Syrian forces fire across two borders

BEIRUT -- Syrian forces opened fire across two tense borders Monday, killing a TV journalist in Lebanon and wounding at least six people in a refugee camp in Turkey on the eve of a deadline for a cease-fire plan that seems all but certain to fail.

A witness at the Turkish camp said he saw two refugees killed, although that could not be independently confirmed.

Across Syria, activists reported particularly heavy violence, with more than 125 people killed in the past two days.

The Obama administration expressed outrage at the violence spilling over the frontiers, saying the Syrian government appeared to have little commitment to the peace plan that was negotiated by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.

The latest bloodshed was a sign of how easily Syria's neighbors could be drawn into a regional conflagration as President Bashar Assad's crackdown on a year-old uprising becomes increasingly militarized.

Annan brokered a deal that was supposed to begin with Syria pulling its troops out of population centers by this morning, with a full cease-fire by both sides within 48 hours. But hopes for the plan collapsed after a fresh wave of violence and the regime's new demands for written guarantees that the opposition will lay down arms first.

The firing by Syrian forces across the border into a refugee camp in Turkey wounded six people, authorities said.

The soldiers were believed to be firing at rebels who tried to escape to the camp after ambushing a Syrian military checkpoint, killing six soldiers, according to the Britain-based activist group Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Turkish authorities said four Syrians and two Turks were wounded, including a Turkish translator who had tried to calm an anti-Assad protest.

Syrian troops also fired about 40 rounds into northern Lebanon, killing a cameraman, Lebanon's Al Jadeed television station said. The camera crew were in Lebanese territory.

Ali Shaaban, who was born in 1980, was shot through the chest as he sat in a car and died on the way to the hospital, Lebanese security officials said.