SYRIA: Violence grows as outside groups hesitate.
Growing indications that a divided international community is unable or unwilling to intervene to halt the violence in Syria are fueling an armed rebellion that risks plunging the country, and perhaps the region, into a wider war.
The slide toward all-out conflict seemed to accelerate Wednesday after the opposition claimed that government forces had been forced to accept a cease-fire negotiated with rebel soldiers in the town of Zabadani, near the Lebanese border.
Rebel soldiers and a Zabadani activist said loyalist soldiers retreated Wednesday afternoon. The rebels acknowledged that the security forces may be regrouping before returning with reinforcements, but activists nonetheless hailed the event as a symbolic turning point, heralding the possibility that the simmering armed revolt may force President Bashar Assad’s government to compromise.
EGYPT: Lawyer claims police didn’t kill protesters.
The lawyer for deposed President Hosni Mubarak said Wednesday that police officials could not have ordered the killings of more than 800 protesters during last year’s revolution because the former leader put the army in charge of security.
During the second day of his argument in court, defense lawyer Farid Deeb said maverick police officers along with “infiltrators” and militants could have been behind the killings after the army took control of security on Jan. 28.
During Wednesday’s hearing, Deeb described Mubarak as a “merciful” man who did his best to allow peaceful protests. Prosecutors have argued that Mubarak, 83, ordered his former interior minister, Habib el-Adley, to crack down on the uprising that ultimately swept him from power.
Denver Post wire services
