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Syria violence rages on as meeting in Tunisia impends

Xinhua, February 23, 2012

• As violence continues to take a heavy toll on Syrian lives, the international community are bracing for the upcoming Friends of Syria Conference slated to be held in Tunisia.

  The state-run SANA news agency said that two army officers were killed on Wednesday by the gunfire of armed groups near al-Zara Bridge in restive Homs' countryside.

  In another incident in Homs, a law-enforcement member was killed and three others injured when two explosive devices went off on the road of Maryamin-al-Shinieh, according to SANA.

  In central Hama province, an armed group assassinated an engineer and wounded his 16-year-old son.

  Meanwhile, an official source was quoted by SANA as saying that an armed group burglarized an oil station on the main road between Homs and Hama and stole 4,000 liters of gas oil and 500 liters of gasoline.

  On the other hand, some Arab TVs reported the killing of many civilians in Homs due to the alleged bombardment by the Syrian army on some restive neighborhoods in the unrest-torn province, mainly in Baba Amr area where two journalists, one French and the other American, were killed.

  Syrian Information Minister Adnan Mahmoud said he was not aware of the presence of the two slain reporters or any other foreign journalists in Syria and urged the journalists who had entered the country illegally to "go to the nearest center ... to regularize their status."

  As this drags on, the U.S. State Department was quoted by local media as saying that Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State, will take part in the Friends of Syria Conference scheduled for Feb. 24 and 25 in Tunisia.

  Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird will also travel to Tunisia to attend the event, the Tunisian website Businessnews said on Wednesday, quoting a Canadian foreign affairs communique.

  The Friends of Syria Conference will gather top diplomats from the Arab League, the European Union and the United States, but will be marked by the absence of Russia, which denounced the meeting as one-sided without the participation of Damascus.

  Representatives from the Syrian National Council (SNC) and other opposition groups will be at the meeting and are expected to be urged to create a united front.

  The conference is also expected to be divided over whether the armed oppositions should be supported.

  In the meantime, Basma Qadamani, a member of the SNC said on Wednesday that her council sees that "a military intervention is the sole way to end the 11-month-old crisis."

  During a meeting held in Paris, Qadamani said "there are two evil eventualities for Syria's crisis, foreign military intervention or a long civil war."

  She also said the SNC suggested that safe corridors be set up through Turkey and Jordan for the transport of aid into the beleaguered areas.

  In Russia, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told reporters on Wednesday that Moscow is "categorically against" any possible military action against Syria, adding that Russia's stance on the issue has been understood by the majority of Arab countries' population.

  The Syrian government has blamed the unrest in Syria on plots by terrorists and foreign-backed armed gangs and said more than 2, 000 army and security personnel were killed during the past months, while the United Nation put the death toll in the Syrian unrest at around 6,000.

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