Syria troops, rebels clash in northern Damascus

On the Field:

Syrian government troops fought fierce battles with rebels on Wednesday for control of key neighborhoods in the north of Damascus, residents and activists said.

Opposition fighters trying to topple President Bashar Assad have been trying to advance into Damascus for weeks, battering regime checkpoints and military bases in the heavily fortified capital. They have also fired mortars into residential districts and into the capital's main football stadium, sowing fear among residents.

Both sides see Damascus as the ultimate prize in the civil war.

The state-run SANA news agency said two mortar rounds exploded near an orphanage in al-Boukhtyar area of Damascus on Wednesday, killing and wounding an unknown number of people.               

It was not immediately clear if any of the casualties were in the orphanage.           

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday's clashes were concentrated in the capital's neighborhoods of Jobar and Barzeh.             

A car bomb exploded outside a police station in Khan Sheih neighborhood, west of Damascus, the Observatory said. The Britain-based activist group also said fierce clashes broke out after the blast but had no immediate reports of casualties.                

Fighting also raged in other Syrian cities, including Homs, where the military pounded rebel positions with artillery and carried out several airstrikes on the Baba Amr district, a former rebel stronghold which the opposition has tried to recapture in the past days.    

EU Official killed:            

A policy officer at the European Union's delegation in Syria was killed in a rocket attack on a Damascus suburb on Tuesday, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said on Wednesday. Ahmad Shihadeh was killed while giving humanitarian help to people in the suburb of Deraya, where he lived, Ashton said in a statement.

Ashton took the occasion to call for an end to the conflict, which started in March 2011 as protests against Assad's authoritarian rule. The revolt turned into civil war after some opposition supporters took up arms to fight back a harsh government crackdown on dissent.

Ahmad Shihadeh was killed while giving humanitarian help to people in the suburb of Deraya, where he lived, Ashton said in a statement.

Moscow evacuates Russian citizens:

Moscow has brought a planeload of Russians home from Syria after delivering humanitarian aid to the port city of Latakia, the Emergencies Ministry said on Wednesday.
   
Moscow says it does not plan a mass evacuation of the thousands of Russian living in Syria, but government planes have now flown nearly 300 people to Russia this year to allow them to escape the civil war there.
   
The ministry said the plane had 76 Russians on board as well as 27 citizens of neighboring countries, and that more such flights would be conducted as necessary.
   
Russia is a long-standing arms supplier to Damascus and  maintains a naval facility in Syria's Mediterranean port of Tartous. It has been a staunch defender of President Bashar al-Assad throughout the two-year-old conflict.

Syria's Children: The victims of War:

The international NGO, Save the Children, issued a report whereby it cited new research carried out among refugee children by Bahcesehir University in Turkey which found that one in three reported having been punched, kicked or shot at.
   
It said two thirds of children surveyed said that they had been separated from members of their families due to the conflict and a third said they had experienced the death of a close friend or family member.

Ukrainian journalist escapes:

Also Wednesday, a Ukrainian journalist who was kidnapped in Syria last year and escaped after being held by rebels for more than 150 days spoke of her ordeal to The Associated Press in Damascus.                

Ankhar Kochneva said she was held by members of the Farouk Brigade of the Free Syrian Army in the central Homs province. She said in a phone interview that she "almost died" because of the shelling of the area she had been held, and that food was scarce while in captivity.               

Kochneva wrote for Syrian and Russian newspapers before she was kidnapped in western Syria on Oct. 9.  On Tuesday, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry confirmed that the journalist was freed.         

Arms and Diplomacy:

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Wednesday that supplying the Syrian opposition with weapons was illegal under international law, a day after Britain floated the possibility it might bypass an EU arms embargo to do just that.
   
"I think that international law provides for the fact it's not possible and I think that arming the opposition is a breach of international law," Lavrov told a news conference in London via a translator.

Prime Minister David Cameron said Tuesday that Britain may consider vetoing an extension of the European Union's arms embargo on Syria if the situation does not improve there.
     
The EU has a blanket embargo against shipping arms to Syria, though last month Britain persuaded the EU to soften the embargo and allow member states to provide non-lethal aid, such as armored vehicles, to the rebels fighting the regime of President Bashar Assad.
     
Both Britain and France support lifting the embargo further to allow weapons into Syria. The current EU embargo expires in May.
     
Western countries have been rethinking their stance on helping the rebels as Assad's support erodes.
    
The United States, in a significant policy shift, announced Feb. 28 that it would for the first time provide non-lethal aid  things like food rations and medical supplies  directly to rebels who are battling to oust Assad. But a senior U.S. military commander, Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis, warned last week that the situation is too complicated in Syria now for the U.S. to provide opposition forces with lethal aid.
     
Cameron said Tuesday that "it's not out of the question we might have to do things in our own way," should Britain fail to persuade other EU members to allow weapons to be sent to the rebels.

 
REUTERS/LBCI/AP