Damascus

Syrian government forces pressing a ferocious crackdown shelled the central city of Homs on Monday, opposition activists said, destroying a makeshift clinic and leaving dozens dead in a town that has been a hotbed of antigovernment resistance. The government of President Bashar Assad denied any involvement in an assault and said "terrorists" had attacked its forces. In Washington, the State Department announced that it was suspending operations at the U.S. Embassy in the Syrian capital of Damascus because of "growing safety risks.

BEIRUT - More than 40 civilians, many of them women and children, were killed Thursday in an airstrike on the northern city of Maarat Numan, activists said, in another bloody day in Syria during which more than 200 people reportedly were killed. Maarat Numan, strategically located on the main highway that connects Syria's two major cities, Aleppo and Damascus, has been the site of more than a week of fierce clashes and intense shelling by government helicopters and warplanes. Thursday's attack came a day after activists posted a video showing what they said was a government helicopter shot down by rebels near the city.

BEIRUT - A powerful car bomb ripped through central Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Thursday, killing dozens and dramatizing the wide gulf between the persistent violence and fledgling efforts to jump-start peace talks in the country's almost 2-year-old war. State news media said at least 53 people were killed and 235 injured in a devastating midmorning attack that yielded disturbing images of smoldering vehicles and charred and dismembered bodies...

BEIRUT - Syrian activists Saturday reported a massacre in a suburb of Damascus that may have claimed more than 200 lives in the last few days. Some activists were estimating that the death toll could reach 300 as government forces continued an onslaught against Dariya, a suburb of the capital, using tanks, warplanes and snipers. Residents found 122 bodies in the basement of a building still under construction, said Abu Kinan, an activist in Dariya. All appeared to have been executed, he said.

Syrian troops reasserted control Monday of rebellious suburbs outside Damascus, retaking some districts amid stiff resistance as the opposition reported dozens killed in fierce fighting. Armed rebels were falling back to avoid the government's onslaught, said opposition activists, as regime tanks and troops pulled into rebel bastions near the capital. "We've entered the stage of street war," said an opposition activist in the Damascus suburb of Duma, who asked not to be named for security reasons.

In a dramatic twist in the nine-month uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad, government officials said Friday that two suicide car bombers detonated hundreds of pounds of explosives in front of buildings used by intelligence agencies in the heart of Damascus, the capital. Officials quickly pointed the finger at Al Qaeda, saying the dramatic escalation in violence confirms their contention that armed terrorists are behind the unrest. To reinforce the point, state television broadcast video of mangled body parts, burned-out vehicles and bloodied pavement against an action-movie-like soundtrack.

Opposition activists said Syrian security forces killed at least 17 people Friday as President Bashar Assad's government faced an Arab League deadline of Saturday for implementing a faltering peace plan. Demonstrators across Syria chanted antigovernment slogans and called on foreign nations to expel Syrian ambassadors, a move that would further isolate Assad. Damascus and Arab League representatives were said to be haggling about the terms of an observer mission to be sent into Syria, where human rights groups say security forces have responded brutally to eight months of largely peaceful protests.

A former Seattle journalist, who disappeared 19 days ago after traveling to Syria on an assignment for Al Jazeera television, arrived safely in Qatar on Wednesday, the news channel said. Dorothy Parvaz, a 39-year-old holder of American, Canadian and Iranian citizenship, arrived at the Arabian Peninsula home of Al Jazeera, on a flight from Iran after being out of touch for nearly three weeks, the station said. "She has been in contact with her family, and we are with her now to find out more about her ordeal over the last 19 days," a statement quoted an unnamed Al Jazeera representative as saying.

The United Nations' nuclear watchdog released a detailed report saying Syria "very likely" pursued a clandestine nuclear program, an assertion that is expected to add pressure on a regime already reeling from protests at home and sanctions imposed abroad. A confidential report published Tuesday by the International Atomic Energy Agency said Syria was building a nuclear reactor at a site in Dair Alzour that was bombed by Israel in September 2007 and had not declared the project to international inspectors, as required by Syria's international treaty obligations.

JERUSALEM - Israel's accusation that Syria used chemical weapons against rebels raises the prospect that Damascus crossed what President Obama has termed a "red line," but appears unlikely to overcome deep resistance of the U.S. and its allies to military involvement in the country's civil war. Brig. Gen. Itai Brun, Israel's top military intelligence analyst, said at a security conference in Tel Aviv on Tuesday that Syria used chemical weapons, probably a sarin-based nerve agent, in attacks March 19 near Aleppo and Damascus.