3 dead, 50 hurt in Damascus shelling

BEIRUT -- Mortar shells struck yesterday in a residential area in central Syria, killing three people and wounding more than 50, including a number of women and children, the state-run news agency said.

The latest mortar attacks came as government troops fought fierce battles with rebels for control of key neighborhoods in the northeast of the capital.

SANA said "terrorists" targeted the al-Boukhtyar neighborhood of Damascus with mortars and that two of the mortar shells struck near an orphanage. The government refers to rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad as terrorists.

Rebels have stepped up mortar attacks on Damascus, striking deeper than ever into the heart of the city to try to loosen Assad's grip on his main stronghold.

Also, a European Union staff member was killed in a rocket attack on an opposition stronghold south of the capital, the EU said. In Brussels, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said Ahmad Shihadeh, 32, was killed Tuesday in the Damascus suburb of Daraya. It was the first death of an EU employee in the civil war.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said yesterday's clashes were concentrated in the capital's neighborhoods of Jobar and Barzeh. A car bomb exploded outside a police station in Khan Sheih neighborhood, west of Damascus, the Observatory said.

Also yesterday, a Ukrainian journalist who was kidnapped in Syria last year and escaped after being held by rebels for more than 150 days spoke of her ordeal to The Associated Press in Damascus.

Ankhar Kochneva said she was held by members of the Farouk Brigade of the Free Syrian Army in the central Homs province. Kochneva wrote for Syrian and Russian newspapers before she was kidnapped in western Syria on Oct. 9.