105 killed in Syria, stun grenades fired near presidential palace

Army shelling sparked fresh clashes in the capital’s Yarmouk camp Southern Damascus saw fresh clashes early on Friday morning as army tanks battered rebel enclaves near the Syrian capital, a conflict watchdog said.           In northern Syria, unidentified gunmen opened fire on a bus in Aleppo province, killing four civilians, among them three university students, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a broad network of activists, lawyers and doctors for its reporting.
"Fresh clashes broke out near Yarmouk camp, while the area was shelled," the Observatory said.
Violence at Yarmouk, once home to some 150,000 Palestinian refugees living in Syria, has raged for several weeks, forcing many one-time residents to flee from the area.
"Yarmouk was not only home to Palestinians, but also to many Syrians fleeing violence elsewhere," an anti-regime activist from Damascus, who identified himself as Abu Yasser, told Agence France Presse [AFP].
"Now, they have no safe place to go to any more in the capital," he said, adding his family was also forced to flee southern Damascus.
Near the capital, tanks shelled several insurgent-held areas, among them Yabrud, Irbin, Moadamiyet al-Sham and Yalda, said the Observatory.
Since the end of summer last year, the army has waged a fierce onslaught on rebel enclaves near Damascus in a bid to stop insurgents from approaching the capital.
In Aleppo province, army shelling hit the town of Sfeira after clashes pitting troops against jihadist fighters loyal to the al-Nusra Front in the area on Thursday night, during which five soldiers were killed.
The city of Homs in central Syria was also pounded on Friday morning, more than six months into a suffocating army siege on several rebel-held districts, the watchdog said.
"The district of Khaldiyeh was shelled by army tanks on Friday morning, as several explosions shook the area," said the Observatory.
This comes a day after 105 Syrians were killed in violence across the country. Also on Thursday, local witnesses reported that three large explosions were heard in the area surrounding the presidential palace in Damascus. Witnesses said that the three explosions were discovered to have been caused by stun grenades.
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused Iran and Hezbollah of playing an increasingly prominent role in the Syrian war.
The US is "disturbed by increasing Iranian and Lebanese Hezbollah activities" in Syria, Clinton told reporters on the eve of her last day as Secretary of State.
"I've done what was possible to do," she said.
But she painted a harrowing picture of a war that could still get worse.
"The worst kind of predictions about what could happen internally and spilling over the borders of Syria are certainly within the realm of the possible now," she said.
The conflict "is distressing on all fronts," Clinton said, a day before John Kerry is sworn in as her successor.
She pointed the finger primarily at Iran, accusing it of dispatching more personnel and better military material to President Bashar al-Assad's regime to help him defeat rebel forces.
She spoke after Syria threatened to retaliate for an Israeli airstrike, and its ally Iran warned ominously that the Jewish state would regret the attack.
In her strikingly candid assessment, Clinton spread the criticism to Russia, which has stymied US-led efforts to set global sanctions against the Syrian regime at the United Nations Security Council.
"The Russians are not passive bystanders in their support for Assad. They have been much more active," she told reporters. "But maybe they will change. And maybe they will be more open to an international solution because they can't look at what's happening and not believe it could be incredibly dangerous to everyone's interests, including theirs."
On Thursday, Syria's opposition National Coalition rejected a surprise suggestion by its head to open talks with government representatives, saying negotiations over the country's political future should focus on the departure of the Assad regime.
One day after Ahmed Moaz Khatib expressed his openness to discussion with members of the regime outside the country, the coalition issued a statement reaffirming the group's charter that "any negotiation or dialogue must be about the departure of the regime and its leading figures."
It added that it welcomed "any political solution or international effort aimed at achieving that objective."
Khatib had set down two conditions: the release of 160,000 political prisoners and the renewal of passports for thousands of exiled Syrians at embassies around the world.
Khatib's proposal generated broad outrage by many Syrians on social media, although some activists expressed their backing of the idea.
A statement by several dozen dissidents, circulated on social media, urged a "yes to the initiative to free 160,000 brothers, friends, sisters, sons and fathers," and predicted that the regime would reject Khatib's proposal.
The official state news agency SANA ignored the issue, but pro-regime daily newspaper al-Watan termed it a sign of the "disintegration" of the opposition.