughter, had converted to Islam about five years ago but she did not know when her niece had traveled to Syria.

"I didn't think she would stoop that low to go over there and try to harm anybody," Speelman said of her niece, who she said had worked at a group home.

A U.S. State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, had earlier told Reuters that Washington was working via the Czech Republic mission in Syria to get more information.

"As we do in all such cases, we are working through our Czech protecting power in Syria to obtain more information, and we appreciate the efforts of the Czech mission on behalf of our citizens," the official said. He added that U.S. authorities could not comment further "because of privacy considerations." 

Related:

• McCain slips into Syria to meet with rebel leaders
• Israel warns of action over Russian plan to give missiles to Syria's Assad

This story was originally published on Fri May 31, 2013 5:38 AM EDT

SANA via EPA

Syrian army soldiers taking position in the Jarba area in rural Damascus, Syria, in this photo released May 13 by the official Syrian Arab News Agency.

News analysis

DAMASCUS, Syria – It's early Friday morning, a holy day in Syria's capital. But war is no respecter of dawn or devotion; dense smoke is rising from several suburbs and the birdsong is punctured by the thud of falling artillery shells.

This is Damascus today; a city filled with the noise of war. MiG warplanes swoop overhead en route to rebel targets, mortars land amid dense housing, tanks rumble through suburban streets and, now and again, suicide bombers detonate their vehicles in the hope of killing President Bashar Assad's men. 

But there is a difference in the war here today, from when I last visited four months ago.

Assad's men appear to be winning, in Damascus at least.

I walked through a suburb where the front line has been pushed back 600 yards by government troops. That may not seem much, but when every 50 yards can cost scores of men's lives, even a modest advance can be significant. 

The smoke from the shelling is further away from the city than before. Rebels are less able to launch attacks on the city center. In their stronghold of Jobar, a suburb of Damascus, which they have held for months, there are now around 200 rebels who are surrounded by government forces pounding them relentlessly.

Much of the fighting on Assad's side is now being done by the militia men of the National Defense Force. They are part time soldiers, trained and armed in 40 days. Their motivation is simple and strong: to defend their districts and to drive out rebels they see as Islamist extremists.

It's thought there are around 50,000 militia soldiers. They know their ground and are proving more adept at urban, street fighting than a regular army trained in national warfare and tank battles.    

Syria’s Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad tells me "momentum is absolutely on our side…We have new tactics, new ways of dealing with armed groups. Now we know the art of fighting them."

It's a pattern repeated in many areas of Syria. In the country's third largest city, Homs, a key suburb, Wadi Sayeh, was retaken by Assad's men. In the South, rebels withdrew hundreds of men from one town because they couldn't be resupplied with ammunition from Jordan. In areas of the North, rebels are running low on arms and ammunition because some donors can't afford to keep paying for munitions two years into the war.

So is this a tipping point in the war?

No.

Does it mean Assad will win?

No.

It all depends on what you mean by winning. 

‘Winning’ by not losing
The former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once said that rebels in a guerrilla war only have to avoid losing to win. But in Syria that maxim might equally apply to the government. 

After Tunisia's leader fell in days, Egypt's in weeks, Libya's in months, the world assumed Assad would fall quickly. It's now been years. And he's still there.

He's there partly because of Russian and Iranian help. He receives a steady supply of weapons from both. 

The latest report in the New York Times suggests Russia has now given Syria advanced anti-ship cruise missiles, in order to deter the West from mounting a blockade or no-fly-zone against the country. Russia is also gathering a flotilla of warships near Syria in a show of strength and support for its ally, before next month's planned peace talks in Geneva. Russia's more conventional weapons stocks have been supplying the guns of the government for two years.

Syria's armed forces are also being bolstered by men from the Lebanese organization Hezbollah, men trained and in many cases, practiced in urban warfare. 

Ward Al-Keswani/Reuters

Free Syrian Army fighters carry their weapons while walking down a debris-filled street in the al-Ziyabiya area in Damascus on May 5.

