An audio recording for 11 Lebanese Shiite pilgrims abducted in Syria will be released soon, the International Human Rights Organization and a Syrian mediator said, as outgoing Syrian opposition leader Burhan Ghalioun announced receiving information claiming that the abductees might comprise non-civilian individuals.
Rebel Brig. Gen. Hussameddine al-Awwak, who described himself as a mediator, told LBC that the abductees comprise five Hizbullah commanders, including a man called Hussein Hammoud, noting that their bus was intercepted by the kidnappers for making several stops near Free Syrian Army bases and because the passengers had “suspicious surveillance binoculars.”
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The Syrian army kept up its bombardment of rebel strongholds on Sunday despite an international outcry over the killing of 92 people, a third of them children, in the shelling of a central town.
Arab and Western governments expressed outrage at the "massacre" in the town of Houla on Friday and Saturday.
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Arab League foreign ministers are to hold an emergency meeting on a massacre in Syria in which U.N. observers say government forces killed 92 people, the bloc's current president Kuwait said on Sunday.
"Kuwait will contact members of the Arab League to hold an emergency ministerial meeting to study the situation and take measures to put an end to the oppressive practices against the Syrian people," said a foreign ministry statement cited by the official KUNA news agency.
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The administration of President Barack Obama is considering working with Russia on a plan calling for the departure of Syrian President Bashar Assad under a proposal modeled on the transition in Yemen, The New York Times reported Sunday.
The newspaper said the plan calls for a negotiated political settlement that would satisfy Syrian opposition groups but that could leave remnants of Assad's government in place.
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A year after the kidnapping of Syrian opposition member Shebli al-Aisamy in the Lebanese town of Aley, his family began losing hope of seeing him alive.
“We are convinced that the operation was carried out through the Syrian embassy in Beirut with the assistance of Lebanese sides,” his daughter, Raja Sharafeddine, told pan-Arab daily al-Hayat published Sunday.
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U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Saturday condemned the "atrocity" of the deaths of 92 people in the Syrian town of Houla, joining global calls for world action to end the bloodshed.
Clinton said the United States would work with its international allies to increase the pressure on President Bashar Assad and his "cronies" after the reported massacre, saying their "rule by murder and fear must come to an end."
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UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al-Nahayan called on Saturday for an urgent Arab League meeting to discuss reports of a massacre in the central Syrian town of Houla.
The "massacre shows the failure of Arab and international efforts to stop the violence against civilians in Syria," said Sheikh Abdullah.
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The 11 Lebanese pilgrims abducted in Aleppo are in a good condition and will be released by tomorrow night, spokesman of the Syrian al-Ahrar party Naser Doqmaq revealed on Saturday.
“The abducted Lebanese are in a good condition but the latest developments in Syria postponed their release,” Doqmaq said in statement.
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U.N. leader Ban Ki-moon and U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan on Saturday condemned a massacre of more than 90 civilians in Syria as a "brutal" breach of international law by the government, a spokesman said.
Ban and Annan "condemn in the strongest possible terms the killing, confirmed by United Nations observers, of dozens of men, women and children" at Houla, said U.N. spokesman Martin Nesirky.
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Britain said Saturday it was in urgent talks with allied countries on "a strong international response" after the bodies of more than 90 people including children were found in a Syrian town.
"We are consulting urgently with our allies on a strong international response, including at the U.N. Security Council, the EU and U.N. human rights bodies," Foreign Secretary William Hague said.
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