BEIRUT (Reuters) – Army deserters killed 27 soldiers in southern Syria on Thursday, an activist group said, in some of the deadliest attacks on forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad since the start of an uprising nine months ago.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the clashes flared in the southern city of Deraa, where protests against Assad first erupted in March, and at a checkpoint east of the city where all 15 personnel manning it were killed.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syrian troops swept into the city of Hama to break a three-day strike by opponents of President Bashar al-Assad, killing at least 10 people but facing resistance from armed insurgents who destroyed two armoured vehicles, activists said.

Outside the city, army deserters attacked a convoy of military jeeps, killing eight soldiers, they said, adding to a death toll of at least 30 people across the country on Wednesday.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Thirteen people were killed in Syria’s Hama province on Wednesday when troops fired on a car and provoked a reprisal ambush, activists said, the latest bloodshed in a nine-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

The British-based Syrian Organisation for Human Rights said army deserters ambushed a convoy of four military jeeps, killing eight soldiers, in response to the army attack on a car which killed five people.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – France says it believes Syria was behind an attack on U.N. peacekeepers in south Lebanon. While Paris has no proof, Damascus has plenty of armed supporters who might try to destabilize Lebanon to divert attention from its own turmoil.

Foreign Minister Alain Juppe blamed Syria on Sunday, singling out its powerful Lebanese ally Hezbollah which holds sway in southern Lebanon where five French soldiers were wounded in an explosion that wrecked their patrol vehicle last week.

BEIRUT, Dec 8 (Reuters) – A Syrian pipeline carrying
oil from the east of the country to a vital refinery in Homs was
blown up on Thursday in what the official news agency SANA said
was an act of sabotage by an armed terrorist group.

Opposition activists said flames and clouds of thick black
smoke were seen at the site of the explosion in a suburb of the
city, the epicentre of popular unrest against Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad that began in March.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Lebanon’s Central Bank does not have to act in response to the Arab League’s financial sanctions on Syria because Damascus does not have any funds deposited with it, the bank’s governor Riad Salameh said on Monday.

“Lebanon’s Central Bank does not have any money of the Syrian Central Bank on its books in Lebanon. And the Syrian government has no funds with the central bank of Lebanon,” Salameh told LBC Television in an interview.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Syria faced growing economic sanctions and condemnation over “gross human rights violations” on Monday, but President Bashar al-Assad showed no sign of buckling under international pressure to end his military crackdown on popular unrest.

State television broadcast pro-Assad rallies “supporting national unity and rejecting foreign interference,” after the Arab League imposed sanctions on Sunday.

BEIRUT/AMMAN (Reuters) – Arab states have landed a hefty blow on Syria’s crisis-hit economy by stopping deals with its central bank and halting investment, but unease among Syria’s neighbours about the impact of sanctions on their own economies may weaken the impact.

At their meeting in Cairo on Sunday, Arab League foreign ministers also agreed to freeze assets related to President Bashar al-Assad’s government and impose a travel ban on top Syrian officials in response to Assad’s crackdown on eight months of protests.

BEIRUT/AMMAN (Reuters) – Arab states have landed a hefty blow on Syria’s crisis-hit economy by stopping deals with its central bank and halting investment, but unease among Syria’s neighbors about the impact of sanctions on their own economies may weaken the impact.

At their meeting in Cairo on Sunday, Arab League foreign ministers also agreed to freeze assets related to President Bashar al-Assad’s government and impose a travel ban on top Syrian officials in response to Assad’s crackdown on eight months of protests.

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Arab officials will prepare plans for sanctions against Syria on Saturday over its failure to let Arab League monitors oversee an initiative aimed at ending a violent crackdown on protesters seeking an end to President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.

Damascus missed a Friday deadline to sign an agreement under which the Arab League planned to send observers to Syria, where the United Nations says 3,500 people have been killed since the start of the uprising in March.