Rebels losing propaganda war
There is an ebb and flow to most wars. At the moment the government has the flow and rebels are on the ebb. 

They are losing ground in the propaganda war, too. Several times this week they have posted brutal videos on the Internet, demonstrating their ruthlessness.

In one, an Islamist fighter, from the Jabhat al-Nusra group that is affiliated with al-Qaeda, appears to publicly execute 11 men kneeling in front of him. Before shooting each of them once in the head, he accuses the men of being soldiers responsible for a massacre. It's one of two brutal execution videos posted by the Al-Nusra group in recent days. Another,video widely circulated in Syria, appears to show a rebel fighter from Homs cutting a hole in a dead soldier’s chest, removing the heart and appearing to take a bite.  

It may be an ancient tactic of war, to dehumanize and terrify your enemy, but the rebels are making many in the outside world queasy and ready to question whether they are worthy of further support. Memories of smiling, flag waving, peaceful pro-democracy demonstrators have dimmed.

And the opposition’s lack of organization is becoming a real problem.

There is, arguably, no such thing as the Free Syrian Army. Aid organizations say they have to deal with around 300 different rebel groups, many loosely grouped under the umbrella of the FSA. Many others are rivals of the FSA, like the al-Nusra group. An “army” is usually something with a command structure and a unified organization. The FSA appears to be nothing of the kind.

As for a political opposition to Assad, the Syrian National Coalition is far from a united coalition. Politicians in the West are frustrated by the apparent inability of the “opposition” to provide a credible alternative to the Assad government.

What international ‘policy’?
All those issues have left supporters of Syria's initial revolution in a quandary.

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The U.S., Britain, France and others are now seriously considering sending weapons to certain, vetted, rebel groups. But which ones? Would the apparent heart-eater's group qualify? How can Europe or America guarantee that the arms they ship will not end up in the hands of Islamists who later turn them against the West? Just remember Benghazi and the murder of a U.S. Ambassador happened in a Libyan city the West began a war to save.

The American administration seems to be indecisive in the face of a seemingly insoluble crisis, haunted by intervention in Iraq, talking about an ever thickening red line on the use of chemical weapons, but concerned about arming the wrong people a year too late. 

Britain and France are pushing for the arming of rebels, while Germany and Austria are pointing to what they see as the folly of doing so. 

Qatar and Saudi Arabia are pouring arms into Syria, money that is making the Islamists of al-Nusra the most effective fighting force on the rebel side. The Gulf States have no interest in the victory of "freedom and democracy" in Syria. As Sunni Muslim states, they want to weaken Shia-dominated nations like Syria and Iran. For many in Saudi Arabia, the advance of a Salafist-Islamist group like the black flagged Nusra Front is an added bonus.

More losers, than winners
Syria's is now more than a sectarian conflict. It's a regional conflict in microcosm, where Iran and Saudi Arabia face off, where Russia and the West arm wrestle, where Israel and Turkey spar for regional dominance and where Syrians die in the tens of thousands.

My old notebook records a death toll of 8,000. That seemed astonishingly high to me, just a year ago. Now it is ten times that and I'm no longer surprised. In fact the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K. based organization that tracks the death toll, now puts it at more than 90,000.

Syria's story today is one of massacres and executions, gruesomely recorded for history on video, of ruthless attacks by both sides, of MiG warplanes bombing men with mortars and machine guns, a chronicle of death foretold, everywhere.

President Assad may be "winning" the war now, whatever winning means. Rebels may "win" in the end by seeing him leave office. But nobody is really winning.

This is, and has been for months, an unwinnable war, deadlocked and deadly. Neither side can break through and neither side will give up. 

Today in Syria, there are only losers.

