Mortar fire kills 6 near Damascus

Beirut: Mortar fire killed at least six people in a suburb of the Syrian capital Thursday, activists and state media said, amid reports that clashes in a coastal province killed a top foreign fighter who was a former Guantanamo Bay detainee. Syria`s state news agency said four mortar rounds slammed into Harasta, a district northwest of Damascus, killing six children and wounding five more. Another five people were wounded when a mortar struck the upscale central neighborhood of Maliki, the agency said. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said shells also struck central Damascus, including Ummayad Square, which is close to the state TV and radio stations, as well as the army command. It said there were no casualties. The mortar fire came as activists reported heavy clashes and government air raids in the Damascus suburb of Mleiha, as well as the capital`s Jobar neighborhood. Both areas are controlled by the rebels. Also today, private Lebanese television station Al-Mayadeen and Hezbollah-owned Al-Manar said Syrian troops killed a Moroccan militant once detained at the US military`s Guantanamo Bay prison. The stations described him as the chief of the hard-line Sham al-Islam Movement. The stations said Brahim Benchakroun, better known in Syria as Abu Ahmad al-Maghribi, was killed yesterday while fighting government forces in the coastal province of Latakia. Rebels launched in offensive in Latakia late last month, capturing several villages while also gaining their first access to the sea. The Observatory said Benchakroun was critically wounded yesterday but could not confirm whether he had been killed. A Latakia-based activist who goes by the name of Mohammed Abul-Hassan said Bencharkoun was defending the strategic hill known as Observatory 45 that fell to the rebels last week. American authorities handed Benchakroun over to Morocco in 2005. He was captured in Afghanistan where he had moved in 1999, according to Islamic websites. Abul-Hassan said Benchakroun used to be a member of the Nusra Front, an al-Qaida-linked rebel group in Syria. Benchakroun then set up his own Sham al-Islam group after the Nusra Front split with the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.