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Israeli warplanes fly over Lebanon as Syrian army chief 's warning heightens tensions

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Israeli warplanes flew over southern Lebanon Friday, two days after the Jewish state launched an airstrike near Damascus, as Syria‘s army chief of staff warned against testing his country’s capabilities.

Gen. Ali Abdullah Ayoub made his comments Thursday during a visit to some military units in the country. The Al-Baath newspaper, the mouthpiece of President Bashar Assad‘s ruling party, quoted Ayoub as saying Syria will never change its stance “no matter how much the enemy carries out provocative and hostile acts.”

The latest overflights came after officials said Israel launched a rare airstrike Wednesday inside Syria, targeting a convoy carrying anti-aircraft weapons bound for Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militant group allied with Syria and Iran.

The general’s comments reflected increased tensions between Syria and Israel, which up to now has refrained from actions that could be interpreted as intervention in Syria‘s civil war.

Israel had no comment on Lebanon‘s description of the air force flights over the border region. There were no reports of airstrikes. Israeli planes frequently fly over southern Lebanon, and Lebanon often files complaints with the U.N. over the incursions into its airspace.

According to a U.S. official, the Israeli airstrikes Wednesday targeted trucks containing SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles. The trucks were next to the research center the Syrians identified, and the strikes hit both the trucks and the facility.

Advanced anti-aircraft missiles like the SA-17 in the hands of Hezbollah could change the strategic equation, which so far has allowed Israel to send warplanes over Lebanon practically unopposed.

The Syrian military denied that the target of the attack was a weapons convoy. It said low-flying Israeli jets crossed into the country over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and bombed a scientific research center. The facility is in the area of Jamraya, northwest of Damascus, about 10 miles from the Lebanese.

The air raid raised tension in the already boiling region as a result of Syria‘s 22-month civil war that has left more than 60,000 people dead, according to the U.N. Many fear Syria‘s civil war could spill to neighboring countries.

Syria and its close ally Iran threatened retaliation, and Arab nations along with Russia condemned the raid.

In Israel, Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor declined to comment on Israeli media reports that its embassies were instructed to be alert for threats after Syria‘s warnings. Syrian-allied Hezbollah has been accused of staging deadly attacks against Israelis abroad in past years.

At home, Israel positioned an additional “Iron Dome” rocket defense system in northern Israel on Thursday, security officials said, after moving another to the northern city of Haifa earlier this week. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the battery’s placement with reporters.

Capt. Eytan Buchman, an Israeli military spokesman, said the military’s home front command has not raised its alert level.

The main Syrian opposition criticized the government for not defending the country against the Israeli air raid saying the Syrian army is busy shelling civilian areas in Syria.

“This is not the first time that Israelis warplanes attacked targets inside Syria. Israelis have gotten used to condemnations and strong words that turn out to be nothing more than media bubbles,” said a statement issued by the Syrian National Coalition.

“The tragedy is that the regime’s, warplanes, helicopters and artilleries were bombarding homes of villagers and turning children into dead bodies and destroying houses over their inhabitants while at the same time , Israeli warplanes were attacking another position,” the group said.

“Those who were watching the attacks of warplanes were not able to differentiate between Assad’s warplanes and those of the Zionists,” the coalition said. “The butchers are many but the victim is one: Syria.”

Ayoub, the Syrian military commander, said the “battle with the Zionist enemy continues.” He said rebel gunmen fighting against his troops are “tools of the Zionist entity.” Israel and Syria have been bitter enemies for six decades.

“We know our capabilities and readiness to use all these capabilities at the suitable time,” Ayoub said. “Those who think they can test our armed forces are mistaken.”

The uprising against Assad began in March 2011 with pro-reform protests and developed into a civil war. The Syrian government says there is no uprising in Syria but a conspiracy against the country because of its support for anti-Israeli groups.

In Lebanon, the security official said the Israeli fighter planes were seen heading from southern Lebanon toward the eastern Bekaa Valley bordering Syria. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Butros Wanna, a resident in the southern Lebanese town of Marjayoun, near the border with Israel, said Israeli flights have been intense for the past four days.

