Brahimi brings new ideas on Syria

International envoy Lakhdar Brahimi International envoy Lakhdar Brahimi on Friday met Syrian opposition figures who said he was bringing new ideas to peace efforts, as blasts rocketed Damascus and regime air strikes targeted rebel areas in Aleppo. Brahimi held talks with opposition groups tolerated by President Bashar al-Assad's regime, such as the National Coordination Committee for Democratic Change, which groups Arab nationalists, Kurds and socialists.
"We told Mr Brahimi... of our support for his efforts to resolve the crisis by ending the violence and killings, providing medical care and releasing political prisoners," Hassan Abdel Azim, the bloc spokesman, told reporters.
"Mr Brahimi will listen to the opposition and officials and crystalise new ideas and a plan that could succeed," he said after their talks in a Damascus hotel, adding that the peace initiative of his predecessor Kofi Annan would be amended.
Fighting raged in several areas on Friday. Regime forces used fighter jets and helicopter gunships to pound the northern city of Aleppo and the province of the same name, where fierce clashes also raged around a military airport, monitors said.
Warplanes bombarded the rebel-held towns of Al-Bab and Marea near Aleppo city, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, adding that army forces and rebels fought around Minnigh military airport.
Despite shelling by regime forces, as seen in videos posted online, residents of Marea, Aleppo city and towns across the northern province came out for anti-regime demonstrations after the weekly Muslim prayers, activists said.
Protests were also reported in the provinces of Damascus, Idlib, Daraa in the south and Hama in central Syria, the Observatory said, adding that soldiers used explosive devices against protesters in Hama city, wounding several people.
Near the capital, at least 15 soldiers were killed or wounded in an attack on their vehicle in the restive town of Douma, where clashes broke out near the municipal building, the Observatory said.
In Damascus itself, three large explosions were heard in the late morning, an AFP reporter said. The Observatory said security forces swept its southern districts of Midan and Nahr Aisha.
The Britain-based Observatory said 45 people were killed on Friday, among them 13 soldiers and two rebels, revising an earlier toll of 50 dead.
It estimates that more than 27,000 people have been killed sincethe uprising against Assad's rule erupted in March last year. The UnitedNations puts the toll at 20,000.
Meanwhile, in neighbouring Lebanon, Pope Benedict XVI on Friday started a weekend visit with a call for an end to arms imports to Syria. "Arms imports must stop once and for all, because without arms imports, war cannot continue," he told reporters.
A security source in Lebanon said soldiers there freed four Syrian troops who had been seized earlier by rebels inside their violence-ridden country.