At least 48 Syrian soldiers and eight Iraqis died on Monday when they were ambushed inside Iraq, The Associated Press reports.

The circumstances indicate a blurred border between the countries and a decision by Iraq's Shiite government to support the Shiite regime of Bashar al-Assad.

The attack occurred after the Syrians crossed into Iraq for refuge when rebels seized the al-Yaroubiyah border crossing point in Iraq's northern province of Nineveh on Saturday.

On Saturday an Al-Arabiya correspondent reported that Iraqi forces opened fire across the Syrian border for the first time, shelling opposition positions near the crossing (called Rabia in Iraq) while snipers took up positions on buildings. (There were reports of shelling on Monday as well.)

The correspondent added that large reinforcements were being deployed by Baghdad near the Syrian borders.

“If this goes on, [Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal] al-Maliki’s government is aligning itself with Iran and the Assad regime against the rest of the Middle East and the will of the Syrian people,” told AP. “That is a huge gamble."

Iraqi forces closed the border crossing on Sunday and were accompanying the Syrian convoy back to Syria through the al-Waleed border crossing in the southern Anbar province when the ambush — a highly-coordinated assault involving bombs, gunfire, and rocket-propelled grenades — erupted.

Iraqi officials blame al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) — the Sunni militant group that has sent veteran fighters and financing to the radical Sunni rebel group Jabhat al-Nusra— which would suggest a lot of communication between AQI and rebels if true.

“In that region, the tribes go right across the Syrian border, and most of the people are related by blood,” Syria expert Joshua Landis told The New York Times. “They’re in one common struggle.”

Last week al-Maliki told the AP that "the most dangerous thing" would be a rebel military victory because it would lead to "a civil war in Lebanon, divisions in Jordan and a sectarian war in Iraq."

We noted that Maliki's stark words may have been part of an attempt to protect the Shiite Crescent i.e. the geographical link between Shiites in power from Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and Syria.

SEE ALSO: Radical Syrian Rebels Are About To Blur The Border With Iraq

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Syrian rebels in the Golan Heights have captured a convoy of UN trucks and are demanding that Bashar al-Assad's forces to leave the area, James Miller of EA WorldView reports.

Reuters reports the UN has confirmed that about 20 peacekeepers had been detained by around 30 armed fighters.

The Islamist "Yarmouk Martyrs Brigade" posted two videos in which one rebel demands the "withdrawal of forces of the regime of Bashar Assad from the outskirts of the village of Jamlah," which lies a mile east of the ceasefire line with the Israeli Golan."If no withdrawal is made within 24 hours we will treat them as prisoners."

At least five unarmed UN observers can be seen sitting inside the trucks.

Israel seized the Golan Heights in the Six-Day War in 1967 and annexed the territory in 1981. In 1973 the UN Disengagement Observer Force Zone was established to end the Yom Kippur War and provide a buffer zone between the two countries.

On Monday Russia's UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin, president of the UN security council for March, said that armed groups operating in a so-called area of separation were threatening the security situation between the two countries.

The Times of Israel reports that rebels uploaded videos showing them studying Isreal Defense Force patrols along the border with Israel.

Israel warned the council that it could not be expected to "stand idle" as Syria's civil war spills over. Last month it was considering creating a buffer zone reaching up to 10 miles from Golan into Syria to secure the 47-mile border against the threat of Islamic radicals in the area.

Miller notes that on Tuesday the same group published a video showing them executing a group of prisoners of war.

Here's one of the videos (here's the other):

SEE ALSO: Israel Faces Increasing Danger As Assad Weakens

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Syria's state-run news agency claims that Israeli spying devices have been found in the country's coastal region, according to The Associated Press.

SANA's report says the devices — some of which look like rocks while others are plastic boxes resembling batteries — are designed to photograph, register, and transfer data.

The relationship between the two countries has become increasingly tense as the two-year civil war in Syria has progressed.

In late January Israel bombed a military research center outside of Damascus and has been considering creating a buffer zone reaching up to 10 miles inside Syria because radical Islamic rebels are now roaming the Golan Heights area that separates the two countries.

There were no further details on the objects or where exactly they were found, but whatever they are they're cool looking.

Check out more photos here >

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Today on EA WorldView's Syria Live Coverage, Jame's Miller posted a YouTube video showing of a group of men in "northern Syria" saying well-known Muslim sayings and then blowing up a "pagan shrine" (destruction begin around 0:35).

Miller notes it's "unclear who the men are, where they are, or what the building is, but it could be an ancient place of worship for any number of religions."

This fanatical act, which results in the militants getting pelted with cinder blocks, serves as apt metaphor for what the country is looking like after two years of civil war.

Meanwhile Syrian Air Force bombs are forcing thousands to stream out of Syria's sixth largest city.

SEE ALSO: Professor Explains Why Aleppo And Damascus Are Doomed

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Syrian rebels on Sunday launched a surprise dawn attack on Baba Amr, a former rebel stronghold in the central city of Homs, a year after it was taken by the army in a bloody battle, a monitoring group said.

"At dawn, the rebels launched a surprise attack on Baba Amr, which they have entered," Syrian Observatory for Human Rights director Rami Abdel Rahman, who was in contact with the rebels, told AFP.