“There is something not normal going on. Warplanes are always in the air,” said Wanna

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Official: Israeli warplanes fly over Lebanon

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A Lebanese security official says Israeli warplanes have flown over southern Lebanon.

The official says the flights were seen heading from southern Lebanon toward the eastern Bekaa Valley that borders Syria. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.

Israel had no comment.

Friday’s flights come two days after officials said Israel launched a rare airstrike inside Syria, targeting a convoy carrying anti-aircraft weapons bound for Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese militant group allied with Syria and Iran.

The Syrian military denied there was a weapons convoy. It said low-flying Israeli jets crossed into the country over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and bombed a scientific research center.

The facility is in the area of Jamraya, northwest of Damascus, about 15 kilometers (10 miles) from the Lebanese border.

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Israeli jets bomb military target in Syria

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Israel launched a rare airstrike inside Syria, U.S. officials said Wednesday, targeting a convoy believed to contain anti-aircraft weapons bound for Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. The attack adds a potentially flammable new element to tensions already heightened by Syria‘s civil war.

It was the latest salvo in Israel‘s long-running effort to disrupt the Shiite militia’s quest to build an arsenal capable of defending against Israel‘s air force and spreading destruction inside the Jewish state.

Regional security officials said the strike, which occurred overnight Tuesday, targeted a site near the Lebanese border, while a Syrian army statement said it destroyed a military research center northwest of the capital, Damascus. They appeared to be referring to the same incident.

U.S. officials said the target was a truck convoy that Israel believed was carrying sophisticated anti-aircraft weapons bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the operation.

Regional officials said the shipment included sophisticated Russian-made SA-17 anti-aircraft missiles, which if acquired by Hezbollah would be “game-changing,” enabling the militants to shoot down Israeli jets, helicopters and surveillance drones. the officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

In a statement, the Syrian military denied the existence of any such shipment and said a scientific research facility outside Damascus was hit by the Israeli warplanes.

The Israeli military declined to comment. However, many in Israel worry that as Syrian President Bashar Assad loses power, he could strike back by transferring chemical or advanced weapons to Hezbollah, which is neighboring Lebanon‘s most powerful military force and is committed to Israel‘s destruction.

The airstrike follows decades of enmity between Israel and allies Syria and Hezbollah, which consider the Jewish state their mortal enemy. The situation has been further complicated by the civil war raging in Syria between the Assad regime and rebel brigades seeking his ouster.

The war has sapped Assad’s power and threatens to deprive Hezbollah of a key supporter, in addition to its land corridor to Iran. The two countries provide Hezbollah with the bulk of its funding and arms.

A Syrian military statement read aloud on state TV Wednesday said low-flying Israeli jets crossed into Syria over the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights and bombed a military research center in the area of Jamraya, northwest of Damascus.

The strike destroyed the center and damaged a nearby building, killing two workers and wounding five others, the statement said.

The military denied the existence of any convoy bound for Lebanon, saying the center was responsible for “raising the level of resistance and self-defense” of Syria‘s military.

“This proves that Israel is the instigator, beneficiary and sometimes executor of the terrorist acts targeting Syria and its people,” the statement said.

Israel and Hezbollah fought an inconclusive 34-day war in 2006 that left 1,200 Lebanese and 160 Israelis dead.

While the border has been largely quiet since, the struggle has taken other forms. Hezbollah has accused Israel of assassinating a top commander, and Israel blamed Hezbollah and Iran for a July 2012 attack on Israeli tourists in Bulgaria. In October, Hezbollah launched an Iranian-made reconnaissance drone over Israel, using the incident to brag about its expanding capabilities.

Israeli officials believe that Hezbollah’s arsenal has markedly improved since 2006, now boasting tens of thousands of rockets and missiles and the ability to strike almost anywhere inside Israel.

Israel suspects that Damascus obtained a battery of SA-17s from Russia after an alleged Israeli airstrike in 2007 that destroyed an unfinished Syrian nuclear reactor.

Earlier this week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned of the dangers of Syria‘s “deadly weapons,” saying the country is “increasingly coming apart.”

