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Syria unrest spirals out of control
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A roadside bomb attack on a police truck carrying prisoners killed at least 14 people in northwestern Syria Saturday, and a battle between troops and defectors near the Turkish border killed another 10.
The U.S. said Friday night the ongoing violence may force it to close its embassy in Damascus. CBS News correspondent Elizabeth Palmer is in the capital.
On most days Damascus is still the calm at the center of Syria's political storm.
But just six miles from the city center, it's a no-man's land sealed off by the Syrian army.
Syria's opposition: "We will carry on"
Ambush on Syrian police truck kills 14
Speaking from a moving vehicle, Palmer said: "We were held at a military checkpoint on the outskirts of Douma, a suburb of Damascus for over an hour. While we waited, we could hear the sound of gunfire. Finally the soldiers waved us inside. It's eerily quiet except for military at almost every corner."
Just an hour earlier, video posted on the Internet showed the streets of Douma filled with anti-government protesters. By the time Palmer and her crew were allowed in, residents told them they ran away when the shooting started.
Over the years, anyone who challenged the ruling family was either exiled or jailed, like Dr Abdul Aziz Khayer, an opposition leader now out of prison and deeply worried by the past 10 months of vicious fighting.
"It must be a warning to all those, and they must act very quickly and very effectively to avoid the progress of civil war."
But calls for political dialogue are lost in the growing chorus of religious hatred and the volleys of gunfire.
It's a tragedy both for Syria and for the embryonic opposition .
"If the battle is lost," said Khayer, "most of us will be either jailed or executed. We know that. So we must not lose our fight. "
Outside the capital, spiraling mistrust and murder suggest it may already be too late.
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