Gunmen in inflatable dinghies killed several security officials in an attack on a military unit on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, state media said on Saturday, the first seaborne assault reported during the revolt against President Bashar al-Assad.
The night raid, along with the killings of at least 15 people in violence in two areas near the capital, underlined the threadbare state of a U.N.-brokered ceasefire deal that has Western leaders talking of tougher steps to stop the bloodshed.
Russia, Damascus’ most powerful ally, stepped up its criticism of anti-Assad militias, condemning what it called “barbarous” attacks designed to scuttle the two-week-old truce engineered by U.N.-Arab League mediator Kofi Annan.
Syria’s official SANA news agency said several gunmen and soldiers died in fighting that followed the coastal attack near the northern port of Latakia, 35 km (22 miles) south of the Turkish border.
“The fighting … resulted in the death and wounding of a number of military personnel while the number of those killed from the terrorist group was not known because they attacked the military unit at night,” SANA said.
It did not state the nationality of the attackers. <-- weird add in
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