The same day, Israel moved a battery of its new “Iron Dome” rocket defense system to the northern city of Haifa, which was battered by Hezbollah rocket fire in the 2006 war. The Israeli army called that move “routine.”

Syria, however, cast the airstrike in a different light, linked to the country’s civil war, which it blames on terrorists carrying out an international conspiracy.

Despite its icy relations with Assad, Israel has remained on the sidelines of efforts to topple him, while keeping up defenses against possible attacks.

Israeli defense officials have carefully monitored Syria‘s chemical weapons, fearing Assad could deploy them or lose control of them to extremist fighters among the rebels.

President Barack Obama has called the use of chemical weapons a “red line” that if crossed could prompt direct U.S. intervention, though U.S. officials have said Syria‘s stockpiles still appear to be under government control.

The strike was Israel‘s first inside Syria since September 2007, when warplanes destroyed a site that the U.N. nuclear watchdog deemed likely to be a nuclear reactor. Syria denied the claim, saying the building was a non-nuclear military site.

Syria allowed international inspectors to visit the bombed site in 2008, but it has refused to allow nuclear inspectors new access. This has heightened suspicions that Syria has something to hide, along with its decision to level the destroyed structure and build on its site.

In 2006, Israeli warplanes flew over Assad’s palace in a show of force after Syrian-backed militants captured an Israeli soldier in the Gaza Strip.

And in 2003, Israeli warplanes attacked a suspected militant training camp just north of the Syrian capital, in response to an Islamic Jihad suicide bombing in the city of Haifa that killed 21 Israelis.

Syria vowed to retaliate for both attacks but never did.

In Lebanon, which borders both Israel and Syria, the military and the U.N. agency tasked with monitoring the border with Israel said Israeli warplanes have sharply increased their activity in the past week.

Israeli violations of Lebanese airspace are not uncommon, and it was unclear if the recent activity was related to the strike in Syria.

Syria‘s primary conflict with Israel is over the Golan Heights, which Israeli occupied in the 1967 war. Syria demands the area back as part of any peace deal. Despite the hostility, Syria has kept the border quiet since the 1973 Mideast war and has never retaliated for Israeli attacks.

In May 2011, only two months after the uprising against Assad started, hundreds of Palestinians overran the tightly controlled Syria-Israeli frontier in a move widely thought to have been facilitated by the Assad regime to divert the world’s gaze from his growing troubles at home.

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Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor and Bradley Klapper in Washington, and Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report.

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Wave of 21,000 Syrian refugees overwhelm camp in Jordan

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A wave of 21,000 Syrian refugees in the past week, moving into northern Jordan at about five times the usual daily rate, has overwhelmed this crowded camp already struggling with flooding, short supplies and tent fires.

As newly arrived refugees unpacked on Monday, one family’s tent went up in flames after kerosene spewed onto a nearby heater. Black smoke poured into the sky. The family’s meager possessions were incinerated. In a sign of frustration, some refugees pelted a fire truck with stones, cracking its windshield, saying the firefighters were slow to respond.

“Almost every day, one or two tents catch fire,” said 22-year-old Abu Anis, who like most refugees interviewed at the camp asked to be identified by his nickname because he feared retaliation against relatives still living in Syria. “Thank God, other people haven’t been hurt because the tents are so close together.”

The United Nations says the huge influx of Syrian refugees crossing into neighboring Jordan during the past week was larger than anticipated and left its agencies, already suffering from a funding shortfall, reeling under the influx. U.N. officials are crying out for more funding as they rush to build showers, toilets and a school for the newcomers.

The UNICEF representative to Jordan, Dominque Hyde, said more than 21,000 Syrian refugees arrived at Jordan‘s sole refugee camp just in the past week.

“We were expecting larger numbers in the new year, but not the 3,000 a day that have been coming across to Zaatari camp,” she said.

New arrivals — most of them coming from southern Syria where fighting has been intense — were crossing into Jordan at about five times the rate anticipated, according to Andrew Harper of the U.N. refugee agency in Jordan. Until recently, an average of 700 refugees arrived at the desert facility each day.

