BEIRUT, Lebanon (AP) ? A string of explosions killed at least 14 prisoners on a police truck in a tense area of northwestern Syria on Saturday, the country?s state-run news agency and an opposition group said.
Syrian troops fought intense battles against defectors elsewhere in northern Syria, activists said, leaving dozens of people wounded in the increasingly militarized 10-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.
The government news agency, SANA, blamed ?terrorists? for the attack on the police truck, which it said had occurred on the Idlib-Ariha Highway, an area near the Turkish border where there has been intense fighting with army defectors recently.
Four bombs hit the truck in two phases, SANA reported, and then attackers fired on an ambulance that arrived.
Six police officers accompanying the prisoners were wounded, some of them critically, the report said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition group based in Britain, put the toll at 15 dead prisoners. The director of the group, Rami Abdul-Rahman, said that several roadside bombs had hit the truck, but that it was not clear who had been behind the attack.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but the so-called Free Syrian Army, a rebel militia, is known to be active in the area.
An activist in Syria said the area had several army encampments and was full of roadside bombs meant for army tanks, adding that the truck carrying prisoners may not have been the target. The activist spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.
Mr. Abdul-Rahman and other activists in Idlib Province, in northern Syria, also reported fierce clashes between Syrian troops and defectors in the Jabal al-Zawiya region, along the Turkish border. Dozens from both sides were wounded, some seriously, Mr. Abdul-Rahman said.
The Local Coordination Committees, an activist network, said five other people were killed in Syria on Saturday: three in the central city of Homs; one in the eastern city of Deir el-Zour; and another in Douma, a Damascus suburb.
The uprising has become increasingly chaotic as frustrated government opponents and army defectors arm themselves and fight back against government forces. The United Nations estimates that 5,400 people have been killed since March, when the uprising began.
The government has blamed a Western conspiracy and Islamist terrorists for the attacks on its forces and other installations, including three suicide bombings in the capital, Damascus, since late December.
On Sunday, the Arab League?s foreign ministers are to meet in Cairo to consider whether to extend the league?s monitoring mission in Syria. League officials said the organization was likely to extend the mission and increase its numbers, despite complaints from the Syrian opposition that it has failed to curb the bloodshed.
In Lebanon, security officials said the Syrian Navy arrested three Lebanese fishermen and confiscated their boat on Saturday in Lebanese waters off the northern town of Arida.
The fishermen, two brothers and their nephew, were taken after Syrian soldiers aboard a naval vessel fired at the boat, the officials said. There were reports that a 14-year-old Lebanese boy has been killed in the shooting.
Afterward, angry residents of Arida blocked the highway linking Lebanon and Syria for hours with burning tires.
Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=5b812ac25b43024c5b73f19168b0a6e7
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