"The rebels infiltrated Baba Amr during the night. Those manning the army checkpoints barely had time to realise what was going on," said Omar, an activist who was also in touch with the insurgents.

The Homs district gained notoriety when hundreds of Syrians were killed last year during more than a month of army bombardment and combat with the outgunned rebels, who were finally driven out by troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

Reflecting its importance to the regime, Assad visited the devastated district on March 27 to mark the "victory" of his troops, and made promises broadcast on state television that Baba Amr would rise again and return to "normal life."

As well as those killed in the siege, dozens of bodies were found in neighbouring districts of Homs, and included those of people fleeing the fighting in Baba Amr, according to the Observatory.

Two foreign journalists, American reporter Marie Colvin of The Sunday Times in Britain and French photojournalist Remi Ochlik, were among those killed in the fighting when a makeshift media centre in Baba Amr was shelled by Syrian forces.

The army, which controls around 80 percent of Homs, launched an offensive several days ago aimed at capturing rebel enclaves, notably in the northern Khaldiyeh district and in the old city, using helicopters to bombard them.

"Thinking that the situation was under their control in the other districts, the army reduced its presence there, concentrating in particular on retaking Khaldiyeh," said the Observatory's Abdel Rahman.

"The rebels took advantage of the situation with a surprise attack on Baba Amr," he added.

The soldiers in Homs also appeared to have been distracted by a double truck bombing launched last week by the jihadist Al-Nusra Front on checkpoints at the entrance to Syria's third-largest city, according to the Observatory.

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The footage below, uploaded to YouTube by the U.K.'s Channel 4, gives a startling glimpse into the Syrian war from an unusual perspective — the turret of a Syrian government tank.

The video shows Darya, a suburb of Damascus, nearly devastated with the Syrian regime patrolling and shooting at rebel positions.

The shocking footage first appeared on YouTube a few days ago and has a somewhat mysterious origin.

Channel 4 points out that it seems to be from the Russian language news agency Abkhazian Network News Agency (ANNA), who appear to be taking a pro-Assad tone. Robert Mackey at The New York Times' Lede blog says not much is known about the news agency, but they regularly post videos to YouTube shot from a tanks-eye view.

Channel 4 say they have reached out to ANNA but not heard back.

Here's the original footage:

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Eric Harroun is an Arizona native who rioted with rebels in Cairo and fought in Syria for Al Qaeda affiliate Jabhat Al Nusra.

He's also a former U.S. Army servicemember who was discharged following a vehicle accident. He was left with full disability pay, his father Darryl Harroun, tells Fox News.

Fox also dug up a bit of his past:

Harroun's descent into Islamic fanaticism seems to have begun sometime after his discharge from the military. With seemingly no way to pursue his lifelong dream of being a soldier, he fell in with two Iraqi brothers, Maadh and Hayder Ibrahim, who he met while attending Pima Community College in Tucson, and began to identify himself as a Muslim, according to people who know him.

Harroun, who talked briefly with Fox via Skype, says that he's now in Istanbul, Turkey. His father isn't sure if Harroun will make it home alive.

"Maybe Gaza is next for me, maybe [the] West Bank," Harroun told Fox.

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Since 2011 the U.S. has been expanding the CIA's role in Iraqas radical Syrian rebels threaten the border region, according to Adam Entous, Julian Barnes, and Siobhan Gorman of The Wall Street Journal.

Officals told WSJ that the agency provides support to Iraq's Counterterrorism Service (CTS) — comprised of SWAT-like units and U.S.-trained Iraqi special forces — which reports directly to Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

The disclosure places CIA personnel on Syria's three largest borders.

In June The New York Times reported that CIA officers in southern Turkey was been funneling weapons to Syrian rebels. In December NPR reported that CIA officers were training rebels in Jordan on how to identify and safeguard chemical weapons (while Der Spigel reported that it had been happening since May).

In October and November we reported on potential but unconfirmed indications that the CIA may have been funneling heavy weapons from Benghazi, Libya, to Turkey.

The reemergence of the CIA in Iraq has coincided with America's increasing concerns about extremist Syrian rebels, namely Jabhat al-Nusra— the radical Sunni rebel group that is supported byveteran fighters and financing from al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI). 

Nusra, which the State Department labeled as terrorists in December, surfaced as the opposition's most effective rebel force in July and now controls large swaths of eastern and northern Syria.

On Monday AQI claimed responsibility for killing 48 Syrian soldiers and state employees in Iraq last week, saying that the Iraqi-led convoy proved that Iraq was supporting the regime of Bashar al-Assad.

From 2004 to '11 AQI fought a brutal guerrilla war against the Iraqi government and the U.S. military with the help of a deep support network in Syria.

During that time, the CIA had more than 700 agency personnel in Baghdad, making it the agency's largest station in the world. Furthermore, Iraq's brutal special commando units were trained under General David Petraeus, who later become CIA Director.

A senior defense official told WSJ that once Assad falls, Nusra could "orient strongly against Iraq." Members of the group told Reuters as much last month:

"The Sunnis in Anbar [Iraq] are helping with weapons and ammunition," the leader of the powerful Al-Qadisiyah Brigade said. "Their days (of fighting) will come soon and Insh'allah ("God willing") we will go to jihad with them. Those Sunnis are our brothers."

