Syrian secret police defect, Arab deadline passes

(Reuters) – At least a dozen Syrian secret  police have defected from an intelligence compound, activists  said, in what appeared to be the first major desertion from a  service that has acted as a pillar of President Bashar  al-Assad’s rule.

A gunfight broke out over-night on Saturday after the  defectors fled the Airforce Intelligence complex in the centre  of Idlib city, 280 km (175 miles) northwest of Damascus.
Ten people on both sides were killed or wounded, the  activists said yesterday.

The defections came as the Arab League once again chided  Syria for failing to sign up to a league-backed plan to end the  violence in Syrian cities.

“We are very clear after the meeting yesterday… We give  the Syrians one day, and I hope we will receive the answer from  them. But until now I think there has been no answer from  Syria,” the diplomat said.

The Arab League had told Syrian authorities to sign an  initiative to end the military crackdown on popular protests by  yesterday, threatening to impose financial and economic sanctions  if it does not sign soon.

A senior Arab diplomat at the League said late yesterday  that there was no sign Syria had responded to the deadline.

Such deadlines have slipped repeatedly in the past. Damascus  complains that its sovereignty would be compromised by the plan,  which would require it to admit Arab monitors to ensure that Syria pulled troops out of cities.

“There are letters still being exchanged between the Arab  League and Damascus to reach a vision for the protocol… These  communications and correspondence are being studied by Damascus,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad al-Makdesi said in  the Syrian capital.

Assad has so far shown no sign of halting the crackdown on  protests against his rule.

In Homs’s Sunni district of Bab Amro yesterday, several  thousand people encircled the coffin of Khaled al-Sheikh, a  19-year-old protester who residents said was killed in random  shooting by the army on the neighbourhood this week.

Abdelbassel Sarout, a 21-year-old football player, kissed  Sheikh’s bloody head as the mostly young crowd of men and women  chanted to the beat of drums: “Sleep easy we will continue the  struggle… mothers weep for Syria’s youth.”