Beirut, Feb. 6: The US closed its embassy in Syria today and withdrew all staff there in response to escalating mayhem in the country and what American officials called the Syrian government's unbridled repression of an 11-month-old uprising that has become the bloodiest conflict in the Arab Spring revolts.
Clearly laying the blame on Syria's President, Bashar al-Assad, the state department said in a statement on its website that the US had "suspended operations of our embassy in Damascus", and that ambassador Robert S. Ford "and all American personnel have now departed the country".
It said the closure reflected "serious concerns that our embassy is not protected from armed attack".
The announcement did not signal a formal break in American diplomatic relations with Syria but was considered a strong signal that Obama administration officials believe there is nothing left to talk about with Assad.
His government has been emboldened since an Arab League peace proposal for Syria appeared to collapse in a diplomatic failure over the weekend at the UN, where both Russia and China vetoed a Security Council resolution to endorse it.
Word of the embassy closure came as Opposition groups reported that Syrian government forces shelled the battered city of Homs for another day striking a makeshift clinic and killing at least 17 people in a mounting toll that has made the city the epicentre of the uprising, which began last March.
The city, Syria's third-largest, has emerged as an arena of some of the revolt's worst violence, with scores dead there in just the past few days.
"The deteriorating security situation that led to the suspension of our diplomatic operations makes clear once more the dangerous path Assad has chosen and the regime's inability to fully control Syria," the state department's spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said in the statement.
The acrimonious demise of the effort on Syria at the UN this past weekend had led secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton to warn of the risk of all-out civil war there. She also reiterated the American position that President Assad must relinquish power. The state department announcement did not specify where the embassy staff had gone, but American officials said they had relocated temporarily to neighbouring Jordan.
The announcement said ambassador Ford "will continue his work and engagement with the Syrian people as head of our Syria team in Washington". It also said American officials "continue to be gravely concerned by the escalation of violence in Syria caused by the regime's blatant defiance of its commitments to the action plan it agreed to with the Arab League".
The bloodshed today followed an onslaught this weekend, when Opposition groups said Syrian forces shelled Khaldiya and other neighbourhoods for several hours on Friday and Saturday, killing more than 200 people in one of the deadliest days of the revolt.
The government has flatly denied the tolls quoted by Opposition groups. On Saturday, it said Homs was quiet. State-run media blamed the violence today on "armed terrorist groups" firing mortars within Homs, an Opposition stronghold.
Explosions could be heard over the phone when speaking with residents. Videos smuggled out by activists showed a chaotic scene at a clinic, as people rushed past doctors and medical staff, shouting, "Oh God." In one video, purporting to document the scene, blood smeared the sidewalk outside.
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