Beirut: Troops opened fired on a car travelling through central Syria early yesterday, setting it on fire and killing all five passengers inside, activists said.
The five were passing near the village of Khattab in the countryside of the central Hama province at dawn yesterday when their vehicle came under attack from Syrian soldiers, the Local Coordination Committees network and the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The car "exploded in a ball of fire," said Rami Abdul Rahman, director of the Observatory, which relies on a network of activists on the ground inside the country.
Revenge attacks
He did not say why the car was targeted, but security forces frequently hunt for suspected anti-government activists in the restive area.
"The area is a stronghold of dissent where anti-regime protests are routinely held and where there are a number of [army] defectors," he said.
The differing accounts could not be immediately reconciled.
Meanwhile, gunmen believed to be army defectors opened fire on a military convoy in central Syria, killing eight soldiers in a retaliatory ambush after troops destroyed a civilian car, an activist group said.
It was the second day in a row in which an attack by government forces on civilians appears to have brought a quick and deadly act of revenge by anti-regime fighters.
The ambush shows how the Syrian conflict is growing into an insurgency. The uprising against President Bashar Al Assad was mostly peaceful when it began nine months ago.
He said gunmen ambushed a convoy of four military jeeps passing through the nearby village of Al Asharna on the northern outskirts of the city of Hama, spraying it with bullets. The gunmen are believed to be military defectors seeking revenge for the dawn attack targeting the car, he said.
