Up to 200 hurt in attack on Syrian Alawite village -activists

The move will pave the way for greater US support for those seeking to oust Assad and follows the blacklisting of a militant Syrian rebel group with links to al-Qaida.             

In this context, the US designated the radical Islamist Syrian rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra, which is suspected of ties to al Qaeda, as a foreign terrorist organization.    

In addition to blacklisting the Jabhat al-Nusra group, the United States moved against two militia groups linked to the embattled government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

By classifying al-Nusra as a terrorist organization, the US State Department order essentially classifies the group, which has advocated for an Islamic state in Syria, as an affiliate of al Qaeda in Iraq.     

US Treasury officials also imposed sanctions on two senior leaders of al-Nusra.

For his part, US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Tuesday that the Syrian government seems to have slowed preparations for the possible use of chemical weapons against rebel targets.       

Speaking to reporters flying with him from Washington to Kuwait, Panetta suggested the threat was no longer escalating, although he was not specific about any Syrian military preparations.                        

Panetta was in Kuwait to visit US troops at the start of a four-day trip. The US has about 13,500 troops in this country; they are a remnant of the 1991 Gulf War in which a US-led coalition force evicted Saddam Hussein's Iraqi army after it invaded Kuwait in August 1990.                  

Asked whether he believed Syrian President Bashar Assad was heeding Western warnings against using chemical weapons, Panetta said: "I like to believe he's got the message. We've made it pretty clear. Others have as well."

Meanwhile, the British based newspaper, The Independent, learned of  a plan to provide military training to the Syrian rebels fighting the Assad regime and support them with air and naval power. This plan  is being drawn up by an international coalition including Britain.             

According to the Paper, the head of Britain’s armed forces, General Sir David Richards, hosted a confidential meeting in London a few weeks ago attended by the military chiefs of France, Turkey, Jordan, Qatar and the UAE, and a three-star American general, in which the strategy was discussed at length.

Any such military action will have to take place without United Nations authorization, with Russia and China highly unlikely to back a resolution.

For its part, Russia has resisted the most recent U.S. appeals to Moscow to persuade Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to quit and threaten Damascus with sanctions in hopes of ending Syria's civil war, the Russian newspaper Kommersant reported on Tuesday.   

The report in the influential daily, which cited no named source, added to public signals that Russia is not prepared to push for Assad's exit despite efforts to distance itself from its longtime ally and buyer of Russian arms.   

"Russia does not intend to persuade the Syrian leader to leave his post voluntarily," said the report, reinforcing hints that a gap persists after two recent meetings of U.S. and Russian officials with international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi.

An attack on a Syrian village on Tuesday killed or injured around 200 members of President Bashar al-Assad's Alawite minority sect, activists said, but it remained unclear who was behind the assault.   

Casualty counts varied, but several activists said they could confirm 10 dead. They blamed Assad's forces for the attack, which they said involved the shelling of a house in which at least 200 Alawites were hiding.

Earlier, Syrian rebels clashed with the Syrian Army near Damascus airport on Tuesday, battling for the capital's outskirts after 20 months of conflict which the United Nations said has driven half a million people from the country.         

However, more than half a million Syrian refugees are now registered or awaiting registration in the region, the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Tuesday.

Earlier, unidentified gunmen in Syria detained two U.N. peacekeeping soldiers for an hour on Monday before releasing them again unharmed, the Austrian Defense Ministry said on Tuesday. According to reports, the soldiers were later released.

In details, the incident occurred around 8 km (5 miles) north of the border with Jordan when gunmen stopped a patrol with two officers - one from Austria and one from New Zealand - assigned to the United Nations Truce Supervision Organization (UNTSO), it said.

The UNTSO, based in Jerusalem, was formed in 1948 to monitor ceasefires in the Middle East. It has 153 military observers from 25 countries. A separate U.N. force based on the Golan Heights monitors a ceasefire between Syria and Israel. Two Austrian peacekeepers from that unit were shot last month in an area of Damascus where government troops and rebels had fought.