Blast hits security force bus in Damascus; Iran says ready to host Syria talks

Syria’s regime on Sunday denied its forces used tanks and helicopters in an assault on Tremseh, saying that what happened was the result of clashes with rebels and not a “massacre.”         

“Government forces did not use helicopters and tanks,” foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi stated during a news conference in Damascus, adding: “What happened was not an attack by the army on innocent civilians.”            

He said 37 militants and only two civilians were killed in Tremsa. Terrorists in Tremsa compelled the Syrian regime’s forces to enter the village, he added. 

             
International positions:    

Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan in Moscow on Tuesday for talks on the conflict in Syria, a Kremlin statement said on Sunday.         

"During the course of the upcoming meeting, the plan is to ensure Russia's support for Annan's peace plan for the politico-democratic regulation of the crisis in Syria," the statement said.         

"It is the Russian side's understanding that this plan is the only viable platform to the solution of Syria's internal problems."       

Meanwhile , Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said that Iran is ready to host talks between the Syrian government and opposition groups.      

"The Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to sit down with the Syrian opposition and invite them to Iran," Salehi said, according to the Iranian Students' News Agency. "We are ready to facilitate and provide the conditions for talks between the opposition and the government."
            

On the field :

Opposition fighters battled Syrian government forces in districts in the south of Damascus on Sunday, some of the most intensive daytime fighting yet inside the city limits of the capital.   

Activist Samir al-Shami, who spoke to Reuters by Skype from Damascus, said the fighting was under way in the poor al-Tadamon district, after a night of sustained battles in the nearby Hajar al-Aswad district. An explosion hit a security forces' bus in Damascus on Sunday and wounded several people, activists said.    

"There is the sound of heavy gunfire. And there is smoke rising from the area. There are already some wounded and residents are trying to flee the area," he said, showing live video images of smoke visible over the skyline.
   
"There are also armored vehicles heading towards the southern part of the neighborhood."

Earlier in the day, shelling continued in  Homs and Rastan killing 51 people, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

REUTERS/LBCI
For the full report, watch the video above