Middle East, Syria | featured news

Syria's government and rebels have "chosen the path of war", a U.N. peacekeeping chief said as the world body ended its doomed monitoring mission to Damascus and deadlock persists among world powers over how to contain the spreading conflict.

Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces and pro-government shabiha fighters have perpetrated war crimes and crimes against humanity on Syrian civilians, a U.N. expert panel concluded Wednesday, in a report that provides in chilling detail further evidence of a conflict spiraling out of control.

Syrian rebels claim to have shot down a Syrian MiG fighter jet, while Syrian state-run media say a pilot ejected from a warplane after a technical failure, the Associated Press reports.

Syrian forces have pushed rebels back from a strategic district of Aleppo, but skirmishes continued in the city and the United Nations said the conflict engulfing Syria would have no winner.

Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab has defected to the opposition seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, a spokesman for Hijab said on Monday, marking one of the highest profile desertions from the Damascus government.

Thomson Reuters said its blogging platform for Reuters News was hacked, resulting in multiple false posts to its website, including a fake interview with a Syrian rebel army leader.

Armed clashes erupted in at least three Syrian cities on Friday amid reports of a deadly mortar attack on a major Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, an event that threatened to draw Syria’s displaced Palestinian population into its civil war... Western nations, led by the United States, have accused Russia of helping to sabotage Mr. Annan’s diplomacy and have questioned the need for a United Nations monitoring presence in Syria if there is no viable peace plan to monitor.

Syrian fighter jets fired on rebel positions in the commercial capital of Aleppo on Wednesday, U.N. observers told The Associated Press, a development that could signal a significant escalation in the battle for control of the key city.

The Assad government targets rebel positions. The U.N. says 200,000 people have left the city, but the opposition denies the military is driving out insurgents.

A Russian official suggests Moscow could offer asylum to Syrian President Bashar Assad, if he requests it. Russian officials, who have strenuously resisted U.S.-led efforts to push Syrian President Bashar Assad from power, are beginning to question whether the beleaguered leader can hang on, but say they have little influence over him as rebels take the fight to his country's biggest cities.