A member of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) focuses on his target Monday in the northern Syrian city of Aleppo.
BEIRUT -- A Syrian government official warned the U.S. on Tuesday that military intervention in Syria could lead to regional turmoil, as regime forces bombed a northern village and stormed a rebel-held Damascus suburb, killing dozens of people, activists said.
The comments came a day after President Barack Obama said the U.S. would reconsider its opposition to military involvement in the Syrian civil war if Syrian President Bashar Assad's government deploys or uses chemical or biological weapons, describing that as a "red line" for the U.S.
Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Qadri Jamil called Obama's statements "propagandistic threats" tied to the U.S. presidential election. But Jamil also said the comments indicate that the West is looking for a pretext to intervene militarily. He insisted that such intervention would be "impossible" because it would cause the civil war to spread to other countries in the region.
"Those who are contemplating this evidently want to see the crisis expand beyond Syria's borders," Jamil said during a visit to Moscow.
The conflict already has spilled over into neighboring Lebanon, where sectarian tensions have risen.
Clashes that broke out Monday night between the two sides in the northern Lebanese city of Tripoli killed at least six people and wounded more than 70, the Lebanese government-run news agency said. The wounded included nine Lebanese soldiers.
The mostly Sunni city also saw gun battles in May, when fighting over Syria killed eight people. The latest clashes were between gunmen from the Sunni neighborhood of Jabal Mohsen and the neighboring district of Bab Tabbaneh, which is mostly populated by followers of the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.
Assad is a member of Syria's Alawite minority; rebels fighting his regime are predominantly Sunnis.
The streets around the two districts were sealed off by roadblocks to keep people from the line of snipers' fire, but life went on normally in the rest of the city, despite the occasional sound of gunfire.
Washington, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the country was "very concerned" about the spillover effect from Syria.
Most of Tuesday's fighting appeared centered in Damascus suburbs, which have witnessed a dramatic rise in fighting over the last month.
The Local Coordination Committees (LCC), a Syrian activist group, and a rebel spokesman also said regime troops entered the opposition-held suburb of Moadamiyeh from four points, raiding homes in search of anti-Assad fighters.
The rebel spokesman, who asked to be identified only by his first name, Ahmed, said three men in their late 20s and early 30s were shot dead, execution-style, soon after the town fell to regime forces. He also said 23 fighters from the Free Syrian Army rebel group were killed when government forces stormed the town at dawn.
Later, activists said dozens of bodies were found dumped in a building in the town. The LCC said they appear to have been killed execution-style. But Rami Abdul-Rahman, director of the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said it was not clear whether they were killed in the shelling or had been shot.
The reports could not be independently verified.
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Edited By Cen Fox Post Team
