Syrian army shells mosque, killing 7 - activists

At least seven civilians were killed on Thursday when the Syrian army shelled a mosque packed with worshipers in the city of Deir al-Zor, scene of heavy fighting between troops and rebels, activists said.
   
"Shells hit the Fardos mosque in al-Jubeileh neighborhood at evening prayers, the last before Ramadan. The mosque was packed. Around 20 people were pulled from the rubble with missing limbs and bad wounds. The number of dead will likely rise," Abu al-Tayeb al-Deiri, one of the activists, told Reuters from the desert city 430 km (270 miles) northeast of Damascus.
   
Syrian authorities have banned most independent media from the country, making independent verification of events on the ground difficult.

Syrian rebels took control of the main Abu Kamal border gate with Iraq on Thursday, opposition activists said, on the same day opponents to President Bashar al-Assad overran a border crossing with Turkey.
   
Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said rebel fighters told him they had clashed with government troops on Thursday morning before seizing the border gate on the eastern frontier, along the Euphrates river.

Syrian rebel fighters also took over a Turkish border crossing, seizing control of the customs and immigration buildings on the Syrian side of the northern frontier, a rebel fighter and a spokesman said.
   
They said they overran the Bab al-Hawa gate, which the rebels have tried to seize several times in the last 10 days, after a confrontation with soldiers loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. Bab al-Hawa is a vital commercial crossing.

Rebels attacked the main police headquarters in Damascus on Thursday, a witness said, a day after the assassination of three of Assad's top lieutenants.   

At least one person was reported killed in the fighting in Ikhlas neighborhood adjacent to the Council of Ministers, a huge complex, and a Damascus University campus, they said.    

Earlier in the day, the Syrian State Television announced that pro-government forces foiled an infiltration attempt by an armed group from Lebanon into Syria, adding that Assad forces managed to withstand the gunmen, particularly near Talkalakh and Kosseir.   

For its part, SANA reported that the pro-government forces chased after the gunmen in al-Midan district, Rif Idlib and Rif Hama.     


International positions:

Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, the Norwegian head of nearly 300 unarmed U.N. observers in Syria, condemned violence in Syria and encouraged a diplomatic solution, which appears increasingly out of reach.   

"It pains me to say, but we are not on the track for peace in Syria," Mood said in Damascus.   

Meanwhile, a senior aide to President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia has not been discussing the possibility of taking in Assad, adding that he was unaware of any plans for Assad to come to Moscow.      

Separately, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that there must be a transitional government without Bashar al-Assad in Syria.    

For its part, China's Foreign Ministry strongly condemned the Damascus blast, and expressed deep concern for Syria's situation.   

In turn, British PM David Cameron stressed the importance that Assad steps down and that the Syrian regime changes to avoid a civil war in Syria.

REUTERS/AP/LBCI