Middle East, Wars | featured news

A gunman wearing an Afghan uniform has shot to death three American troops in the southern Helmand province, according to the U.S.-led international military coalition in the country, known as ISAF. U.S. officials told CBS News correspondent David Martin that the three slain troops were members of a Marine special operations force. Afghan sources in Helmand told CBS News Kabul bureau chief Fazul Rahim that they were part of a team overseeing the training and recruitment of Afghan local police. The sources said it was one of the police officers who opened fire on his mentors during dinner on Thursday evening. ISAF has not yet confirmed these details.

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.

A spokesman for the National Guard Association of the United States told The State that Michael Haley may be the first spouse of a sitting governor to be deployed into a combat zone. Nikki Haley, 40, is a Republican who assumed office in 2011. She has been discussed as a potential vice presidential pick for Mitt Romney and hit the campaign trail days ago for the presumptive GOP nominee.

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.

U.S. auditors have concluded that more than $200 million was wasted on a program to train Iraqi police that Baghdad says is neither needed nor wanted. The Police Development Program -- which was drawn up to be the single largest State Department program in the world -- was envisioned as a five-year, multibillion-dollar push to train security forces after the U.S. military left last December. But Iraqi political leaders, anxious to keep their distance from the Americans, were unenthusiastic.

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.

The Foreign Ministry spokesman, addressing repeated questions about Syria’s chemical weapons that have arisen in recent days, said the army would only use such weapons in case of an external attack.

Government forces claimed to have retaken a pocket of Damascus, as state television reported that a fourth member of President Bashar al-Assad’s elite circle died of wounds from Wednesday’s rebel bombing.

Syrian government forces struck back against rebels with attack helicopters and shelling around Damascus Thursday after an audacious bomb attack that killed three senior members of the ruling regime.