The recurrence of the CIA-Iraq coalition has a tinge of irony since the U.S. has been aiding Syrian rebels while calling on Assad to step down while Iraq has recently begun showing signs of support for the embattled Syrian president.

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Nate Andersen at Ars Technica published what I call a "rabbit hole" piece Sunday night detailing the secret Internet underbelly of a group of programmers called RATters.

It's a rabbit hole because you can't ever come back once you've read a piece like this. It's a Matrix-style Red Pill.

Or maybe, more accurately: A RAT hole.

A RAT is a Remote Administration Tool that IT guys use to look inside computers.

Basically it's software that tech sections in corporations sometimes use to get remote control of a desktop for troubleshooting purposes. RATers have co-opted this software to hijack women's systems without their knowledge. RATers refer to these women as slaves.

Slipping past the three pages of pervertedness (which again, I recommend reading at length), one gets to a truly troubling aspect of hacking (or any sort of innovation for that matter): the law of unintended consequences.

Perverts have obviously repurposed this software — meant originally to fix computers — to watch unsuspecting people. Presumably, there's nothing stopping embattled dictators, say during the Arab spring, from doing the same thing in order to surveil leaders of rebel groups.

This is exactly what Malwarebytes, a computer security company, found after analyzing all the things that popular RAT DarkComet was capable of. That analysis also referred to the fact that the Syrian and Egyptian governments used RATs to battle rebels.

From Ars Technica:

The conclusion drawn by the researchers at Malwarebytes was that RAT creators had unwittingly become low-cost arms dealers to repressive regimes that couldn't afford to develop such tools themselves.

So a piece of software developed in an open source environment was picked up by oppressive regimes to spy on unwitting rebels.

Andersen notes at the end of his piece that the results of these revelations, as well as the use of his technology by RATs, led prominent RAT program author Jean-Pierre Lesueur to "shut down DarkComet with a message blaming his users."

As an aside, hackers recommend keeping Javascript and Flash updated on computers to avoid becoming a RATter's slave.

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Abu Ibrahim says he and his family are the only Christians left in Syria's devastated city of Deir Ezzor, and he is terrified Muslim extremists could make their already difficult life hell.

Yet every Sunday, he and the family peacefully hold prayers in a house they share with 15 soldiers from the rebel Free Syria Army (FSA), all Sunni Muslims.

But this is no paradox.

Abu Ibrahim's wife Mariam, a silver cross hanging from around her neck, recalls fondly the Deir Ezzor she knew before the uprising against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad broke out two years ago.

In a mixed neighbourhood of Christians and Sunnis, "we all lived in peace with each other. We had many Muslim friends who came to our house for Christmas and we would go to theirs to break the fast during Ramadan."

"That is the Syria that I would like to live in again," she says wistfully.

She and her husband are not troubled by Muslims per se. Indeed Mariam cooks and washes for the FSA fighters, saying "they are like my children."

What they do fear is the Al-Nusra Front, a jihadist group that is better financed, armed and organised than the FSA and that has muscled it out as the primary rebel force in Deir Ezzor.

There are widespread fears that if the regime falls, Al-Nusra will attempt to impose an Islamic state in Syria, where Christians, Sunnis and Alawites, the offshoot of Shiite Islam to which Assad belongs, have coexisted for centuries.

"When Assad falls, we will see what their true intentions are," says Abu Ibrahim.

And if that were to happen, then "we Christians... will have no place in this country, and we will leave."

Traditionally, about 10 percent of Syria's population are Christian, with the largest number being Greek Orthodox. The once-bustling commercial capital Aleppo is believed to have been home to the largest number of Christians.

But Christians in Deir Ezzor, once a city of around 800,000, were a small minority of 4,000. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says most of them fled months ago.

Abu Ibrahim says there were never inter-confessional problems.

"Those are lies invented by the regime to provoke confrontations among Christians, Alawites and Sunnis. What the government wants is to divide us, because that makes it stronger."

The presence of Al-Nusra fighters in Deir Ezzor is palpable, with their black flags fluttering from pickup trucks that race through the streets.

"So far, we haven't had any trouble with them," Abu Ibrahim explains, though saying he had heard Christians in Aleppo did. But he quickly adds: "We are afraid of them, and not just us, but the FSA soldiers as well.

"There are all sorts" in the group, he says. "Radicals and moderates; good people and people who have only hatred in their hearts."

Mariam says she hasn't been out of the house in months because of them.

"I can't go out shopping because I don't wear a veil, and I'm afraid that they will do something or say something to me, and I don't want them beating me in front of my children."

But if Mariam can't go out uncovered, it's different at home, where she wears no veil despite her Muslim friends. "They respect my beliefs and I respect theirs."

With these people, it's different. In fact, the family owes its life to them.

After Abu Ibrahim lost his job in Deir Ezzor's oilfields, he opened a garage at his house and the rebels began bringing their vehicles for repairs.

"Until the regime found out and bombed the house -- five times. We lost everything," he says.

After the first attacks, the family moved into the basement, then "we nearly died from breathing in the dust when the house finally collapsed.

