The mother superior of a Syrian convent says
12 nuns have been abducted by opposition fighters and taken to a rebel-held town.
Febronia Nabhan, Mother Superior at Saidnaya Convent, said Tuesday that the nuns and three other women were taken the day before from another convent in the predominantly Christian village of Maaloula to the nearby town of Yabroud.
Syrian rebels captured large parts of Maaloula, some 60 kilometers (40 miles) northeast of the capital, on Monday after three days of fighting.
Nabhan told The Associated Press that the Maaloula convent's mother superior, Pelagia Sayaf, called her later that day and said they were all "fine and safe."
The state news agency SANA had reported Monday that six nuns, including Sayaf, were trapped in a convent in Maaloula.
UN aid:
The United Nations said on Tuesday it had delivered food to 3.4 million people in Syria in November, falling short again of its monthly target of 4 million as heavy fighting kept it from reaching hungry people in contested areas.
As winter bites, the number of children in Syria deemed vulnerable and in need of assistance has nearly quadrupled from a year ago to 4.3 million, the U.N. Children's Fund (UNICEF) said.
"The scale of the humanitarian response needed for the looming winter is unprecedented," it said in a statement.
UN aid chief Valerie Amos was to brief the Security Council on the humanitarian situation in Syria later on Tuesday amid deep concerns about lack of access to besieged civilians.
A UN document obtained by Reuters last week said around 250,000 people were beyond the reach of its aid convoys, in areas besieged by Syrian government forces or rebels.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said it had reached eight communities in November that had been cut off for months, mainly in rural Homs and Deraa, but that it was gravely concerned about many others.
It said some areas in Damascus and in the northeasterly Hassakeh province, scene of heavy fighting, had seen no food deliveries for six months. Residents report severe food shortages in parts of the Damascus countryside and Homs, and say people are dying from lack of medical care.
On the field:
A suicide bomb attack at a Syrian defence ministry office in central Damascus killed at least four people on Tuesday, state media and a monitoring group said.
The bomber detonated himself using an explosive belt at the office in the Jisr al-Abyad area in the capital's centre, news agency SANA reported.
At least four people were killed and 17 wounded in the attack, state television said.
Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the office was used by relatives of deceased soldiers for paperwork and was not a military site.
More than 100,000 people have been killed in the Syrian conflict, which started in March 2011 as a peaceful protest movement and descended into civil war after a government crackdown.
AP/REUTERS