BEIRUT (AP)
-- Syrian warplanes struck targets near the border with Lebanon on
Saturday, killing at least nine people in the latest attack along the
volatile border, the Lebanese state-run news agency and security
officials said.
The warplanes targeted the
rebel-held town of Yabroud inside Syria, just across from Lebanese
villages housing Syrians who fled a government offensive in June, a
Lebanese security official from the eastern Bekaa region said. Both
sides in the Syrian civil war have allies and supply lines in Lebanon.
The
official said the victims included six members of the same family,
while 16 people were wounded. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line
with regulations.
Also on Saturday, rebels captured an arms depot near Damascus, seizing weapons and ammunition from the regime, activists said.
The
Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that militants
from the al-Qaida-affiliated Jabhat al-Nusra group led the assault on
the depot in Qalamun district north of the capital. Militants seized
caches of ammunition, rockets and anti-tank missiles, the Observatory
said.
It was a rare battlefield success by the
rebels in recent months. The government has been on the offensive in
the country's heartland and has retaken territory, although rebels are
sometimes reported to overrun military facilities and villages.
The Observatory relies on reports from a network of informants on the ground.
Syria's
main opposition coalition meanwhile urged the release of a Catholic
priest who disappeared Monday while visiting a rebel-held city dominated
by Islamic groups in the country's northeast. The Western-backed Syrian
National Coalition said it was "deeply concerned" over the
disappearance of Paolo Dall'Oglio, an Italian Jesuit priest and a
well-known figure in Syria.
"We urge all
parties involved in the disappearance of Father Paolo to immediately
come forward and release him," the coalition said in a statement
released in Istanbul on Saturday. It described the priest as a "wise
man of peace and compassion" who engaged in interfaith dialogue with
Muslims and forged close ties with people all over Syria.
Activists
said Dall'Oglio went to Raqqa to meet with al-Qaida-linked militants.
The city, which fell to the rebels in early March, has seen tensions
between the hard-liners and more moderate rebel groups over how to
administer it.
Both rebels and pro-regime
forces have abducted political foes, members of rival sects and wealthy
families around Syria and others, including foreign journalists, to
settle scores or for ransom.
Dall'Oglio is a
critic of the regime of President Bashar Assad, which the rebels are
fighting to overthrow. A year ago, the government expelled him from
Syria, where he had lived for 30 years.
Cardinal
Leonardo Sandri, in charge of the Holy See's office dealing with
Eastern Churches, has expressed `'closeness in prayer" to Dall'Oglio's
fellow Jesuits over the `'persistence of the uncertainty of the
situation," the Vatican said Saturday.
Sandri's
office said it was praying that `'the war ends and peace is given back
to beloved Syria and all the peoples of the Middle East."
Dall'Oglio
is the third Christian cleric believed to have been kidnapped in
northern Syria this year. In April, two Orthodox bishops were abducted
and have not been heard from since their kidnapping. No group has
publically claimed it is holding the clerics.
The statement said Sandri's office also recalled the `'absolute silence that weighs on the fate of the two (Orthodox) bishops."
More than 100,000 people have been killed since the beginning of the Syrian uprising in March 2011.
---
Associated Press writer Frances D'Emilio in Rome contributed to this report.
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