"The rebels risked their lives to come to our rescue," he says. "They pulled us out from under the rubble and gave us shelter and food. Sectarian war? If that were the case, they would have left us to die beneath the rubble of my house."

Omar Deire is one of those rebels, and adds his voice to that of Abu Ibrahim, who discounts fears expressed by some in the West that "we started this war to carry out an ethnic cleansing or some such."

"This is just simply not true," says Deire, who recounts how his mother died years ago and Mariam had become his surrogate mother. "I would give my life for her or for any of her three children."

Instead, he says, "we are fighting against a regime, against a dictator, not religious beliefs. If there are no more... churches in this city, it's because the regime bombarded them, not because FSA soldiers destroyed them."

He says he shares a vision similar to the one expressed by Mariam.

"In all the (anti-regime) demonstrations in this city there was a single cry: 'One, one, one. The Syrian people is one.'"

And that, he says, is something Al-Nusra will have to respect.

"We are fighting together against an enemy, but once that enemy has been overthrown, they will have to leave. If they want to stay, they will have to do so under our laws," where Christians, Muslims and Alawites are all Syrians.

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The Syrian revolution — which has since morphed into a full-blown civil war — began with a Arab Spring "Day of Rage" on March 15, 2011, when a group of 200 mostly young protesters gathered in the Syrian capital of Damascus to demand reforms and the ouster of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. As peaceful protests spread, the Assad regime met them with an iron fist. The a British-trained optometrist lifted the the country’s decades-old state of emergency sent tanks into restive cities as security forces opened fire on demonstrators. As the crackdown continued into the summer, thousands of soldiers defected and began launching attacks against the government and foreign governments began making arrangements to help the opposition. Going into 2012, hopes for a internal-brokered ceasefire dissipated as foreign fighters entered the country to support both sides and fighting became more intense. This collection present Business Insider's best coverage from February 2012 to present day, showing the arc of the conflict as it went from a domestic revolution to a proxy war to a full-blown sectarian conflict fueled by radical jihadists and outside forces that has spilled over Syria's borders. We'll keep adding to it as the war rages on.

Go to the collection >

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Iran is stepping up arms shipments to Syria. It has trained and funded 50,000 Lebanese Hezbollah fighters. And it has Russia as a political umbrella in the U.N, according to recent reports.

While it sends fuel, money and weapons to Assad, Moscow argues in the U.N. that support for legitimate governments — i.e. Syria — does not go against international arms trade laws.

The main mode of supply comes from civilian airliners flying into Iran, bringing with them a weekly 5-ton shipment of weapons, according to recent western intelligence reports.

Without Russia or China on board in the Security Council, international inspectors cannot stop these aircraft.

Iran's own inspectors swear that there's no weapons on those flights, and Russia says the Kremlin is only supplying anti-missile air defense systems and not any offensive weapons.

According to Reuters, who saw the western intelligence report, the weapons flowing into the ravaged country range from communication equipment to small arms and advanced strategic weapons:

"The more sophisticated gear includes parts for various hardware such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), shore-to-sea missiles and surface-to-surface ballistic missiles (SSMs)," the report said. "Other weapons are being used by Syrian security forces, pro-Assad shabbiha militiamen, and Lebanese Hezbollah."

At this point, Syria has devolved into a gigantic proxy playground, with at least 15 entities, both state and private, backing one side or the other — making war-bucks or gaining political currency in the process.

Josh Rogin of Foreign Policy compiled a list today, one which might surprise even a casual follower of the conflict.

The list includes:

— Russia: money, fuel, weapons

— Iran: money, fuel, weapons (and fighters)

— North Korea: missile technology, technical assistance

— Venezuela and Angola have provided fuel

— Private entities in Georgia, Lebanon, Cyprus, Italy, South Africa and the UAE have provided various support 

While the U.S. only admits to offering non-military support to the rebels, it could be pulling strings with allies Saudia Arabia and Qatar, who are believed to be providing weapons support to the rebels, according toCNN.

In addition to the United Nations, European Union law blocks arms trade with non-governmental actors. Russia touts this in its defense of Syria.

From a Deutsche Welle report:

[Russia] has repeatedly blocked resolutions against the government of President Bashar al-Assad at the United Nations. Several nations have called for the Security Council to take action over the crackdown that has followed the rebellion.

High-ranking officials from both France and Britain have come out against the the EU's arms embargo, according to a Guardian report, with one UK official saying, "The regime is getting help. The extremists are getting help. The moderates are not."

Russia argues in the U.N. that its support falls along established, legitimate international laws on the arms trade. It also argues correctly that support for non-state actors within a state violates those same trade laws.

According to a JanuaryNew York Times report, Russia has a lot to lose if the U.S. begins openly arming rebels. It's been arguing for years against America's form of military and political interventionism —  so losing in the U.N. would legitimize American efforts.

From the report:

Moscow does not believe the U.N. Security Council should be in the business of endorsing the removal of a sitting government.

The Kremlin has issued three U.N. Security Council vetoes, bent over backward to water down the Geneva Communiqué calling for a peaceful transition of authority, and fastidiously avoided joining the call for Assad to step down.

They wouldn't just lose Assad as an intelligence and military sharing neighbor — indeed even a loyal customer— but they'd lose political clout in the international community.

