State television also blamed "terrorists" for those attacks, but opposition activists said they doubted armed groups trying to bring down Assad would have the capacity to carry out such operations against his security institutions in Damascus. The sound of heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades echoed throughout the night from the western neighbourhood of al-Mezzeh, one of the most heavily guarded areas of the capital, residents told the Reuters news agency by telephone on Monday. At least three rebels and a member of the security forces were killed in the upscale western neighbourhood of Mazzeh, state television and monitors said. Monday's fighting broke out when security forces stormed an apartment used as a hideout by an "armed terrorist" group in Mazzeh after evacuating the building of all inhabitants, the state-run news agency SANA said. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists throughout Syria, said 18 of Assad's troops were wounded in the clashes. Russian foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov "clearly agreed to and was supportive of" the idea of a daily two-hour cessation of hostilities to allow for life-saving aid operations, ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger told Reuters after talks with Lavrov in Moscow on Monday. The mission to 15 cities, on the first such assignment in Syria since the violence started, was launched in Homs on Sunday. Monday's clashes in the capital came after twin car bombs ripped through two neighbourhoods of Damascus on Saturday, killing 27 people, according to an interior ministry toll. Five soldiers, including two officers, were also killed, it said. Troops in the northwestern province of Idlib attacked Abdita, home village of defector Colonel Riyadh Asaad, head of the Turkey-based rebel Free Syrian Army, local activist Nurredin al-Abdo told AFP. Security forces killed at least nine civilians on Monday -- including a young girl -- in Idlib, Homs and the southern province of Daraa, while a captain who deserted was killed in the central town of Rastan, the Observatory said.
– Machine guns and explosions were audible as violence overtook a high-security section of Damascus last night, killing at least three and wounding 18 Syrian troops. Locals began hearing gunfire at about midnight and say "intensive gunfire" continued for hours in the Mazzeh district of the Syrian capital, an upscale neighborhood home to several senior regime members. "People came to Mazzeh and they are trying to attack residents. They are calling them names and taking them out of their houses," an opposition activist tells al-Jazeera. "The clashes were the strongest and the closest to security installations in the capital since the outbreak of the revolt a year ago," a watchdog tells AFP. The fighting follows car bombs in Damascus and Syria's second-biggest city of Aleppo this weekend. Damascus hasn't faced the daily clashes reported in other Syrian cities, the AP notes. An activist said last night's violence was sparked by a Free Syrian Army hit-and-run effort, though state TV said it began with a security raid on an "armed terrorist" hideout. The clashes may have been a rebel attempt to damage security forces' morale after a series of effective attacks on the opposition, the AP suggests.