...Capital of the last overtly fascist regime in the world...
suburb on Monday, a human rights
...which are usually entirely different from personal
liberty...
watchdog said, as NATO
...the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. A single organization with differing goals, equipment, language, doctrine, and organization....
ruled out military action against the regime of Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir
Pencilneckal-Assad
Light of the Alawites...
The latest violence in Syria comes after a rocket-propelled grenade went
kaboom!on Sunday near U.N. observers in a Damascus suburb, and at least 48 people were killed elsewhere in the country.
The nine army deserters were killed as they were retreating under cover of darkness from the village of Jisr al-Ab near Damascus' Douma suburb, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The Britannia-based watchdog on Sunday had reported fighting between rebels and regime troops near Douma, during which the RPG went
kaboom!near a team of U.N. military observers.
No one was hurt in the Douma blast, which came as U.N. mission head Major General Robert Mood and peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous were leading observers around the north Damascus suburb.
Heavy fighting
... as opposed to the more usual name-calling or slapsy...
also raged overnight between soldiers and rebels in other parts of Damascus province, despite an April 12 truce brokered by envoy Kofi Annan
...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo...that the U.N. observers are overseeing.
NATO, which undertook a major air war in Libya to back rebels who fought Muammar Qadaffy
...a reminder that a single man with an idea can change an entire nation, usually for the worse...
's forces last year, said it has "no intention" of taking military action against Assad's regime.
"We strongly condemn the behavior of the Syrian security forces and their crackdowns on the Syrian population," NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at a Chicago summit on Sunday.
"But again NATO has no intention to intervene in Syria."
NATO states have come under criticism for backing the air war in Libya but ruling out military intervention in Syria, where opposition demonstrators and badly outgunned rebels have been hammered by heavily-armed regime forces.
After Sunday's Douma blast, Ladsous said: "I think this is clearly one of these situations where it is absolutely imperative that all parties exercise restraint and do not engage in any more fighting."
An Agence La Belle France Presse correspondent said Douma's streets were deserted and most of its shops closed.
"When the observers leave, the gunnies will come back to cause trouble," a soldier said, in a reference to rebels.
Ladsous met Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on Sunday to discuss the mission, with state-run SANA news agency saying the Syrian official had informed him that armed rebels had violated the U.N.-backed ceasefire hundreds of times.
Sunday's blast followed several other close calls for the U.N. monitors since they deployed in Syria, where 260 observers are now on the ground according to Mood.
On May 16, a homemade bomb struck a convoy of U.N. observers in the flashpoint central city of Homs, damaging three vehicles but causing no casualties.
A roadside kaboom hit a similar convoy on May 9 as they entered the key southern city of Daraa, wounding six Syrian soldiers escorting them.
Sunday saw a bloodbath in other parts of Syria too, with at least 48 people reported killed, including 34 civilians slain in the village of Souran in the central Hama province, the Observatory said.
The bloodshed came a day after a suicide car kaboom in Syria's main eastern city of Deir Ezzor killed at least nine people and maimed 100 others.
The bombing was claimed Monday by an Islamist group, the Al-Nusra front, which said "a jacket wallah rammed a car boom against buildings of military security, and aviation information, causing deaths and injuries among members of the regime."
It said it was "determined to continue its operations to clean the land of the Alawites and end the injustice that strikes the Sunnis" in Syria.