Now, as the death toll has reached 70,000, Moscow is ostensibly pulling out all stops to keep western bodies from outwardly arming rebels. At that point, with its open support for Assad, Russia and the west would find themselves locked in a very public, very messy proxy war.

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BEIRUT (AP) — A high-ranking general in the Syrian army defected on Saturday with the help of rebels and said morale is low among those still fighting for President Bashar Assad as the civil war enters its third year.

Maj. Gen. Mohammed Ezz al-Din Khalouf told Al-Arabiya TV that many of those still with Assad's regime have lost faith in it.

"It not an issue of belief or practicing one's role," he said. "It's for appearance's sake, to present an image to the international community from the regime that it pulls together all parts of Syrian society under this regime."

Activist videos posted online Saturday showed Khalouf sitting with a rebel fighter after his defection and riding in a car to what the video said was the Jordanian border.

The video said he was Chief of Staff for the army branch that deals with supplies and fuel.

While widespread defections from the Syrian army have sapped it of much of its manpower during the two-year-old anti-Assad uprising, high-level defections have been rare.

The Syrian government did not comment on the defection.

Still, cracks continue to spread slowly through Assad's regime as rebel forces slowly expand their areas of control in the country and put increasing pressure on the capital, Damascus.

Also Saturday, Human Rights Watch said Syria's government is expanding its use of widely banned cluster bombs.

The New York-based rights group said Syrian forces have dropped at least 156 cluster bombs in 119 locations across the country in the past six months, causing mounting civilian casualties. The report said two strikes in the past two weeks killed 11 civilians, including two women and five children.

The regime denied using cluster bombs, which open in flight, scattering smaller bomblets and have been banned in many countries. They pose a threat to civilians long afterward since many don't explode immediately.

Human Rights Watch said it based its findings on field investigations and analysis of more than 450 amateur videos.

A senior Syrian government official on Saturday rejected the report, saying many amateur videos were suspect. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to make official statements to the media.

The fighting in Syria has killed some 70,000 people and displaced 4 million of the country's 22 million people, according to U.N. estimates.

The conflict remains deadlocked, despite recent military gains by the rebels.

In new violence, rebels detonated a powerful car bomb with more than two tons of explosives outside a high-rise building in the eastern city of Deir el-Zour, setting off clashes with regime troops, state TV and activists said.

On Saturday, rebels in Deir el-Zour detonated a car rigged with more than two tons of explosives next to the tallest building in the city, known as the Insurance Building, state TV said.

State TV says rebels entered the building after the blast but were pushed out by government forces. No casualties were reported in the blast, but the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said four fighters were killed in subsequent clashes with regime troops.

Regime forces also shelled several areas of the city, the activist group said.

In an amateur video said to be showing Deir el-Zour, heavy gunfire was heard in the background and a cloud of smoke was visible.

The blast came a day after Syrians marked the second anniversary of the start of their uprising against President Bashar Assad. The rebellion began with largely peaceful protests, but when the regime cracked down on demonstrators, the unrest evolved into an insurgency and then a civil war.

In recent months, the Assad regime has escalated airstrikes and artillery attacks on rebel-held areas in the north and east of the country, rights groups have said.

The Observatory also said at least 12 rebel fighters were killed in clashes near a cement factory in the northern city of Aleppo, and five people were killed when a shell exploded in the Damascus neighborhood of Qaboun.

Also Saturday, the head of Syria's leading opposition group issued an anniversary message to Syrians, saying that the uprising has "has taken a long time."

The opposition recognizes March 15, 2011 as the start of the uprising.

In a video posted on his Facebook page, Mouaz al-Khatib, head of the Syrian Opposition Coalition, congratulated the town of Yabrud, north of Damascus, for creating a civil council to run its affairs.

"Our people are great, our people are civilized and they don't need gangs to rule them," al-Khatib said, sitting in front of a Syrian flag and cracking a rare smile. "They just need to breathe a little bit of the air of freedom and they'll create as they have created in all places."

All videos appeared authentic and corresponded with other reporting by The Associated Press.

___

Associated Press writer Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, contributed to this report.

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The Syrian capital of Damascus— inhabited as early as 8,000 to 10,000 BCE — is arguably the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world.

Syrian rebels — bolstered by an influx of Croatian weapons and new promises from the West— are inching closer to penetrating the fabled city as they gain ground nearby.

"It will become difficult for the regime to claim to govern Syria if the opposition breaks into downtown Damascus," Joseph Holliday of Institute for the Study of War concludes in a recent analysis of the regime’s military strategy over the last two years. "Assad is more likely to destroy Damascus than to abandon it to the opposition."

The Associated Press reportsthat at least three mortar shells struck central Damascus Monday, including one near Tishreen presidential palace — one of three palaces that Assad uses in the capital. Syrian rebels also claimed to have hit the Damascus International Airport, which has been under attack for months, with 27 rockets.

"I don't even feel safe at home any more," one Damascene father of two told Reuters three weeks ago. "It's one thing for government forces to walk around with machine guns. But RPGs? A mortar shell or grenade can come flying through my window any minute. It's ridiculous."

Assad feels the heat — and the morale of his troops is reportedly waning— but the Alawite ruler still has plenty of help and claims that “the war will not end anytime soon.”

