AMMAN/BEIRUT (Reuters) – At least two Hezbollah guerrillas and five Syrian rebels have been killed in fighting in Syria on the border with Lebanon, Lebanese residents and Syrian opposition sources said on Sunday.

The clash between Lebanese Shi’ite Hezbollah and Sunni Muslim rebels, in a religiously-mixed area southwest of the city of Homs, shows a growing role for Hezbollah in Syria’s war, which is deepening the Middle East’s sectarian divide.

AMMAN (Reuters) – Syria’s opposition coalition is ready to negotiate President Bashar al-Assad’s exit with any member of his government who has not participated in his military crackdown on the uprising, coalition members said on Friday.

Syrian authorities have given no formal response to several offers of talks in recent weeks. But officials say they cannot accept pre-conditions about Assad’s departure and have privately dismissed what they say are no more than media initiatives.

AMMAN (Reuters) – Syria’s opposition coalition is ready to negotiate President Bashar al-Assad’s exit with any member of his government who has not participated in his military crackdown on the uprising, coalition members said on Friday.

Syrian authorities have given no formal response to several offers of talks in recent weeks. But officials say they cannot accept pre-conditions about Assad’s departure and have privately dismissed what they say are no more than media initiatives.

AMMAN (Reuters) – The Syrian National Coalition opposition group is ready to negotiate a departure for President Bashar al-Assad with any member of his government who has not participated in the crackdown on the uprising, a high-level coalition member said on Friday.

Coalition president Moaz Alkhatib formulated the initiative in broad terms last month without consulting the coalition, catching the 70-member assembly by surprise. A powerful bloc in the coalition dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood, the only organized group in the political opposition, criticized the initiative as harming the revolution.

AMMAN (Reuters) – President Bashar al-Assad’s forces bombarded the southeast of Damascus with air strikes and artillery on Wednesday to try and dislodge rebel fighters who have gained a foothold in the Syrian capital, opposition activists said.

A Middle East diplomat following the military situation described battles in and around Damascus as a “major engagement”, with fighting going back and forth between the two sides.

AMMAN, Feb 12 (Reuters) – Syrian opposition fighters
captured a military airport near the northern city of Aleppo on
Tuesday in another military setback for President Bashar
al-Assad’s forces which have come under intensifying attack
across the country.

The airport is the latest military facility to fall under
rebel control in a strategic region situated between Syria’s
industrial and commercial centre and the country’s oil- and
wheat-producing heartland to the east.

AMMAN (Reuters) – Syrian opposition fighters captured a military airport near the northern city of Aleppo on Tuesday in another military setback for President Bashar al-Assad’s forces which have come under intensifying attack across the country.

The airport is the latest military facility to fall under rebel control in a strategic region situated between Syria’s industrial and commercial centre and the country’s oil- and wheat- producing heartland to the east.

AMMAN/BEIRUT (Reuters) – Rebels have captured Syria’s biggest hydro-electric dam and battled army tank units near the center of Damascus, activists said as the opposition renewed an offer on Monday to negotiate the departure of President Bashar al-Assad.

On the Turkish border, nine people were killed when a car arriving from rebel-held territory in northwestern Syria blew up at the Reyhanli frontier crossing; Turkish officials said it was unclear whether the blast was a suicide attack or an accident.

AMMAN (Reuters) – Syrian National Coalition leader Moaz Alkhatib said on Sunday he was willing to hold peace talks with President Bashar al-Assad’s representatives in rebel-held areas of northern Syria.

The aim of the talks would be to find a way for Assad to leave power with the “minimum of bloodshed and destruction”, Alkhatib said in a statement published on his Facebook page.

AMMAN (Reuters) – The head of Lebanon’s Maronite Church evoked his country’s long civil war to condemn the futility of conflict, on the second day of a controversial visit to Syria’s war-ravaged capital Damascus.

At a Sunday mass broadcast live on Syrian state television, Patriarch Beshara al-Rai appeared to dismiss the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad’s 13-year rule as not worth the bloodshed.