Syrian army and defectors 'battling in south'

Hundreds of army defectors in southern Syria have fought with tank-backed loyalist forces in one of the biggest armed confrontations in a nine-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, residents and activists said.

Troops, mainly from the 12th Armoured Brigade, based in Isra, 40km from the border with Jordan, stormed the
nearby town of Busra al-Harir, the Reuters news agency reported.

The sound of explosions and heavy machine guns was heard in Busra al-Harir and in Lujah, an area of rocky hills north of the town, where defectors have been hiding and attacking military supply lines.

Earlier on Sunday, activists across the country launched a general strike to step up pressure on the country's government to end its deadly crackdown.

At least 10 people were killed in Syria on Sunday as troops opened fire on demonstrators, according to activists. Three of them were killed in the city of Hama, two in Idlib, four in Homs and one in Daraa.

The Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC), a Syrian rights group, organised the civil disobedience campaign, including the closure of shops and universities in protest, as well as sit-in demonstrations across the country.

"This strike is really a desperate action, a desperate cry from the Syrian people, the last civilian action we could do," Ashraf al-Moqdad, a member of the Syrian opposition calling for civil disobedience, told Al Jazeera.

"We've been demonstrating peacefully for nine months. Thousands of us have been murdered by Assad and his thugs. We've been waiting for real concrete action from the international community ... What else can we do?

"This is part of our desperate action to get the attention of the international community to look at us. Please look at our situation. We are desperate now."

The LCC has predicted the campaign will gather pace and said the strike was "the first step in an overall civil disobedience" campaign to overthrow the government.

Navi Pillay, UN human rights commissioner, has said that "much more than 4,000 people" have been killed in the government crackdown on dissent in Syria since the anti-regime protest movement broke out in March.

Assad refuses to let investigators from two UN human rights inquiries enter Syria and is resisting Arab League calls to accept monitors despite being hit by regional sanctions on top of US and EU measures.

A League official said Arab foreign ministers will hold an emergency session on Syria by the end of the week in Cairo, following a smaller meeting of a ministerial task force.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies