A pan-Arab TV station says the general who heads Syria’s military police has defected and joined the uprising against president Bashar Assad.

THE Iraqi government said yesterday that half the Sunni Muslim militants behind the bombings shaking the country had arrived through neighbouring Syria.

An Arabic satellite TV channel broadcast an audio tape today that it said was allegedly recorded by Saddam Hussein.

An Australian newspaper said today it had been handed an audiotape purported to have been recorded by Saddam Hussein inside Iraq earlier that day.