International donors have pledged less than 3 percent to a $1 billion U.N. appeal made last month to aid the more than 670,000 Syrian refugees estimated to have fled to surrounding countries during the 22-month uprising to topple President Bashar Assad. The U.N. says it hopes a donor conference for Syrian refugees Wednesday in Kuwait will rectify the dire funding situation.

Harper said the Jordanian government has done what it can to provide protection to the 320,000 Syrian refugees it now hosts, but it cannot continue to bear the strain. The U.N. refugee agency said Syrian refugees in Jordan required about $500,000 in assistance. About one-fifth the refugees live in the camp, while the rest shelter in mainly northern communities.

Crossing into Jordan was frightening for Abu Nidal, a 50-year-old farmer from near the Golan Heights. He and 180 others, including women and children, were forced to row across territory flooded by waters from the Yarmouk River.

“The women and children were so afraid because the small boats were rickety and the water (was) deep,” he said. “It took eight hours, but we finally arrived safely with the help of the young men and the Jordanian army.”

Hyde said the influx to the camp means more showers, toilets, shelters, and schools need to be built. And more refugees also means a rising demand for water in Jordan, already the fourth most water scarce country in the world. She described the sharp increase in refugees as “daunting.”

“You can see that many children at Zaatari — called the `kids’ camp’ because they make up the greatest numbers here — don’t have socks or even shoes in the dead of winter,” she said as children played on swings and slides nearby.

Hyde said 24,000 Syrian refugee children entered Jordan in the past month alone — the highest number ever.

“This means that we need to be building a new school immediately,” she said, expressing hope that a new one could be constructed by mid-February.

Classes are to resume at the existing school on Feb. 5, but desperate refugees moved in earlier this month because howling winter winds blew their tents down and others were flooded. They say they are still awaiting alternative accommodations. Other camp residents have started jokingly describing the school as “occupied territory.”

“We’ve had officials come and visit — even the Bahraini government who built the school — and still no one has responded to our needs for new housing,” said Abu Mohamed, a 35-year-old businessman who is staying in the school where about two dozen people share a single classroom partitioned by rows of desks.

“They haven’t given us heaters, tents or trailers,” said the man who fled fighting in the Syrian capital, Damascus, with his family of four. “Rain is forecast again. Doctors tell us at the camp hospital that our children are sick from the cold.”

Anne Richard, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, says that as more Syrians pour out of their homeland, more countries are needed to contribute assistance.

Last year, the U.S. contributed $220 million to assist Syrian refugees. Speaking Monday in the Jordanian capital, Richard said the U.S. would announce additional funding for Syria at the conference in Kuwait, but declined to provide details.

Another Abu Walid, 46, from the southern Syrian town of Dara’a, said that as much as he and the other refugees need the aid, what they really want is an end to nightmarish killing, rape and shelling back home. His 16-year-old son was killed in Syria by shrapnel from artillery tank fire as he walked home from work.

“We want this awful crisis to end and to return home,” said the slender man, a wool scarf tied around his neck to ward off the cold.

“The world is sleeping. It’s failing us. … How can it continue to turn its back on us every day as more and more are killed inside Syria?”

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UN: Syrian refugees overwhelm Jordan camp

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A wave of 21,000 Syrian refugees in the past week, moving into northern Jordan at about five times the usual daily rate, has overwhelmed this crowded camp that’s already struggling with flooding, short supplies and tent fires.

As newly arrived refugees unpacked on Monday, one family’s tent went up in flames after kerosene spewed onto a nearby heater. Black smoke poured into the sky. The family’s meager possessions were incinerated. In a sign of frustration, some refugees pelted a fire truck with stones, cracking its windshield, saying the firefighters were slow to respond.

“Almost every day, one or two tents catch fire,” said 22-year-old Abu Anis, who like most refugees interviewed at the camp asked to be identified by his nickname because they feared retaliation against relatives still living in Syria. “Thank God, other people haven’t been hurt because the tents are so close together.”

The United Nations says the huge influx of Syrian refugees crossing into neighboring Jordan during the past week was larger than anticipated and left its agencies, already suffering from a funding shortfall, reeling under the influx. U.N. officials are crying out for more funding as they rush to build showers, toilets and a school for the newcomers.

