Dozens killed in Syria as regime attacks rebels

FSA fighter fires his weapon toward Syrian Army positions in Aleppo Two women and three children were amongst the eleven people killed on Monday in Syria at dawn, mainly in the northern province of Idlib, said the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Later on the same day six people were reportedly killed in a battlefield execution in the southern province of Daraa, anti-regime activists said. They added that the regime's troops have intensified their military raids against the coastal towns of Latakia province, particularly the towns of Hiffa, Jabal al-Turkman, Annabi Youssef, Jibla and Banyas.
On the northeastern outskirts of Damascus, clashes erupted when troops tried to storm the rebel-controlled town of Harasta. On Sunday, at least eight civilians and eight rebels were killed in fighting and shelling there.
In Aleppo, one rebel was killed in the central Midan district at dawn on Monday, while clashes continued through the morning in the southwest rebel district of Salaheddin, Izaa in the north and the Old City in the centre.
The Internet connection in Syria's second city and longtime commercial hub wasrestored on Sunday afternoon after being down for a day and a half, according to sources.
"There was a problem with the main cable between Saraqeb and Maaret al-Numan that carries the Internet from Damascus to Aleppo, but it is fixed now," a technician for state-run ADSL services told reporters.
Maaret al-Numan, a strategic town in the northwest province of Idlib on the Aleppo-Damascus highway, has been the scene of intense fighting since it fell to rebels on October 9, severing a key army supply route.
On Sunday, the Observatory reported 173 people - 65 civilians, 46 rebels and 62 government troops - killed nationwide. A 12-year-old boy died of his wounds from a cluster bomb in the town of Saraqeb the day before.
Rebels had earlier shown media debris from cluster bombs they accused the air force of dropping on residential areas, as well as dozens of others that failed to explode.
Human Rights Watch has accused Syria of using cluster bombs, a charge denied by the military, which insists it does not possess them.
More than 34,000 people have been killed since the revolt against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad broke out in March 2011, according to the Syrian Observatory.
Meanwhile, Jordan said one of its soldiers has been killed at the Syrian border on Monday in clashes with armed militants trying to illegally cross into the neighbouring country to join rebels fighting Bashar Assad's regime.
He was the first Jordanian soldier killed in violence spilling over from the Syrian civil war.
Information Minister Sameeh Maaytah said the soldier was killed early Monday. Maaytah did not say whether the militants were Jordanians or foreign fighters trying to join the fray in Syria. A number of foreign Islamists are fighting in Syria alongside the rebels.
He said that "Corporal Mohammed Abdullah al-Munasir, 25 years old, was martyred during a clash with an armed group that wanted to enter Syria."
A military source said that soldiers guarding the border, who have been reinforced since the beginning of the conflict in neighboring Syria, "chased a group of 12 armed men trying to cross the border."
"The militants refused to stop and opened fire, killing the corporal before several of the gunmen were captured," he added.
The violence came just hours after Jordan announced it had foiled a "terrorist plot" and arrested 11 al-Qaeda suspects who planned to carry out suicide attacks against shopping malls, foreigners and diplomatic missions in the kingdom.
Maaytah said on Sunday the al-Qaeda suspects were arrested after crossing the border from Syria.
Since the Syrian conflict erupted in March last year when President Bashar Assad responded with brutal violence to an initially peaceful popular uprising, tens of thousands of Syrians have fled to Jordan.
Jordan says more than 200,000 Syrian refugees have crossed into its territory since last year.
The kingdom has been targeted by numerous al-Qaeda attacks in the past, notable in 2005 when the bombings of three hotels in the capital Amman killed 60 people.
Jordan's banned Salafi movement - which promotes an ultraconservative brand of Islam - has sent several fighters to Syria in past months and Jordanian border patrols have caught some of them recently.