Syria's bloody crackdown; it's not my fault, says president: it's my poorly trained police! No kidding...

The Syrian president said his country's security forces had made mistakes during the uprising against his regime, blaming poorly trained police officers at least in part for a crackdown that has killed more than 850 people over the past two months.

Bashar al-Assad's comments, carried on Wednesday in the private Al-Watan newspaper, came even as a human rights activist said that Syrian troops have used heavy machine guns to attack a neighbourhood in the central city of Homs.

His remarks were a rare acknowledgment of shortcomings within Syria's powerful security agencies.

The brutal crackdown across Syria has sparked international condemnation, and the US and EU are planning new sanctions against the Syrian leadership. More than 850 people have been killed in the crackdown on protests that erupted in mid-March, according to Syria's top rights organisation. More...

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