33 Civilians, 7 Regime Troops Killed as Syria Violence Rages
Army defectors on Tuesday killed seven members of Syria's security forces in retaliation for an attack that cost the lives of 11 civilians, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, as the Local Coordination Committees said Syrian forces shot dead 33 civilians across the country on Tuesday.
The LCC, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said security forces shot dead 20 people in the northwestern province of Idlib, seven in the central province of Hama, four in the central region of Homs and two in the southern province of Daraa.
"Seven security force members were killed in an ambush by deserters on a convoy patrolling the Idlib-Bab al-Hawa road in response to the martyrdom of 11 civilians this morning," the Observatory said in a statement received by Agence France Presse.
Security forces backed by pro-regime Shabiha militiamen killed 11 people and wounded dozens of others in two villages of northwestern Idlib province, the Observatory said in an earlier statement.
"Eleven people were killed and dozens others wounded Tuesday by gunfire from security forces and the Shabiha in the areas of Maarret Masrin and Kfar Yahmul," the Britain-based group said.
And state-run SANA news agency said guards shot dead two "terrorist" infiltrators who were attempting to enter Syria from across the northern border with Turkey.
"Border guards' forces in Idlib today foiled an infiltration attempt by an armed terrorist group into the Syrian lands through Ain al-Bayda site of Badama, Idlib" province, said SANA.
"Border Guards' forces clashed with 15 terrorists... killing two of them and wounding the others," said the report in English.
Syria on December 6 reported its forces thwarted a similar infiltration bid by "armed terrorist groups" in the same area, saying an unspecified number of the 35 gunmen were wounded and the rest fled back to Turkey.
Turkey says that around 7,500 Syrians have fled across the border with its southern neighbor in the face of a bloody protest crackdown the United Nations estimates has killed more than 5,000 people since mid-March.
Colonel Riyadh al-Asaad, who heads the Free Syrian Army, is based in a Turkish border camp and, unlike some other dissidents, has called for foreign air strikes.
Source: Agence France Presse
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