Clashes erupted
between regime troops and opposition fighters in the Yarmouk refugee camp in Damascus on Friday afternoon, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.
Earlier, an activist group is reporting that Syrian rebels have tried to storm a base protecting a military industrial compound in the north.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said seven rebels were killed in the attack on the air defense base in the town of al-Safira.
The Observatory's chief Rami Abdul-Rahman says that al-Safira, just south of Syria's largest city, Aleppo, is home to Syrian military factories.
He says the plants are surrounded by army bases and posts to protect them.
Friday's clashes come three days after rebels captured a warehouse in the area. It was later bombed by Syrian warplanes, killing nearly two dozen rebels, Abdul-Rahman said.
On the other hand, while few
families returned to Yarmouk camp, the Syrian opposition websites published
photos of the Free Syrian Army freeing the 81 Regiment in al-Maliha in Reef
Damascus, stressing that 30 military officers defected from the Army. The
rebels also declared that they seized large quantities of weapons and ammunition.
Positions:
Syrian opposition coalition denounced an Iranian peace initiative. "The
Iranian initiative represents one example of these desperate
attempts to throw a lifeline to the inevitably sinking ship of the Assad
regime," the coalition said in a statement.
Officials in Tehran outlined on Sunday a step-by-step peace plan for
Syria capped by elections that presumably could usher in a new leader in
Damascus.
Earlier, NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen on Friday condemned Syria's firing of short-range missiles after a NATO source said allied surveillance had detected new launches of Scud-type missiles in Syria this week.
The source said there had been multiple launches of the missiles inside Syria on Thursday morning, more than a week after the alliance first detected Scuds being fired during Syria's 21-month-old civil war.
Rasmussen said NATO strongly regretted the missile launches. "I consider (them) acts of a desperate regime approaching collapse," he told reporters at NATO headquarters.
This as, Russian President Vladimir Putin
on Friday said Russia wanted to see "order" and "wouldn't like
chaos" in Syria.
"We will try to
pursue the public order in Syria and look forward to a democratic regime in
Syria because this country is close to our borders. We wouldn't like chaos in
that country," he noted during a news conference closing an EU-Russia
summit.
REUTERS/AP/LBCI