Middle East

(Reuters) - A militant group claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing in eastern Syria last week that killed nine people and said attacks would continue, in a statement posted on the Internet on Monday.

AMMAN (Reuters) - Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Wednesday that countries trying to "sow chaos" in Syria could be infected with it themselves, an apparent warning to Arab Gulf nations that back the insurgency aimed at forcing him from power.

DAMASCUS — Regime forces fired on protesters who took to the streets of Aleppo on Friday, wounding several people at the biggest rally seen in Syria's second city since a revolt erupted last year, a watchdog said.

The UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon says that Islamist militants from al-Qaeda must be behind two deadly suicide car bomb attacks in Syria last week.

BEIRUT (AP) — A key activist group is threatening to withdraw from Syria's main umbrella grouping, saying the council has drifted away from the spirit of the Syrian revolution.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — President Bashar al-Assad of Syria said in an interview broadcast Wednesday that he faced no real domestic opposition in the 15-month-old uprising against him, the violence in his country is entirely the work of foreign-backed terrorists, and the boycott of parliamentary elections last week was a fiction. 

(CNN) -- A confidential U.N. report reveals Iran is exporting arms to the Syrian government in violation of a ban on weapons sales, the same day President Bashar al-Assad blamed the violence in his country on the work of foreign-backed fighters.

Syria's president Bashar al-Assad has promised to display captured foreign "mercenaries" who have been fighting his regime and denounced western governments for failing to protest at the violence being perpetrated by his enemies.

The head of United Nations peacekeeping, Herve Ladsous, was in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday and talked to Michele Kelemen about how many unnamed observers are in Syria and what they are able to do. Ladsous has said that the ongoing violence is appalling. Some in Washington have been calling for stronger measures, including humanitarian corridors or safe zones. But that seems unlikely since it would take a substantial military intervention, not just a few unarmed U.N. observers.

TRIPOLI, LEBANON — About a week before the start of the latest round of fighting between Sunni and Alawite militias in Lebanon’s second city, one of Tripoli’s most influential Salafi clerics received visitors in a small room inside the mosque he presides over after noon prayers.