Journalist Michael Weiss notes that, according to Holliday's analysis, Assad has "around 18,700-28,700 conventional troops with which to combat an insurgency that now exceeds 100,000."

But Assad is also drawing from 50,000 or more Hezbollah-trained and Iran-financed militiaman called the Jaysh al-Sha‘bia (i.e. "People's Army") and an unknown number of Hezbollah and Iranian fighters using Iranian and Russian weapons.

To get an idea of what the future holds for Damascus, one needs only to look at the country's second city of Aleppo. Syria's commercial hub — which lies near the oldest known human settlement in the world — has been destroyed by vicious fighting over the past year.

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There's been evidence of a Japanese trucker taking pictures in Aleppo and a Russian judge reporting on government troops near Damascus, and now it appears a Chinese national is fighting with jihadist rebels in Syria.

A YouTube video entitled "A message of victory to the people of China from the Mujahidin Brigade Front" features a Chinese man embedded with an al-Qaeda affiliate, blogger Eliot Higgins pointed out on Monday.

Isaac Stone Fish and J. Dana Stuster of Foreign Policy translated the video, in which a man named "Bo Wang"— he introduces himself as "Yusef"— talks about converting to Islam and fighting with Libyans in their "revolutionary" war while holding a Kalashnikov (with a mounted bayonet). An al-Qaeda flag waves in the background.

From Foreign Policy:

"As a Chinese Muslim, I'd like to deeply apologize" to the Syrian people "in utter misery from the flames of war," he says. "Also," he continues, "I am representing all of the Muslims in warning the Chinese government to immediately stop all forms of aid to [Syrian President Bashar al-Assad], including selling arms to them, including economic aid."

Higgins, who tracks weapons and rebel groups in Syria on his Brown Moses blog and Twitter feed, noted that it was the first time he noticed a Chinese national fighting alongside jihadists in the country.

Here's the video (it's in Mandarin with Arabic subtitles):

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Syria's government on Tuesday accused rebel forces of using chemical weapons for the first time, but the opposition denied the claim, saying instead that government forces might have used banned weapons.

"Terrorists fired rockets containing chemical materials on Khan al-Assal in Aleppo province," the state news agency SANA and Syrian state television said.

Syria's Information Minister Omran al-Zohbi called the attack a "dangerous escalation," saying that 16 people were killed and 86 injured in the incident.

"The international community and the states that arm, finance and shelter the terrorists should (take note) of the crime committed today in which terrorists used a weapon that is prohibited by international law," he said.

He said countries that backed the rebels, including Turkey and Qatar "bear the legal, moral and human responsibility for the crime that left 16 dead and 86 injured, both civilians and soldiers," Zohbi added.

A spokesman for the Free Syrian Army in Istanbul denied rebel forces had used chemical weapons, blaming President Bashar al-Assad's regime for a deadly rocket attack that caused "breathing problems".

"We understand the army targeted Khan al-Assal (in Aleppo province) using a long-range missile, and our initial information says it may have contained chemical weapons," Louay Muqdad told AFP.

"There are many casualties and many injured have breathing problems," he said in Istanbul, where Syria's opposition has gathered to pick a rebel prime minister.

"We have neither long-range missiles nor chemical weapons. And if we did, we wouldn't use them against a rebel target," said Muqdad.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based watchdog, confirmed that a ground-to-ground missile had been fired at a Syrian army position in Khan al-Assal, but there was no information on whether it contained chemical material.

The group said the incident had killed 16 soldiers and 10 civilians.

"I'm not able to confirm if the missile contained chemical materials or not," the group's director Rami Abdel Rahman said.

In early March, nearly 200 regime forces and rebels were killed in fighting over control of a police academy in Khan al-Assal, which is west of Aleppo.

Rebel forces seized the academy, but in the past week regime forces retook much of the town in a counter-offensive, according to the Observatory.

The international community has expressed repeated concern aver the possibility that Assad's regime would use its chemical weapons against rebel forces, and there are also fears the stocks could fall into the hands of militants if the regime loses control over them.

Syria's chemical weapons stockpile, which dates back to the 1970s, is the biggest in the Middle East but its precise scope remains unclear according to analysts, and the regime has not acknowledged having the arms.

The country has hundreds of tons of various chemical agents, including sarin and VX nerve agents, as well as older blistering agents such as mustard gas, dispersed in dozens of manufacturing and storage sites, experts say.

But it remains unclear if the chemical weapons are mounted and ready to be launched on Scud missiles, if the chemical agents are maintained effectively, and whether the regime is able to replenish its chemical stocks.

Damascus has said it might use its chemical weapons if attacked by outsiders, although not against its own people.

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There are reports that neighborhoods near both Aleppo and Damascus were hit with chemicals — suggesting a coordinated attack — and the circumstances make it unlikely rebels were responsible, James Miller of EA WorldView reports.

At least 20 people have been killed in the attack, and the casualties include Syrian regime soldiers and pro-Assad armed men.

Earlier, Syria's government accused rebel forces of firing a rocket containing toxic chemicals for the first time. Rebels say that a regime Scud missile fell on the wrong side of the front lines in Aleppo, and that yesterday rebels captured a base near where chemicals were dispersed in Damascus.

