Russia is ready to provide security at the Syrian port of Latakia and in Syrian waters while the country's chemical weapons arsenal is destroyed, Itar-Tass news agency quoted a Russian official as saying on Wednesday.
Syria is due to hand over deadly toxins which can be used to make sarin, VX gas and other lethal agents under an international agreement forged after an attack on the outskirts of Damascus which killed hundreds in August.
"Russia ... said it will provide security for Latakia and Syria's territorial waters during the operation to destroy the chemical weapons," state-run Itar-Tass quoted Vasily Titushkin, a deputy to Russia's representative at the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, as saying.
Russia has said it plans to provide vehicles and help transport chemical weapons to Latakia from sites elsewhere in Syria, and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the Russian navy was ready to escort ships removing the stockpile.
The chemicals will be destroyed on board a specially adapted US ship because they are too dangerous to import into any country. There is no agreement yet on where the ship will anchor while the work is carried out.
Russia has been Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's main international ally during the civil war that began in 2011. It initiated the agreement under which Syria agreed to destroy its chemical arms to avert possible US military strikes.
Syria's Islamic Front spurns talks with US:
Islamist rebels fighting in Syria have rejected overtures from the United States to sit down and talk, a senior US diplomat said on Wednesday.
The Syrian government said it was "reprehensible" that Washington was prepared to enter a dialogue with the Islamic Front, which comprises six major Islamist rebel groups and which it considers a terrorist organization.
"The Islamic Front has refused to sit with us without giving any reason," US Syria envoy Robert Ford told Al Arabiya television, a day after Secretary of State John Kerry said talks might take place.
"We are ready to sit with them because we talk to all parties and political groups in Syria," said Ford, speaking in Arabic.
UK doctor committed suicide:
Syria's Foreign Ministry said a British doctor who died in government custody committed suicide, and X-rays show no sign of violence or mistreatment.
Syria's state news agency said government officials handed over a medical report detailing the death of the doctor, Abbas Khan, to a representative of the Czech Embassy on Wednesday.
Britain, which has suspended its diplomatic services in Syria, had been seeking consular access to Khan through the Czechs and others.
Syrian government troops seized Khan, a 32-year-old orthopedic surgeon from London, in Aleppo, Syria, in November 2012 after he entered the country on a humanitarian mission. He appeared to be on the verge of being released when his death was announced this week.
A senior British official has accused the Syrian government of effectively murdering Khan.
On the field:
Syrian government aircraft dumped barrels packed with explosives on at least four opposition-held neighborhoods of Aleppo on Wednesday, the fourth day of stepped-up airstrikes on the contested northern city, activists said.
The air campaign, which activists say killed more than 100 people in the first three days alone, suggests that Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces are trying to crush opposition in Aleppo ahead of an international peace conference scheduled for late January in Switzerland.
Wednesday's airstrikes hit at least four neighborhoods in the city, said Aleppo-based activist Abu al-Hassan Marea. One of them exploded near the Ahmad al-Qassar school, while another landed by a student dormitory, he said via Skype.
Marea and the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least two people were killed in the air raids.
Activists in Aleppo say the four-day offensive has been the most intense they've seen since the beginning of the uprising against Assad in March 2011.
REUTERS/AP