At least 34 people were killed in violence across Syria on Tuesday, including 22 members of the security forces, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
“Twelve members of the security services who headed for the town of Dael to carry out arrests were killed at 10:00 am (0800 GMT) when their vehicle was ambushed by a group of armed deserters,” said the Britain-based monitoring group.
It was the second deadly ambush the same day on the military, which has led a year-long crackdown on dissent that the United Nations said on Monday has cost more than 8,000 lives.
In the northwestern province of Idlib, at least 10 Syrian soldiers were killed in a pre-dawn rebel attack on an army checkpoint in the town of Maaret al-Numan, said the Observatory.
The group also reported eight civilians killed in the central province of Homs, including seven in the city of the same name and a woman in Tal Kalakh, near the Lebanese border.
A civilian died in Idlib province as security forces opened up with heavy machine gunfire and another was killed in Douma in the Damascus region.
One civilian and a member of the security forces were killed in the northern province of Aleppo after fierce clashes between security forces and armed rebel groups in the town of Aazaz.
