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Gunmen in Damascus Kill Brother of Parliament Speaker Gunmen in Damascus Kill Brother of Parliament Speaker
(about 2 hours later)
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Gunmen assassinated the brother of the Syrian Parliament speaker on Tuesday in a central Damascus neighborhood, the official Syrian news agency reported, as clashes between government forces and the rebels convulsed most major cities and seven defecting Syrian generals fled into neighboring Turkey. BEIRUT, Lebanon — Disjointed diplomatic maneuvering on the Syria crisis by top foreign officials on Tuesday seemed to underscore the lack of any coherent international effort to end the fighting, even as another residential bombing and an assassination rocked Damascus.
The violence aroused new concern about the faltering diplomatic efforts to end the conflict. At the United Nations, the under secretary general for political affairs, Jeffrey Feltman, briefed the Security Council and told reporters afterward that the antagonists in Syria appeared unable to break out of the “military logic” that force will dictate the outcome. He also expressed hope that the Security Council could put aside its divisiveness on the Syria issue and “act in a unified fashion” to help the special Syria representative of the United Nations and the Arab League, Lakhdar Brahimi, who is to brief council members later this month. “The situation inside Syria is turning grimmer every day, and the risk is growing that this crisis could explode outward into an already volatile region,” Jeffrey D. Feltman, the United Nations under-secretary-general for political affairs, told a meeting of the Security Council.
“Our overriding message is one of great concern,” Mr. Feltman told reporters. “The situation inside Syria is turning grimmer every day and the risk is growing that the crisis could explode outward into an already volatile region.” He quoted activists as saying that 250 people had died across Syria on Monday alone. “We continue to hope that the Security Council can come together and act in a unified fashion on Syria, as this would be critical to any peace effort,” he said.
The assassination victim, Mohammad Osama al-Laham, was felled by bullets fired into his car while en route to work, in the Midan neighborhood of Damascus, the Syrian capital, said an account by the official news agency, SANA. There was no sign of that.
The agency attributed the attack to terrorists, the government’s standard description for the opposition to Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, and said the motive was to deprive Syria of skilled loyalists needed in the country. Mr. Laham, the brother of Jihad Laham, the speaker of the People’s Assembly, held a doctorate in agriculture. The Russian foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, held talks in Jordan with the highest-ranking defector from the Syrian government, former Prime Minister Riad Hijab, who attacked Moscow’s enduring support for President Bashar al-Assad as unworkable for a political transition.
The assassination came one day after the funeral of Mohamed Rafeh, 30, a television star who was abducted and killed, apparently by opponents of the government, over the weekend. Remarks by David Cameron, the British prime minister, that Mr. Assad might be granted safe passage out of his country as a means to end the fighting also caused a stir, with his office quickly stressing that he did not mean Mr. Assad should avoid prosecution.
Mr. Rafeh had been outspoken in his support for the fierce government suppression of armed opponents as a peaceful protest movement that began in March 2011 descended into civil war. An online statement from a rebel faction accused him of being a government informant. Lakhdar Brahimi, the international envoy to the conflict, warned that unless there was a greater international effort, Syria risked descending into another Somalia — which as a failed state became a font of international piracy and other terrorist problems for 20 years. In an interview with the pan-Arab newspaper Al-Hayat, Mr. Brahimi said the main effort should be a binding Security Council resolution on a political transition.
In Turkey, which has become one of Mr. Assad’s biggest opponents, news agencies reported that seven Syrian army generals arrived with their families through the border town of Reyhanli in Hatay province, escorted under tight security. The generals were sent to the Apaydin military camp, home to high-ranking military officers and their families who have fled Syria. The Web site of Turkey’s Zaman newspaper said the latest defections brought the total number of Syrian generals who have defected to 42. In Damascus, gunmen assassinated the brother of the Syrian Parliament speaker in broad daylight in a central neighborhood, the official Syrian news agency SANA reported.
Government and rebel reports detailed clashes in virtually every major urban area on Tuesday, extending what had already been described as some of the worst violence in months. The victim, Mohammad Osama al-Laham, was felled by bullets fired into his car in the Midan neighborhood while en route to work, SANA said.
The mayhem including three bombs that exploded late in the day in Qudsiya, a working-class suburb of Damascus, according to the SANA and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group based in Britain with contacts inside Syria. At least 10 people died and 40 were injured, the observatory said in a brief statement. It said the bomb went off in Zahra Square, near an area that is heavily populated by Republican Guards, an elite military unit whose members are drawn from President Assad’s minority Alawite sect, which controls Syria. The guards have been heavily involved in fighting opponents of the regime. The agency attributed the attack to terrorists, the government’s standard description for the opposition, and said the motive was to deprive Syria of skilled loyalists needed in the country. Mr. Laham, the brother of Jihad Laham, the speaker of the People’s Assembly, held a doctorate in agriculture.
The bombings were part of a series of killings and attacks with booby-trapped cars that have targeted people or neighborhoods close to the seat of Mr. Assad’s government The assassination came one day after the funeral of Mohamed Rafeh, 30, a television star who was abducted and killed, apparently by government opponents, over the weekend. Mr. Rafeh had been outspoken in his support for the fierce government suppression of armed opponents. An online statement from a rebel faction called him an informant.
The Local Coordinating Committees, a collection of activist organizations across Syria, said the daily toll on Monday reached at least 159, including 72 killed in Idlib, and 47 in Damascus and its suburbs. Other mayhem in the capital and throughout the country included three bombs that exploded late in the day in Qudsiya, a working-class suburb of Damascus, according to SANA and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group based in Britain with contacts inside Syria.
People in Damascus said the fighting on Monday was the fiercest they could remember since July, with thousands of people having fled as a Palestinian faction that supports Mr. Assad skirmished with government opponents in three southern neighborhoods. At least 10 people died and 40 were injured, the observatory said. The bombs exploded in crowded Zahra Square, near an area heavily populated by Republican Guards, an elite military unit whose members are drawn from President Assad’s minority Alawite sect that controls Syria. The guards are among the main units used to suppress the opposition.
“It’s a real war,” said an activist reached in southern Damascus via Skype, who used only one name, Eman, for her safety. “Explosions, bombing and gunfire, and of course the helicopters, which have become part of the sky in Damascus now, like birds,” she said. On Monday, opposition members vowed to step up attacks in the city center to try to draw government units away from extended assaults on other outlying neighborhoods.
The latest violence came as Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, a strong supporter of nonmilitary aid to the Syrian uprising, suggested it was possible to arrange a safe departure and possible immunity for Mr. Assad if that would hasten the end of the conflict, the longest and most violent of the Arab Spring revolutions. “We are planning to escalate our attacks on the areas of the government thugs,” said one member of the Jundullah Battalion, a unit of the Free Syrian Army full of Sunni Muslim fundamentalists.
Asked about such a possibility in an interview on Saudi Arabia’s Al Arabiya television, Mr. Cameron said: “Done. Anything, anything to get that man out of the country and to have a safe transition in Syria.” In Amman, Jordan, Mr. Lavrov held a rare meeting between a senior Russian official and the opposition, saying he wanted to glean their thoughts on ending the conflict.
He also said: “Of course I would favor him facing the full force of international law and justice for what he’s done. I am certainly not offering him an exit plan to Britain but if he wants to leave he could leave, that could be arranged.” “The idea of the meeting was to get an agreement or a road map on how to deal with opposition forces and save the Syrian people,” Mr. Lavrov told a news conference. At the same time, he warned that any alternative to the Assad government might visit further chaos on Syria.
Mr. Assad has shown no intention of resigning. His opponents have said they would not negotiate with Mr. Assad, whom they blame for the uprising, which has caused an estimated 35,000 deaths according to activist groups. Mr. Hijab rejected that assessment, saying that replacing Mr. Assad was the sole way out of the uprising, which started as a peaceful protest movement in March 2011.

