Three killed as gunfights break out in embassy area of Damascus

It was one of the most serious confrontations in the tightly controlled capital since the anti-government uprising began a year ago. At least three people were killed.

The clash was a show of force by the opposition fighters, who recently suffered several major setbacks when they were driven out of strongholds in the northern city of Idlib and the central city of Homs. It demonstrated they can strike at the heavily guarded heart of the capital.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists throughout Syria, said 18 government troops were wounded in the fighting. It described the clashes as the most violent of their kind and closest to security centres in Damascus since the revolution began.

Damascus has been largely free of the daily shootings and killings reported across the country since the uprising against president Bashar Assad began. But the capital has witnessed several major bombings targeting government security buildings, most recently on Saturday when three suicide bombings killed 27 people. Two of them also targeted government security buildings.

On Sunday, an explosion killed two and wounded 30 in the northern city of Aleppo, Syria’s largest.The government blames “terrorists” for the bombings but the opposition says that the regime itself may be carrying them out to discredit the uprising.

The US has suggested al-Qaida may be entering the fray in Syria.

The gunbattles in Damascus came hours after a team sent by the UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan arrived in the capital,

The state-run news agency SANA reported that the fighting broke out when security forces stormed an apartment used as a hideout by an “armed terrorist” group in the Mazzeh neighbourhood.

Forces are believed to have killed two of the gunmen and arrested the third while a member of the security forces was killed.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory, gave an account of the same clash. He said several “armed groups of defectors” came from one of the suburbs of the capital and fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the house of an army brigadier general. They then entered a building where they were chased by security forces.

Mazzeh is home to affluent Syrians of different sects, and is the first Damascus neighbourhood that people coming from Lebanon reach.

It is about a mile from a military airport.