NEWS FLASH

Syria Rebels Withdraw From Ceasefire | The main organization of armed opposition to Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad said today that it would no longer honor the ceasefire put in place by former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s long-since faltering peace plan. “We have resumed our attacks but we are doing defensive attacks which means we are only attacking checkpoints in the cities,” said Major Sami al-Kurdi, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army (FSA). Over the weekend, a surge in attacks by the FSA resulted in 80 dead soldiers fighting for the Syrian government, according to a London-based human rights group in contact with doctors on the ground. Assad hasn’t formally announced his withdrawal from the ceasefire, but massacres like the one on May 25 in Houla — in which more than 100 were killed — and tacit admissions of state-backed violence call into question his efforts at imposing it in the first place.