Major battle in Syria; shops shut by strike ["End strike or your shops will be smashed"]

Reuters ^ | Sunday, December 11, 2011 | Khaled Yacoub Oweis

[SunkenCiv]

Army defectors fought government troops Sunday in one of the biggest battles of Syria's nine-month uprising, and a strike shut businesses in a new gesture of civil disobedience, residents and activists said.

In a major international development likely to raise Western pressure on President Bashar al-Assad, France's Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Paris believed Syria was behind attacks that wounded French peacekeepers in neighboring Lebanon Friday.

In Sunday's fighting, Syrian troops mainly from the 12th Armored Brigade based in Isra, 40-km (25 miles) from the border with Jordan, stormed the nearby town of Busra al-Harir.

A housewife in Busra who did not want to be named told Reuters by telephone that the town was being hit by machinegun fire from tanks. Her children were crying.

The sound of explosions and heavy machineguns was heard there and in Lujah, an area of rocky hills north of the town, where defectors from the army have been hiding and attacking military supply lines, residents and activists said...

Opposition activists said they had shut down much of the capital and other towns with a strike, the biggest walkout by workers since the protest movement demanding Assad's removal erupted in March.

Syria has barred most independent journalists, making it difficult to gauge the extent of participation in the strike. Official state media made no mention of it...

Syria has long had strong ties with Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon, where a roadside bomb wounded five French peacekeepers Friday, in the third attack this year on United Nations forces deployed near the frontier with Israel... When asked if he believed Hezbollah had carried out the attack on behalf of Damascus, Juppe said: "Absolutely. It is Syria's armed wing (in Lebanon)."

[SunkenCiv]

(Additional reporting by John Irish in Paris, Douglas Hamilton and Erika Solomon in Beirut, Dina Zayed and Edmund Blair in Cario; Editing by Peter Graff)

Anti-government protesters carry the coffin of Abdul Haleem Baqour during his funeral in Hula near Homs December 10, 2011. Credit: Reuters/Handout

[SunkenCiv]