The Arab League foreign ministers will discuss Syria in a special December 17 meeting at its Cairo headquarters.
Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports that the Syrian army defectors clashed with state forces in a drive to topple President Bashar al-Assad as activists staged a strike against the regime.
“The general strike took place in several Syrian cities and has terrified the regime as the Hama governor threatened to seal off the stores in the city and forces threatened to set these stores on fire,” Ali Hassan, spokesman for the Syrian Revolution Council, an opposition group, told Al Arabiya in an interview,
The protests of Assad’s government followed successful efforts to topple regimes in Egypt and Tunisia. Longtime Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi was killed by revolutionary forces in that country and Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh resigned last month in exchange for immunity from prosecution.
The UN has said 4,000 people have been killed in the violence.
