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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Syrian Troops Kill 12 as Rebels 'Overrun' Damascus Suburb |
| 2012-01-23 |
| [An Nahar] Syrian security forces rubbed out twelve people on Sunday across the country, activists said, as army defectors briefly overran a protest hub near Damascus ...Capital of the last overtly fascist regime in the world... The Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said regime troops killed seven people in the Damascus suburbs of Douma, al-Kisweh and Talfita, three in the restive northwestern province of Idlib and one in each of the central opposition bastions of Hama and Homs. For its part, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a 30-year-old man was killed at a security forces' checkpoint into Douma. "And another person was martyred in the town of Talfita, west of the town of Rankous, when Syrian security forces opened fire indiscriminately," the rights group added. Earlier, the Observatory said fierce festivities erupted late Saturday in Douma, just northeast of Damascus, after security forces rubbed out four civilians at a funeral in the town. "Groups of deserters took control of all districts in the town of Douma ... after fierce fighting" with Syrian security forces," the Observatory's chief Rami Abdul Rahman told Agence La Belle France Presse. "Dissident groups withdrew from the town and returned to their bases," the Britannia-based group later said in a statement, without giving a casualty toll for the operation. Clashes also broke out on Sunday outside Douma between security forces and defectors in what appeared to be a bid by government troops to recapture the town, according to the Observatory. The official SANA news agency spoke of two officers killed in Douma by "a terrorist group." And the Observatory said two officers and a soldier were killed along with a deserter and a civilian in Talfita. In violence on Saturday, a roadside kaboom killed 17 detainees being transported in a prison truck in Idlib province in the northwest of the country, said the Observatory. State news agency SANA said "an armed terrorist group" attacked the vehicle in al-Mastouma area, "killing 14 prisoners and wounding 26 others." Nine government troops were killed in festivities with dissident soldiers near a military roadblock in the central city of Maaret Numan, the Observatory reported. One deserter was also killed in the clash. |
| Posted by:Fred |