The UNICEF representative to Jordan, Dominque Hyde, said more than 21,000 Syrian refugees arrived at Jordan‘s sole refugee camp just in the past week.

“We were expecting larger numbers in the new year, but not the 3,000 a day that have been coming across to Zaatari camp,” she said.

New arrivals — most of them coming from southern Syria where fighting has been intense — were crossing into Jordan at about five times the rate anticipated, according to Andrew Harper of the U.N. refugee agency in Jordan. Until recently, an average of 700 refugees arrived at the desert facility each day.

International donors have pledged less than 3 percent to a $1 billion U.N. appeal made last month to aid the more than 670,000 Syrian refugees estimated to have fled to surrounding countries during the 22-month uprising to topple President Bashar Assad. The U.N. says it hopes a donor conference for Syrian refugees Wednesday in Kuwait will rectify the dire funding situation.

Harper said the Jordanian government has done what it can to provide protection to the 320,000 Syrian refugees it now hosts, but it cannot continue to bear the strain. The U.N. refugee agency said Syrian refugees in Jordan required about $500,000 in assistance. About one-fifth the refugees live in the camp, while the rest shelter in mainly northern communities.

Crossing into Jordan was frightening for Abu Nidal, a 50-year-old farmer from near the Golan Heights. He and 180 others, including women and children, were forced to row across territory flooded by waters from the Yarmouk River.

“The women and children were so afraid because the small boats were rickety and the water (was) deep,” he said. “It took eight hours, but we finally arrived safely with the help of the young men and the Jordanian army.”

Hyde said the influx to the camp means more showers, toilets, shelters, and schools need to be built. And more refugees also means a rising demand for water in Jordan, already the fourth most water scarce country in the world. She described the sharp increase in refugees as “daunting.”

“You can see that many children at Zaatari — called the ‘kids’ camp’ because they make up the greatest numbers here — don’t have socks or even shoes in the dead of winter,” she said as children played on swings and slides nearby.

Hyde said 24,000 Syrian refugee children entered Jordan in the past month alone — the highest number ever.

“This means that we need to be building a new school immediately,” she said, expressing hope that a new one could be constructed by mid-February.

Classes are to resume at the existing school on Feb. 5, but desperate refugees moved in earlier this month because howling winter winds blew their tents down and others were flooded. They say they are still awaiting alternative accommodations. Other camp residents have started jokingly describing the school as “occupied territory.”

“We’ve had officials come and visit — even the Bahraini government who built the school — and still no one has responded to our needs for new housing,” said Abu Mohamed, a 35-year-old businessman who is staying in the school where about two dozen people share a single classroom partitioned by rows of desks.

“They haven’t given us heaters, tents or trailers,” said the man who fled fighting in the Syrian capital, Damascus, with his family of four. “Rain is forecast again. Doctors tell us at the camp hospital that our children are sick from the cold.”

Anne Richard, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration, says that as more Syrians pour out of their homeland, more countries are needed to contribute assistance.

Last year, the U.S. contributed $220 million to assist Syrian refugees. Speaking Monday in the Jordanian capital, Richard said the U.S. would announce additional funding for Syria at the conference in Kuwait, but declined to provide details.

Another Abu Walid, 46, from the southern Syrian town of Dara’a, said that as much as he and the other refugees need the aid, what they really want is an end to nightmarish killing, rape and shelling back home. His 16-year-old son was killed in Syria by shrapnel from artillery tank fire as he walked home from work.

“We want this awful crisis to end and to return home,” said the slender man, a wool scarf tied around his neck to ward off the cold.

“The world is sleeping. It’s failing us. … How can it continue to turn its back on us every day as more and more are killed inside Syria?”

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Syrian forces escalate offensive in Homs

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Syria‘s army unleashed a barrage of rocket and artillery fire on rebel-held areas in a central province Friday as part of a widening offensive against fighters seeking to oust President Bashar Assad. At least 80 people were killed in fighting nationwide, according to activist groups.

The United Nations said a record number of Syrians streamed into Jordan this month, doubling the population of the kingdom’s already-cramped refugee camp to 65,000. Over 30,000 people arrived in Zaatari in January — 6,000 in the past two days alone, the U.N. said.