Blogger Eliot Higgins, who tracks weapons and rebels in Syria, points out that it's highly unlikely that the homemade rockets used by the opposition could travel 20 miles (as the government claims) or deliver enough pungent gas to hurt that many people.

Miller provides another observation:

#Syria Snap Analysis: If the rebels conducted a chemical attack, where's the car bomb? bit.ly/XXa6BP | #MENA

— James Miller (ميلر) (@JMiller_EA) March 19, 2013

FSA spokesperson Louay Muqdad denied the charge, telling AFP that rebels "have neither long-range missiles nor chemical weapons. And if we did, we wouldn't use them against a rebel target."

Aleppo Media Centre, a group of activists who serve as opposition spokespeople in Syria's second city, provided Miller with this summary:

Activists in Damascus and Aleppo say that the regime used chemical weapons in khan Al Asal in Aleppo and in Al Atebah in the eastern countryside of Damascus. This video is from Al Atebah. ...

According to activists in Aleppo, the regime shelled Police School taken by the opposition by a scud, but by mistake the scud fell on an area controlled by the regime.

Higgins tweeted a playlist of videos of the alleged attack east of Damascus (WARNING: Graphic).

Miller reports that Al Atebah is in the "heart of rebel-held eastern Damascus" and has been "constantly under regime air and artillery attack" because it is where rebels are leading their charge into downtown Damascus.

Yesterday Syrian rebels claimed that they won a base near Al Atebah and were being bombarded ever since.

Miller also points out that khan Al Asal is on the front lines of the battle for Aleppo as "a major cohort of rebels are marching against some of Assad's most hardened bases."

Miller noted that rebels in the area — equipped with captured tanks, artillery, and other weapons — have been attacking "Assad's artillery academy and other military installations that constitute the major strongholds of the regime in southwest Aleppo. Without these bases, the city will fall to the rebels."

The U.S. ruled out that rebels were responsible, and a senior UK official told BBC reporter Jon Williams that chemical use would be "game-changer" no matter who is responsible.  

Al Jazeera reports a medic in Aleppo believes the victims were exposed to organic pesticides and not chemical weapons. Miller reports that another doctor says that one suspect is an "Organophosphate," which is in the same category as nerve gases.

Syria's chemical weapons stockpile is the biggest in the Middle East, and everyone watching the situation worries that part of it could fall into the hands of extremist rebels.

This would not be the first time civilians had died from chemicals in the two-year conflict. In December doctors at the Syrian American Medical Society (SAMS) interviewed witnesses and victims of an apparent attack and concluded the "probable" use of an "incapacitating" chemical called "Agent-15" or "BZ." A week later "Western intelligence sources" told Ynetnews that chemical weapons had been used on rebels.

Miller ends his report with a question of motive:

Motive is a primary question here. Why attack these sites now? With rebels on the advance in both locations, and with today's news of the appointment of a new opposition Prime Minister, who thinks that they can benefit from today's attacks?  

SEE ALSO: Why Syria's Chemical Weapons Are So Terrifying [INFOGRAPHIC]

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On Monday the Syrian opposition chose naturalized Syrian-born American citizen Ghassan Hitto to lead an interim government tasked with aiding rebels and serving as an alternative to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.

Hitto is backed by the Free Syrian Army (FSA), a Western-backed group formed in 2011. The FSA mostly comprises Syrian army soldiers and high-level officers who defected from the regime in addition to local (mostly secular) militias.

The hope is that a functional transition will be established to administer war-torn areas in the north until and after Assad is toppled — but that appears to be a stretch.

The primary problems are that jihadist rebels control most of the north and are unlikely to relinquish territory they've captured, while the top-down structure of the FSA doesn't have authority in practice.

Nusra owns the north

Jihadists rebels now control large parts of the three provinces that make up northeastern Syria and are working to install the foundations for an Islamic state.

Earlier this month extremist rebels — mostly from large armed groups Ahrar al Sham and Jabhat al Nusra — captured the provincial capital of Raqqa, Syria's sixth largest city and the first to fall into rebel hands.

In February Nusra rebels have surrounded the provincial capital of of Deir al-Zor, and the 10,000-strong forcealready controls wheat silos, a textile factory, and oil fields across the province.

Also in February Nusra fighters advanced within 30 miles of the far northeastern provincial capital of Hasakah. 

This is all after 13 Islamic factions declared sovereignty over the northern city of Aleppo — Syria's second largest city and commercial hub — in November.

Jihadists fighting with Nusra —led by veterans of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)— have said that they will fight any post-Assad secular government in addition to going to jihad with their Sunni brothers in Iraq.

Does a Free Syrian Army even exist?

Defected Gen. Selim Idriss, who heads the FSA's Supreme Military Command,says the rebels will support and "work under the umbrella" of Hitto's government, but experts such as Aron Lund point out that the FSA is more of a brand than an actual organization.

Lund details how the FSA organization in Turkey is split between "a whole bunch of defected officers who claim to be leaders of the FSA," and the powerful Islamist brigades don't recognize the authority of the Supreme Military Command.

Gen. Idriss "controls" the most men, but Lund explains that the various groups claim allegiance to the FSA to get weapons from the opposition's foreign backers and ultimately follow their own leaders.

