France Press

BEIRUT: Violence in Syria killed at least 40 people Sunday, among them 15 members of the security forces who died in firefights across the country, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
 
The violence came a day after President Bashar Assad’s regime declared that those seeking its ouster had been defeated and that it was now focused on stabilizing security nationwide.
 
The latest deaths come as dozens of representatives from Western and Arab countries gathered in Istanbul for talks aimed at putting pressure on Damascus to implement a peace plan by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan to stop the bloodshed.
 
The heaviest fighting erupted in Quriyeh in eastern province of Deir al-Zour, killing five rebel fighters, four soldiers, including an officer, and a civilian, said the Britain-based Observatory.
 
A group of army deserters killed four other troops in an ambush on their convoy near the town of Jisr al-Shoghour in northwestern Idlib province close to the border with Turkey, it said.
 
In the same province, a sniper shot dead a woman near the town of Maaret al-Numan and other fighting broke out near the town of Saraqeb between rebels and the army during a search operation.
 
The monitoring group said that in Deraa province in the south – where the first protests against Assad’s iron-fisted rule erupted in mid-March last year – four soldiers were killed in clashes with rebels near the town of Jassem.
 
Another three soldiers who tried to defect during the fighting there were recaptured and shot dead by an officer, it added.
 
Security forces also killed two civilians at Um al-Mayazen in eastern Deraa province, and three members of the security forces died when their vehicles came under attack at Sem al-Julan.
 
Seven civilians were also reported killed in Homs in the center of the country – six when districts of the city came under bombardment and one who was shot dead.
 
In Hama province, in central Syria, four civilians were shot dead as security forces carried out searches in the Latamneh, Al-Jabin and Al-Zokat areas.
 
And in Hama city itself, three security agents were wounded when army defectors fired on their car, the Observatory said.
 
There was also trouble in the capital Damascus, with a young man reported shot dead in the Rukneddine district in the north of the city, again during a search operation by security forces.
 
Another young man was killed in a raid by security forces in the town of Dmeir in Damascus province, where four other people were detained, monitors said.
 
All such reports could not be independently verified.