Neil MacFarquhar reported from Beirut, and Rick Gladstone from New York. Hania Mourtada contributed reporting from Beirut, Hala Droubi from Dubai, United Arab Emirates, and Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul.

“Russia is searching for a political solution in which Bashar al-Assad stays,” he said in an interview with Al-Arabiya, an Arabic satellite television station. “We told Lavrov frankly that there could be no political solution at all with the presence of Bashar al-Assad.”
On a visit to Saudi Arabia and the Gulf, Mr. Cameron told Al-Arabiya in an interview that if safe passage and possibly immunity for Mr. Assad would end the bloodshed, it might be negotiated.
“I am certainly not offering him an exit plan to Britain, but if he wants to leave he could leave, that could be arranged,” said Mr. Cameron. “Of course I would favor him facing the full force of international law and justice for what he’s done.”
Mr. Assad has shown no intention of going anywhere. Indeed, analysts have long said that the fact that he inherited the presidency from his father prompted him to destroy Syria rather than abandon his legacy.
The lack of a cohesive Syrian opposition has been blamed for preventing a more robust international effort on Syria. Attempts to create a more unified coalition sputtered along Tuesday in Doha, Qatar, where a meeting was scheduled for Thursday to try to implement an American-backed plan to broaden the opposition to include more factions, including more representatives of the military units doing the fighting.
On that front, news agencies in Turkey reported that seven Syrian Army generals arrived with their families through the border town of Reyhanli in Hatay Province, escorted under tight security.
The generals were sent to the Apaydin military camp, home to high-ranking military officers and their families who have fled Syria. The Turkish newspaper Zaman reported on its Web site that the latest defections brought the total number of Syrian generals who have defected to 42.

Reporting was contributed by Hania Mourtada from Beirut, Lebanon, Rick Gladstone from New York and Hwaida Saad from Antakya, Turkey.