A United States official has said forces loyal to the government of Syria have been firing Soviet-designed Scud missiles at insurgence this week. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official said the missiles had been launched from the Damascus area, targeting rebels in the north. NATO also said that its surveillance operations had detected this type of missile. Without confirming that Scuds have been fired, the U.S. State Department spokeswoman said the recent use of incendiary barrel bombs showed that President Assad's forces were resorting to, what she called, increased lethality.
The British Prime Minister David Cameron says a government commission report into the murder of a prominent human rights lawyer in Northern Ireland in 1989 has found that British agents played a key role in his killing. Pat Finucane defended members of the IRA during their armed campaign to unite Northern Ireland with the Irish Republic. Mr. Cameron said the review made difficult reading. It sets aside the extent of collusion in areas such as identifying, targeting and murdering Mr. Finucane, supplying a weapon and facilitating its later disappearance and deliberately obstructing subsequent investigations. But Mr. Finucane's widow Geraldine dismissed the report as a sham.
BBC world service news.
The International War Crimes Tribunal in the Hague has sentenced the former Bosnian Serb Intelligence Chief Zdravko Tolimir to life in prison for his role in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. The judges found Tolimir guilty of genocide over the murder of more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys. It was the worst atrocity in Europe since the second World War. Tolimir, conducting his own defense, had argued that what happened at Srebrenica was military action against terrorists, rather than a massacre.