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The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that government shelling of some neighborhoods of the central city of Homs and the nearby town of Talbiseh killed two civilians on Saturday. It added that the bodies of five men, who appear to have been subjected to torture, were found in the northwestern village of Tahtaya. For the U.S. and its allies, Syria is proving an especially murky conflict with no easy solutions. Assad's regime is one of Washington's clearest foes, a government that has long been closely allied with Iran and anti-Israel groups Hamas and Hezbollah, which the U.S. considers terrorist. Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-led Gulf countries are eager to see Assad's fall in hopes of breaking Syria out of its alliance with their regional rival, Shiite-majority Iran. "The battle to bring down the state in Syria has already ended and the battle of reinforcing stability has started," said Makdessi, in an apparent reference to recent gains by Syrian troops in their crackdown on the rebels. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was flying on Saturday from Saudi Arabia, where she held talks with Saudi King Abdullah and others on ways to resolve the Syrian crisis and other regional strategies, to Turkey, ahead of Sunday's 60-nation gathering of the "Friends of the Syrian People" in Istanbul. The U.S. remains opposed to arming Syria's rebels, which some Gulf states have proposed, even as continued violence is stymying U.N. efforts to persuade Damascus to make good on a cease-fire plan it has accepted.
[Associated
Press;
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