FRANCE PRESS

DAMASCUS: Clashes raged Thursday in Syria between troops and suspected army deserters as more civilians were reportedly killed in the crisis-hit country, a rights group said.
On the diplomatic front, the Arab League announced that Syrian authorities had agreed to allow a delegation to visit the country next week as part of efforts by the 22-member organization to defuse the spiraling violence.

“We have received approval from the Syrian government to receive a ministerial delegation headed by Qatar on Wednesday, Oct. 26,” the Arab League’s assistant secretary-general Wagih Hanafi said in Cairo.

The delegation will also include Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi and the foreign ministers of Algeria, Egypt, Oman and Sudan.

Violence in Syria has intensified in recent weeks as defections from the army reportedly increase, and at least five civilians died in Thursday’s fighting, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

“Violent clashes today pitted troops against gunmen believed to be army deserters” in Burhaniya, near the town of Qusayr in central Homs province, said Rami Abdel Rahman, who heads the rights watchdog.
Later Thursday, the opposition Local Coordination Committees said the death toll reached 15 with people killed in Homs, Deraa, Damascus suburbs, Hamah, and Idlib.

Abdel Rahman told AFP power, water and communication had been cut off in Qusayr Thursday.
The Britain-based Observatory also reported five civilian deaths Thursday and said a sixth person died of injuries sustained the previous day.

One woman was shot dead Thursday in the district of Deir Baalaba in Homs when her home came under heavy fire and a 25-year-old man was killed when he was hit by a stray bullet in Damir outside Damascus, the watchdog said.
A third civilian was killed and five others wounded in the central Hama region when security forces opened fire on a crowd which gathered outside a military camp to demand the release of villagers detained by the army.
And two young people were killed in the southern province of Deraa, cradle of the anti-government protests that erupted in mid-March, when security forces opened fire to disperse a protest by students, it said.

Meanwhile, Syria’s Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said Thursday that “armed terrorist groups” were seeking to destabilize the situation in Syria, and were recieving support from neigboring countries. Moallem told a visiting Russian delegation that President Bashar Assad’s reform program would be implemented in the coming six months.
The United Nations estimates more than 3,000 people, including 187 children, have been killed in a fierce crackdown on dissidence in Syria.

The Arab League earlier this month had called for “national dialogue” in the Egyptian capital between Syria’s government and the opposition to help end the violence and avoid “foreign intervention” in Damascus. The proposal was rejected by Syria’s official media.