Gunmen on Saturday abducted the
elderly father of Syria's deputy foreign minister, the official's office said,
in the latest kidnapping targeting family members of figures in President
Bashar Assad's regime.
The father of Deputy Foreign Minister
Faisal Mekdad was seized Saturday in the village of Ghossom in the southern
province of Daraa, Mekdad's office said. An official in the office said the man
is in his 80s, but he did not know his name.
There was no immediate claim of
responsibility, but armed opposition groups in Syria have targeted senior
regime officials or members of their families in the past for kidnapping or
assassination in the past.
Last year, rebels carried out one of
the highest-profile attacks against regime officials to date, detonating a bomb
inside a high-level crisis meeting that killed four advisers of Assad,
including the defense minister and the president's brother-in-law.
On another note, the Obama
administration denounced Russia for providing Syrian President Bashar
Assad's regime with anti-ship missiles, saying the weapons would only worsen a
war that Washington and Moscow have been promising to work together on
stopping.
This as, the UN Security Council is
considering a plea from senior U.N. aid officials to demand aid access in
war-torn Syria, a move that could lead to a showdown between Russia and Western
states over humanitarian cross-border deliveries, U.N. diplomats say.
Regionally, the Britain-Based Observatory
for human rights said that opposition fighters took control over 4 towns in
Reef Damascus inhabited by citizens from the Alawite sect.
The Observatory mentioned that opposition
forces were able to take over these towns after the withdrawal of regime troops
from them after battles that continued for several weeks.
The Observatory also mentioned that
towns in Reef Hama are being subject to heavy shelling in parallel with raid
carried out by helicopters over various other towns in the region.
Separately, lawyer of Syrian actress May Skaf announced on
Saturday that she was released after being detained by Syrian regime forces
earlier this week for several hours.
Lawyer Anwar al-Bunni added that the security
forces released actress May Sakf at 10:30 pm on Thursday.
Skaf was arrested on Thursday afternoon, on her
way home in the Syrian capital of Damascus.
Skaf is known to be a critic to the Syrian
regime of President Bachar al-Assad.
REUTERS/LBCI
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