Ambush on police truck in Syria kills 14
BEIRUT – At least 14 people were killed when multiple explosive devices struck a police truck transporting prisoners in a tense area of northwestern Syria on Saturday, the state-run news agency and an opposition group said. The state news agency SANA blamed the attack on "terrorists" and said it occurred on the Idlib-Ariha highway, an area near the Turkish border that has witnessed intense fighting with army defectors recently.
Four bombs that went off in "two phases" hit the truck, and then attackers targeted an ambulance that arrived to assist the wounded, SANA reported.
Six policemen who were accompanying the prisoners were also wounded, some of them in critical condition, it said.
State Department preparing to close embassy in Syria, no final decision made
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AP
Jan. 20, 2012: A pro-Syrian regime protester holds a portrait of Syrian President Bashar Assad during a demonstration in Damascus, Syria.
The State Department is preparing to close the U.S. embassy in Damascus amid worsening security conditions in Syria, senior U.S. officials said Friday. The officials stressed that no final decision has been made. The Obama administration is first asking the Syrian government "to take additional security measures."
But the administration apparently is prepared to pull out of Damascus if those conditions are not met. The State Department later put out a written statement saying that "unless concrete steps are taken in the coming days we may have no choice but to close the mission."
