Syria, Syrian Uprising | featured news

Jordan's King Abdullah said Tuesday that Syrian President Bashar Assad should step down, making him the first Arab ruler to issue such a call over the regime's deadly crackdown on an 8-month-old uprising.

The Arab League announced Saturday that it is suspending Syria's membership after its failure to stop the violence against its people.

Syrians in the restive region of Homs performed special prayers for a major Muslim holiday to the sound of explosions and gunfire as government troops pushed forward their assault on the area, killing at least 11 people Sunday, residents and activists said.

Under intense pressure from Arab states, Syria has signed a pact to pull its armed forces from the streets, release political prisoners and engage with opposition groups after seven months of unrest that has ravaged the strategically situated nation and unsettled the entire region.

Syrian state television said on Tuesday a final agreement had been reached between Syrian authorities and an Arab League committee tasked with finding a solution to end seven months of unrest.

Syrians aiming to write a new constitution for the strife-torn country will meet for the first time on Monday, the state news agency reported Sunday, after a weekend of intense violence.

Western powers risk causing a major conflict in the Middle East if they intervene in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad says in an interview with a British newspaper.

Syrian security forces opened fire Friday on protesters and hunted them down in house-to-house raids, killing about 30 people in the deadliest day in weeks in the country's 7-month-old uprising, activists said.

More than 30 civilians and as many as a dozen soldiers were killed Monday in an upsurge of violence in Syria, most of them in the central city of Homs that is rapidly emerging as the epicenter of armed resistance to the government led by President Bashar al-Assad.

The United Nations' top human-rights official assailed the Syrian government Friday for a campaign of "ruthless repression and killings" and called for the international community to take steps to prevent the nation from plunging into "full-blown civil war."