Syria uprising intensifies, spills into Lebanon

Syrian armour moved against protest flashpoints and a general was gunned down in Damascus on Saturday as the bloodshed showed no signs of abating, even spilling over into Lebanon.The Syrian National Council, or SNC, said Arab recognition of the opposition umbrella group was imminent, ahead of key talks on the crisis in Cairo on Sunday.In Aleppo, tensions escalated as President Bashar al-Assads forces stepped up security after twin car bombs killed 28 people and wounded 235 in Syrias second city on Friday, activists said.Thirty-one people were killed across the country on Saturday, mostly civilians, said Rami Abdel Rahman of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.Tank shelling killed 10 civilians in Homs, nine of them in the rebel stronghold neighbourhood of Baba Amr, Abdel Rahman told AFP. Dozens were wounded.Assads forces have waged a brutal week-long onslaught on the central protest city of Homs that has killed at least 500 people since February 4, Abdel Rahman said.In Lebanon, a 17-year-old girl was among three people killed and 23 were wounded in clashes between Sunni Muslims hostile to Syrias regime and Alawites who support it, a security official said.Ten of the wounded were Lebanese soldiers, including a sergeant in critical condition.The rival factions in Tripoli fired guns and rocket-propelled grenades at each other in the bloodiest clashes since June, when six people died in the wake of demonstrations against Syrias government.In recent years Tripoli has been rocked by intense clashes between members of its Sunni-majority community and Alawites -- the community from which hails the Syrian president.Syrian state media, meanwhile, blamed terrorists for Fridays double car bomb attacks on security posts in Aleppo.The rebel Free Syrian Army accused the criminal regime of launching the attacks to steer attention away from what it is doing in Homs, Zabadani and elsewhere.