The newcomers are mostly families, women, children and elderly who fled from southern Syria, said Melissa Fleming, spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. She said the UNHCR was working with the Jordanian government to open a second major camp nearby by the end of this month.

Many of the new arrivals at Zaatari are from the southern town of Daraa, where the uprising against Assad first erupted nearly two years ago, the Britain-based Save the Children said Friday.

Five buses, crammed with “frightened and exhausted people who fled with what little they could carry,” pull up every hour at the camp, said Saba al-Mobasat, an aid worker with Save the Children.

The exodus reflected the latest spike in violence in Syria‘s civil war. The conflict began in March 2011 after a peaceful uprising against Assad, inspired by the Arab Spring wave of revolutions that toppled leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, turned violent.

Activists said the army recently brought in military reinforcements to the central province of Homs and launched a renewed offensive aimed at retaking patches of territory that have been held by rebels for months.

An amateur video posted online by activists showed rockets slamming into buildings in the rebel-held town of Rastan, just north of the provincial capital, Homs. Heavy gunfire could be heard in the background.

Another video showed thick black and gray smoke rising from a building in the besieged city. “The city of Homs is burning … day and night, the shelling of Homs doesn’t stop,” the narrator is heard saying.

Troops also battled rebels around Damascus in an effort to dislodge opposition fighters who have set up enclaves in surrounding towns and villages. The troops fired artillery shells Friday at several districts, including Zabadani and Daraya, according to the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees, said regime warplanes carried out airstrikes on the suburb of Douma, the largest patch of rebel-held ground near Damascus.

The Observatory, which like the LCC relies on a network of activists around Syria, said at least 80 people were killed in violence across the country Friday, including 11 in Homs.

Other video showed devastation in the Damascus neighborhood of Arbeen, following what activists said were two airstrikes there. A bleeding, wounded man can be seen being helped out of the rubble of the destroyed building. The videos appeared consistent with Associated Press reporting on the fighting.

Last month, the UNHCR said it needed $1 billion to aid Syrians in the Mideast, and that half of that money was required to help refugees in Jordan.

The agency says 597,240 refugees have registered or are awaiting registration with the UNHCR in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. Some countries have higher estimates, noting many Syrians have found accommodations without registering, relying on their own resources and savings.

In a rare gesture, Syria‘s Interior Ministry called on those who fled the country during the civil war to return, including regime opponents. It said the government will help hundreds of thousands of citizens return whether they left “legally or illegally.”

Syrian opposition figures abroad who want to take part in reconciliation talks will also be allowed back, according to a ministry statement carried late Thursday by the state SANA news agency.

If they “have the desire to participate in the national dialogue, they would be allowed to enter Syria,” it said.

The proposed talks are part of Assad’s initiative to end the conflict that started as peaceful protests in March 2011 but turned into a civil war. Tens of thousands of activists, their family members and opposition supporters remain jailed by the regime, according to international activist groups.

Opposition leaders repeatedly have rejected any talks that include Assad, insisting he must step down. The international community backs that demand, but Assad has clung to power, vowing to crush the armed opposition.

More than 60,000 people have been killed since the conflict began, according to the U.N.

Activists also said two cars packed with explosives blew up near a military intelligence building in the Syrian-controlled part of the Golan Heights, killing eight. Most of the dead were members of the Syrian military, the Observatory said.

The Syrian government had no comment on the attacks, which occurred Thursday night in the town of Quneitra, and nobody claimed responsibility for them.

Car bombs and suicide attacks targeting Syrian troops and government institutions have been the hallmark of Islamic militants fighting in Syria alongside rebels trying to topple Assad.

Quneitra is on the cease-fire line between Syria and Israel, which controls most of the Golan Heights after capturing the strategic territory from Syria in the 1967 war.

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Associated Press writers Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, and Zeina Karam in Beirut contributed to this report.

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2 deadly carbombs explode as Syrian government urges rebels, refugees to return

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Twin car bombs in the Syrian-controlled part of the Golan Heights have killed eight people, activists said Friday as the government called on those who fled the country during the civil war to return, including regime opponents.

The persistent violence and the moribund peace plan offered by President Bashar Assad — now enforced by his appeal to refugees and political opponents to come back — underlines the intractable nature of the 22-month conflict that has killed more than 60,000 people and left the international community at a loss to find a way to end the bloodshed.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said two cars packed with explosives blew up near a military intelligence building in the town of Quneitra on Thursday, killing eight. Most of the dead were members of the Syrian military, the Observatory said. The Syrian government has not commented on the attacks.

There was no claim of responsibility for the blasts. Car bombs and suicide attacks targeting Syrian troops and government institutions have been the hallmark of Islamic militants fighting in Syria alongside rebels trying to topple Assad.

Quneitra is on the cease-fire line between Syria and Israel, which controls most of the Golan Heights after capturing the strategic territory from Syria in the 1967 war.

Since the conflict began, more than half million Syrians have fled to neighboring Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey. Those who left include opposition activists and defectors, both ordinary soldiers and army officers who switched to the rebel side, which is fighting to topple Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for more than four decades.

The state-run SANA news agency said the government will help hundreds of thousands of citizens return whether they left “legally or illegally.” Syrian opposition figures abroad who want to take part in reconciliation talks will also be allowed back, according to an Interior Ministry statement carried by SANA late Thursday.

If they “have the desire to participate in the national dialogue, they would be allowed to enter Syria,” the ministry said.

The proposed talks are part of Assad’s initiative to end the conflict that started as peaceful protests in March 2011 but turned into a civil war. Tens of thousands of activists, their family members and opposition supporters remain jailed by the regime, according to international activist groups.

Opposition leaders, who have repeatedly rejected any talks that include Assad, could not immediately be reached to comment the Syrian regime’s latest appeal. The opposition — including the rebels fighting on the ground — insists he must step down. Their demand is backed by the international community, but Assad clings to power, vowing to crush the armed opposition.

Both sides remain convinced they can win militarily, and while Assad’s forces maintain control over the capital, the rebels have in recent weeks captured large swaths of territory in the country’s north and east, including parts of Aleppo, Syria‘s largest city and its main commercial hub.

Also Friday, regime troops shelled Homs and soldiers battled rebels around the central province with the same name, which was a major frontline during the first year of the revolt. An amateur video posted online by activists showed rockets slamming into buildings in the rebel-held town of Rastan, just north of the provincial capital, Homs. The sound of heavy gunfire could be heard in the background.

Another video showed thick black and grey smoke rising from a building in the besieged city. “The city of Homs is burning… Day and night, the shelling of Homs doesn’t stop,” the narrator is heard saying.

Troops also battled rebels around Damascus in an effort to dislodge opposition fighters who have set up enclaves in towns and villages around the capital. The troops fired artillery shells at several districts, including on Zabadani and Daraya, according to the Observatory.

Another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees, said regime warplanes carried out airstrikes on the suburb of Douma, the largest patch of rebel-held ground near Damascus.

Both groups depend on a network of activists on the ground around the country.

As violence in the past weeks continued unabated in the south and in central Syria, thousands have been fleeing their homes daily, according to aid agencies, seeking shelter in Jordan and Lebanon, where authorities have struggled to cope with the unprecedented refugee influx.

The Britain-based Save the Children said Friday that 10,000 Syrians, mostly women and children, fled to Jordan over the last 24 hours due to intense fighting between troops and rebels in southern parts of the country, including in Daraa, where the uprising against Assad first erupted.

More than 3,000 of those have reached Jordan‘s overcrowded Zaatari refugee camp, where five buses, crammed with “frightened and exhausted people who fled with what little they could carry,” pull up every hour, according to Saba al-Mobasat, an aid worker of Save the Children in Zaatari.

Last month, the United Nations refugee agency said it needed $1 billion to aid Syrians in the region, while $500 million was required to help refugees in Jordan. The UNHCR says 597,240 refugees have registered or are awaiting registration with the agency in Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt. Some countries have higher estimates, noting many have found accommodations without registering.

Jordan hosts more than 300,000 Syrians.

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