4 killed as Syrian fight again spills on Lebanon

Children in Azaz, Syria, warm themselves Sunday at a refugee camp near the Turkish border. At least 45 people were killed in fighting in Syria on Sunday, according to a British-based opposition activist group.

Children in Azaz, Syria, warm themselves Sunday at a refugee camp near the Turkish border. At least 45 people were killed in fighting in Syria on Sunday, according to a British-based opposition activist group.

Monday, December 10, 2012

— Syria’s civil war spilled over into neighboring Lebanon once again Sunday, with gun battles in the northern city of Tripoli between supporters and opponents of President Bashar Assad’s regime that left four dead.

INTERACTIVE

Uprising in Syria

Meanwhile, rebels seized a military base in northern Syria and heavy fighting elsewhere closed a highway connecting Damascus with Jordan.

Nine Syrian judges and prosecutors also defected to the opposition. It was the latest setback for the regime, which appears increasingly embattled with rebels making gains in northern Syria and near Damascus, the capital. Numair Ghanem, the Syrian ambassador to Algeria, was seeking political asylum in France, Al-Arabiya television reported.

The defecting judges posted a joint statement online urging others to join them and break ranks with Assad’s regime. There have been several high-level defections over the past year, including Assad’s former prime minister.

In Geneva, the United Nations’ Special Representative for Syria and the Arab League, Lakdhar Brahimi, met with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State William Burns to discuss the crisis in Syria. They said in a joint statement that the situation in Syria was “bad and getting worse,” adding that a political process to end the conflict was “still necessary and still possible.”

Russia and the United States have argued bitterly over how to address the conflict, which began with peaceful protests against Assad in March 2011 and escalated into a civil war that has killed an estimated 40,000 people. Activists said another 45 were killed on Sunday.

The U.S. has criticized Russia for shielding the Assad regime, while Moscow has accused Washington of encouraging the rebels and being intent on regime change.

In Moscow, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Russia agreed to take part in the Geneva talks on condition there would be no demand for Assad to step down. Washington and its allies, including Turkey and Qatar, have repeatedly called on the Syrian president to step down to help stop the bloodshed.

Addressing fears that Assad could use chemical weapons in a last-ditch effort to save his regime, Lavrov once again said the Syrian government has given assurances that it has no intention of ever using the weapons of mass destruction. He said the greatest threat is that they would fall into the hands of militants.

Russia’s foreign minister said that after he agreed to a U.S. proposal to have his and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s deputies “brainstorm” on Syria, the Americans began to suggest that Russia was softening its position.

“No such thing,” Lavrov said. “We have not changed our position.”

He urged the international community to come together and “with one voice” to demand a ceasefire, return U.N. observers in bigger numbers and begin a political dialogue. Lavrov repeated that Russia was not wedded to Assad but believed that only the Syrians have the right to choose their leaders.

In Washington, a senior State Department official said the U.S. remains willing to hold additional discussions in the weeks ahead, if it would help “advance the process of political transition that the people of Syria seek.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss Sunday’s meeting in Geneva with reporters.

Qatari Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hamad bin Jassim Al Thani urged Assad to step down. With the rebels at the president’s doorstep in Damascus, he said, Assad knows the regime will fall.

“But how much killing and destruction does he want before this inevitable outcome?” Hamad said after an Arab League meeting in the Qatari capital, Doha.

In Lebanon, fighting between pro-and anti-Assad gunmen involving machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades flared as bodies of three Lebanese, who were killed after crossing into Syria to fight in the civil war were taken back home for burial, the state-run National News Agency said.

Four people were killed and 12 were wounded in the gunfights, the agency said. Two Lebanese soldiers were also injured, the Lebanese Armed Forces command said.

Syria civil war has often spilled into neighboring countries including Turkey, Lebanon and Israel, raising concerns of a wider war in the volatile region.

Lebanon, which Syria dominated for decades, is particularly vulnerable to getting sucked into the crisis. The two countries share a porous border and a complex web of political and sectarian ties.

The Britain-based opposition activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported fighting between opposition fighters and regime troops in northern Idlib province, in the Damascus suburbs and in Aleppo, Syria’s largest city. At least 45 people were killed in fighting Sunday, said the group, which relies on reports from activists on the ground.

Syria’s state-run SANA news agency said four people were killed when a rocket slammed into the Armenian quarter of the city of Homs. SANA said “terrorists” were behind the attack that also injured several others. Damascus refers to rebels as terrorists and mercenaries of Western and Persian Gulf countries.

The Observatory also said rebels and Arab fighters from Jabhat al-Nusra, designated a terrorist group by the U.S., overcame three brigades and a command center of the 111th regiment west of Aleppo on Sunday.

The group said about 140 soldiers fled the fighting to shelter at another military base nearby. It also reported that both sides sustained casualties in the command center fighting.

Assad’s military has failed to prevent rebels from overrunning army bases, taking heavy weapons and seizing oil fields across the country.

In recent days, scattered reports have suggested that jihadi groups such as Jabhatal Nusra are gaining ground in places where support for the rebel Free Syrian Army is wearing thin.

Al-Jazeera television broadcast footage of residents complaining about the Free Syrian Army in Aleppo, which is split with part of it controlled by the army and part ruled by the rebels. The residents said the Free Syrian Army was doing a poor job providing routine services, and was profiteering from the conflict. Their anger overflowed when they chanted, “FSA thieves. We want al-Nusra to rule.”

The rebels’ Free Syrian Army elected a new military command Sunday, replacing Colonel Riad al-Asaad with Brigadier General Salim Idris, al-Arabiya television reported.

Idris told al-Arabiya in a telephone interview that the new command was elected by hundreds of rebels because “we are the real fighters on the ground, they decided to choose who leads them in the battle against [Assad].” Information for this article was contributed by Barbara Surk, Jamal Halaby, Lynn Berry, John Heilprin, Matthew Lee and Abdullah Rebhy of The Associated Press; by Glen Carey and Robert Tuttle of Bloomberg News; and by Carol Morello, Will Englund and Suzan Haidamous of The Washington Post.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/10/2012