Related links: 

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

Syria denies blame for Turkish border bomb blast that killed at least 46

NBC News coverage of Syria 

Ugarit News via AP file

In this image taken from video obtained from the Ugarit News, which has been authenticated based on its contents and other AP reporting, a man reads a statement as four abducted Filipino UN peacekeepers are seen in Daraa, Syria, on Thursday, May 9, 2013. The peacekeepers have now been released.

Four Filipino United Nations peacekeepers abducted last week by armed men while patrolling in the demilitarized area between Syria and the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights have been released, officials said Sunday.

U.N. officials and the Philippine army both said that the four are in good health.

The rebels from the Yarmouk Martyrs' Brigade had said they were holding the soldiers for their own safety after clashes with Syrian government forces had put them in danger, Reuters reported.

They were seized on Tuesday as they patrolled close to an area where the same rebel group held 21 Filipino observers for three days in March.

A rebel spokesman said the four were handed over on Sunday morning at a border checkpoint called Beit Ara, in an area where the Jordanian and Israeli borders join with the Golan Heights.

"They have been handed over in a spot in the Yarmouk Valley," Abu Iyas al-Horani told Reuters.

Philippine Foreign Minister Albert del Rosario confirmed to Reuters in Manila that the four had been released.

Brigadier General Domingo Tutaan, a spokesman for the Philippine armed forces, said the four had already been taken back to their battalion in the U.N. peacekeeping force on the Golan Heights.

The Philippines said it aimed to pull out 342 soldiers on peacekeeping duties in Golan after the abduction.

Israel captured the Golan Heights in the 1967 Middle East War and later annexed them, a move not recognized internationally.

Meanwhile, at least 82,000 people have been killed and 12,500 others are missing after two years of civil war in Syria, the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Sunday.

Most of the dead were killed by troops and militia loyal to President Bashar al-Assad and most of the missing are believed to have been detained by the government's secret police and other loyalists, the monitoring group said.

"The vast majority of civilian victims were killed by the regime. Killings in unofficial jails are commonplace, and the conditions under which prisoners are held are horrific," said Rami Abdulrahman, the Observatory's president.

The Observatory, established by Abdulrahman in Britain seven years ago, said 4,788 children were among the 34,473 civilians killed. Another 12,916 anti-Assad fighters were killed, along with 1,924 army deserters, it said.

On the loyalist side, 16,729 troops and 12,000 militiamen and informers have been killed. The report said the fate of around 2,500 loyalist troops believed to be held by rebels is unknown.

Reuters contributed to this report

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

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.

Slideshow: Syria uprising

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

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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

Khaled al-Hariri / Reuters

A destroyed car is pictured near the former Interior Ministry building after a blast in central Damascus on Tuesday killed at least 13 people and injured dozens more, according to state television and activists.

BEIRUT -- A bomb in central Damascus killed 13 people on Tuesday, state television said, a day after Prime Minister Wael al-Halki survived an attack on his convoy in the heart of the Syrian capital.

State television said 70 people were wounded, several critically. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that nine civilians and five soldiers had died.

Pro-government Al-Ikhbariya television showed firefighters running through thick smoke after the blast in Marjeh Square. Two bodies could be seen on the ground.

The target of the attack was not immediately clear. Footage showed the site of the blast was near the former Interior Ministry building on one of the capital's main roads.

Monday's attack on the prime minister's convoy killed six people in what has become an increasingly common tactic used by rebels.

A resident of Damascus, who lives a mile from the blast site, said the explosion shook the doors of her house.

"It must be huge for me to hear it like that. Casualties must be horrific because it is a super busy square at this time of day," she said over Skype.

Rebels have increased their attacks on Damascus, which include mortar fire from the contested suburbs, in a civil war that has cost more than 70,000 lives according to U.N. estimates.

A bomb in July killed four of President Bashar Assad's aides, including his brother-in-law Assef Shawkat and the defense minister.

Related:

Fighting reported near suspected chemical weapons site in Syria

Obama reiterates chemical weapons would be 'game-changer'

Inside a Syrian city split between rival militias