BEIRUT (Reuters) – Bombs killed at least 14 prisoners in a Syrian security vehicle yesterday, and fierce battles erupted between rebels and state forces as the Arab League considered whether to keep monitors in place.
Rebels seized parts of a suburb of Damascus late yesterday, activists said, and fighting continued into the night.
The League looks set to extend its monitoring mission in Syria, given the lack of any Arab or world consensus on how to halt the bloodshed there, an Arab diplomatic source said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the 10-month-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad, said an explosive device planted on a road in the northwestern province of Idlib had killed 15 detainees and wounded dozens.
Syria’s state news agency SANA said a “terrorist” group had set off two explosions on the road between the towns of Idlib and Ariha, killing 14 prisoners and wounding 26. Six police guards were also wounded, some critically.
Activists in Idlib offered a very different account, saying the vehicle had actually been carrying dead bodies. They uploaded videos of corpses on the bloodied floors of a hospital morgue, some of which appeared to be decomposing, and said they had come from the vehicle.
Foreign journalists are mostly banned from Syria and such reports are impossible to verify.
Elsewhere in Idlib, clashes broke out between rebels and troops in the city of Maarat Noaman.
“Ten soldiers were trying to desert and their escape sparked clashes between the army and the rebels. One rebel was martyred when he helped give the defectors cover and nine army personnel were killed,” the Observatory’s head Rami Abdelrahman told Reuters by telephone from Britain.
The Observatory said troops had clashed with army deserters who had joined the insurgency in the town of Jebel al-Zawiya, also in Idlib province, which borders Turkey.
The group said late yesterday insurgents were fighting the army at the entrances to the Damascus suburb of Douma, which has been a centre of protest.
