Syrian rebels launch counteroffensive
BEIRUT – Syrian rebels launched a counteroffensive in the northern city of Aleppo, recapturing a base near its international airport hours after the army advanced into the area, activists said Saturday.
The fighting came as the main Western-backed opposition group began a two-day meeting in Istanbul to decide whether they will attend a proposed peace conference the U.S. and Russia are trying to convene in Geneva.
The Syrian National Coalition has demanded that President Bashar Assad step down in any transitional Syrian government as a condition for going to Geneva. Syrian officials say Assad will stay in his post at least until his terms ends in 2014 and that he may run for re-election.
In Cairo, Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby told reporters that the U.N.-Arab League’s top envoy to Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, will hold a meeting in early December to decide on a new date and the attendees of the Geneva conference.
Olympic torch taken on first spacewalk
MOSCOW – An Olympic torch took a spacewalk for the first time Saturday, carefully held by two Russian cosmonauts outside the International Space Station as it orbited some 260 miles above Earth.
Video streamed by NASA showed Oleg Kotov and Sergei Ryazanskiy carrying the unlit torch of the Sochi games, which bobbed weightlessly at the end of a tether in a darkness dotted by stars.
The two gingerly maneuvered to take photos of the torch against the background of the planet, the orb’s edge glowing with sunrise.
They then returned it to the space station before continuing with other tasks on a spacewalk that was to last about six hours, including attaching a footrest and a camera platform to the exterior of the orbiting laboratory.
Bomb blows up car, kills two police, lawyer
TRIPOLI, Libya – Gunmen shot dead two policemen in Libya’s second city and a state attorney was killed when a bomb blew up his car in an Islamist militant stronghold on Saturday, the latest violence to hit the country’s restive east, security officials said.
Assassinations of public figures and security officials are frequent in Libya. Many killings are blamed on militias, which the government is struggling to control even as it continues to rely on many of them to impose order.
A security official in the city of Darna, known for its hard-liners, said a bomb struck a car carrying public attorney Mohammed Khalifa al-Naas. Meanwhile, unknown gunmen fired at a security patrol in a commercial area in Benghazi, Libya’s second city, leaving two policemen dead, another security official said.
Also Saturday, about 300 protesters held a rally in Tripoli demanding elections for parliament before the end of the year, fearing the current interim body will seek to extend its mandate beyond February when a new vote is expected. Protesters carried banners that read, “No to extension. Yes for renewal.”
Associated Press
