Rebel groups including a hardline Islamist unit seized a government army
command center in northern Syria on Sunday, forcing more than 100
soldiers to flee, a monitoring group said.
Jabhat al-Nusra, a
group suspected of having links with al Qaeda, helped rebels take over
the site - part of the 111th regiment base in the Sheikh Suleiman region
of Aleppo province, which is on the country's northern border with
Turkey, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Some
fighters on the rebel and army side were killed, while around 140
soldiers fled to another military site in the area, the Observatory
added.
Earlier, Syrian rebels, who
control the Sheikh Sleiman base in northwestern Syria, ended on Sunday the
shelling on the base, due to their fears from hitting chemical weapons that
might be stocked there, according to an opposition leader in the region.
The rebels siege Sheikh
Sleiman brigade from a distance of 12 Kilometers, which is the last base for
the Syrian forces in this region, located between Idlib and Aleppo.
Positions:
International mediator Lakhdar Brahimi said after talks with senior U.S. and Russian officials on Sunday that they had agreed it was still possible to find a political solution to the deepening crisis in Syria.
"The meeting was constructive and held in a spirit of cooperation. It explored avenues to move forward a peaceful process and mobilise greater international action in favour of a political solution to the Syrian crisis," Brahimi said in a statement issued at the end of all-day talks in Geneva.
Earlier, UNHCR Special Envoy Angelina Jolie visited the Syrian refugee camps in Jordan. Since the UNHCR special envoy's last visit in September, the number of registered Syrian refugees in the region has increased by more than 200,000 and in Jordan alone by nearly 50,000.
Meanwhile, Syrian Ambassador to Algeria Namir Al-Ghanem completely denied the information some Arab media and social networks have been circulating about his defection and escape to France.
This as, Germany's
foreign intelligence chief says the regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad
won't survive, but it's impossible to say how long it will hang on.
The head of the Federal
Intelligence Service, Gerhard Schindler, was quoted Sunday as telling the
Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung newspaper: "Signs are increasing
that the regime in Damascus is in its final phase."
In turn, Russia said on Sunday it was not holding any talks on the future of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, dismissing speculation that it is preparing for its ally's potential exit from power.
"We are not holding any talks on the fate of Assad," Itar-Tass news agency quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying during a meeting on Sunday.
"All attempts to present the situation differently are rather shady, even for the diplomacy of those countries that are known for striving to distort facts in their own favour," it quoted him as saying. He also said countries criticising Russia and China for vetoing UN Security Council resolutions on Syria were "dishonest."
REUTERS/AP/LBCI