A top Lebanese security official who was bitterly opposed to Syrian leader Bashar Assad was killed in a car bomb in Beirut that also claimed the lives of seven others.
A blogger in Aleppo notes the growing presence of al-Qaeda militants in the insurgent forces, and writes that the Free Syrian Army must purge them or forfeit support from abroad.
At angry protests over economic conditions in Tehran, slogans included “Allahu akbar!” (God is great, associated with the 1979 revolution) and “Leave Syria alone, instead think of us!”
Turkey’s parliament in an emergency session authorized military action against Syria following deadly cross-border fire—while insisting it was not a war mandate.
With two US warships headed for Libya, 25 nations led by the US are converging on the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz for naval maneuvers on an unprecedented scale.
"Leftists" in the West are waxing paranoid about how the Syrian revolutionaries are a bunch of jihadists. But if the West intervenes in Mali, they will likely be rooting for jihadists—again.
With Tehran revealed to be supplying Damascus with arms through Iraqi airspace, events in Syria could be propelling the US towards unprecedented military commitments.
Aid workers protest that while media reports on Syria focus on the political stalemate, a humanitarian crisis grows, with over a million displaced and 3 million facing hunger.
The Melkite Catholic archbishop of Aleppo flees Syria after his offices are sacked by jihadists—as the US State Department establishes an Istanbul office to aid the Syrian rebels.
The British anarcho-syndicalist website Solidarity Federation runs a statement from a representative of a “group of young Syrian anarchists and anti-authoritarians from Aleppo.”
Syrian forces and their supporting Shabbiha fighters have committed “war crimes and gross violations of international human rights and humanitarian law,” a UN report finds.
As urban warfare rages in Damascus and Aleppo, rebel gunmen abducted 47 Iranian pilgrims outside the capital—and a mob attack on Alawites was reported in Turkey.
