In brief: Clashes in Syrian enclave suggest shift

BEIRUT – Syrian rebels battled regime forces Monday in a heavily protected, upscale area of Damascus, activists said, in a sign that the country’s outgunned opposition is increasingly turning to insurgent tactics.

At least three people were killed in the firefight, which was the most serious clash in the Syrian capital since the uprising began a year ago. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which has a network of activists throughout the country, said 18 government troops were wounded in the fighting and two later were believed to have died.

Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory, said several “armed groups of defectors” came from one of the suburbs and fired a rocket-propelled grenade at the house of an army brigadier general. It was not clear whether the general was hurt, he said.

The state-run SANA news agency gave a different version, saying security forces stormed an apartment used as a hideout by an “armed terrorist” group in the Mazzeh neighborhood.

North Korea invites monitors to return

VIENNA – North Korea has invited the International Atomic Energy Agency to return, three years after expelling its nuclear monitors, the agency said Monday. The U.S. said such a move would be welcome but remained critical of the North’s missile test plans.

Without disclosing the North’s terms, IAEA spokeswoman Gill Tudor said it received the invitation on Friday.

That was the same day that Pyongyang announced it plans to launch a satellite on a rocket, a move that Washington has suggested could jeopardize a nuclear moratorium deal reached with the United States last month.

Attack kills 12 police looking for bodies

ACAPULCO, Mexico – Gunmen ambushed and killed 12 police officers who had been sent to search for the bodies of 10 people whose severed heads were found in southern Guerrero state, authorities said Monday.

Guerrero state police spokesman Arturo Martinez said six state and six local officers were killed Sunday night on a road leading out of the town of Teloloapan. Another 11 officers were wounded.

The attack on the officers occurred as they were traveling in six patrol pickups and searching for the bodies of seven men and three women whose severed heads were dumped outside the town’s slaughterhouse earlier Sunday, Martinez said.

The heads were left with a message threatening the La Familia drug cartel, whose home base is in neighboring Michoacan state.