From Lund:

"The elaborate command structure which has been released by the General Staff is a figment of the imagination, intended to create the impression of a unified organization that isn’t there."

The overrding problem 

As jihadist rebels — who have long been the oppositions best and most organized fighters — continue to acquire territory, a set of entirely new and devastating set of problems faces the new government.

Toppling Assad is only half the battle, and the FSA will have to prepare to fight against the powerful Islamic militias like Nusra and al Sham.

“After the fall of Bashar there will be so many battles between these groups,” an Iraqi who joined the regular Free Syrian Army told the New York Times in December. “All the groups will unite against al-Nusra."

Given that the powerful Islamic brigades are the opposition's best chance to defeat Assad, it seems likely that they'll be the strongest force in Syria when he's gone.

SEE ALSO: A Chinese National Appears To Be Fighting With Al-Qaeda In Syria

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The BBC's official weather account — @BBCWeather — has been hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army (SEA), a cyber clan that spreads propaganda in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

At about 9:00 EST the handle tweeted "Long Live #Syria Al-Assad #SEA" and has since been publishing absurd mash-ups involving various Middle East countries and the weather.

Here are a few examples:

Forecast for Tel Aviv on Saturday - 5000 degrees Kelvin with northern fog and eastern high pressure front

— BBC Weather (@bbcweather) March 21, 2013

Chaotic weather forecast for Lebanon as the government decides to distance itself from the Milky Way

— BBC Weather (@bbcweather) March 21, 2013

Saudi weather station down due to head on-collision with camel

— BBC Weather (@bbcweather) March 21, 2013

Hazardous fog warning for North Syria: Erdogan orders terrorists to launch chemical weapons at civilian areas

— BBC Weather (@bbcweather) March 21, 2013

Last month the SEA hacked @AFPPhoto and tweeted a number of pro-Assad/anti-Obama tweets and images.

@BBCWeather is usually run by presenters and producers and has more than 57,200 followers and counting.

From BBC social media editor Chris Hamilton:

Yes, @bbcweather has been hacked. We’re working on it.

— Chris Hamilton (@chrishams) March 21, 2013

To get an idea of what the SEA is all about, here's a video they addressed to the amorphous hacker collective Anonymous:

SEE ALSO:  HACKED: Israeli Deputy Prime Minister's Social Media Accounts Hijacked

SEE ALSO:  The Twitter Conversation Between Hamas And IDF Is One Of The Most Revealing Aspects Of The Conflict

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The CIA is doing more to bolster non-radical Syrian rebels to counter the increasing dominance of jihadist groups, Adam Entous, Siobhan Gorman, and Nour Malas The Wall Street Journal report.

The Agency is now feeding intelligence to secular-leaning rebels, presumably members of the West-backed Free Syrian Army (FSA), to use against government forces.

The intelligence comes from satellites and other surveillance systems that collect intelligence on Syrian troop and aircraft movements, powerful radars in Turkey used to track Syrian ballistic missiles and pinpoint launch sites, and the extensive spy networks Israel and Jordan have inside Syria, U.S. and European officials told WSJ.

Officials told WSJ that the move is part of an effort to "influence which groups dominate in post-Assad Syria," which will be difficult given that Islamic militias such as Jabhat al Nusra have long been the opposition's best and most organized fighters.

Nusra — a group of about 10,000 fighters led by veterans of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI)— "resembles an army more than a quaint little terrorist group," Seth Jones, an al Qaeda specialist at the Rand Corp. think tank, told WSJ. "As this war drags on against Assad and as long as they are able to build up their capabilities, it's going to make it all the more harder to target them once the regime falls."

This week the group helped capture a major air defense base in a strategic region of southern Syria near Jordan and territories in the Golan Heights near Israel. Meanwhile its members claimed large-scale raids in Syria's Hama and Idlib governorates.

Nusra and its allies already control much of northern Syria. Earlier this week Liz Sly of the Washington Post detailed how Nusra runs more than half of Aleppo, Syria's second largest city and commercial hub, where they turned a hospital into their headquarters and instituted Islamic law in rebel-held areas.

The group says it will fight any post-Assad secular government in their quest to impose Sharia (i.e. strict Islamic) law in "liberated" areas.

“After the fall of Bashar there will be so many battles between these groups,” an Iraqi who joined the regular FSA told the New York Times in December. “All the groups will unite against al-Nusra.”

The Agency is already working with elite counterterrorism units inIraq, training rebels in Jordan on how to identify and safeguard chemical weapons, and funneling weapons to Syrian rebels from southern Turkey.

The advantage of providing intel instead of arms is that actionable intelligence about the fluid battlefield is only valuable for a short time while arms can be used and passed around for years.

Blogger Eliot Higgins, aka Brown Moses, noticed an influx of Croatian weapons in southern Syria at the beginning of the year. It turned out to be a large batch of arms bought by Saudi Arabia and sent through Jordan to secular and nationalistic rebels.

In March Higgins noticed that the weapons turning up in the hand of jihadists.

In October and November we reported on unconfirmed indications that the CIA may have been funneling heavy weapons from Benghazi, Libya, to Turkey. In October C.J. Chivers of The New York Times reported that SA-7 heat-seeking shoulder-fired missiles were being used in Syria.

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