U.S. Embassy in Syria Halts Operations as Violence Flares

BEIRUT, Lebanon — The United States closed its embassy in Syria on Monday and withdrew all staff members there in response to escalating mayhem in the country and what American officials called the Syrian government’s unbridled repression of an 11-month-old uprising that has become the bloodiest conflict in the Arab Spring revolts.

Britain also recalled its ambassador for consultations. The foreign secretary, William Hague, said in a statement to the House of Commons: “This is a doomed regime as well as a murdering regime. There is no way it can recover its credibility internationally.”

Word of the diplomatic changes came as opposition groups reported that Syrian government forces shelled the battered city of Homs for another day, striking a makeshift clinic and killing at least 17 people in a mounting toll that has made the city the epicenter of the uprising, which began last March. The city, Syria’s third-largest, has emerged as an arena of some of the revolt’s worst violence, with scores dead there in just the past few days. 

 Clearly laying the blame on Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, the State Department said in a statement on its Web site that the United States had “suspended operations of our embassy in Damascus,” and that Ambassador Robert S. Ford “and all American personnel have now departed the country.” It said the closing reflected “serious concerns that our embassy is not protected from armed attack.” 

The American embassy building in Damascus in January, 2011.

The announcement did not signal a formal break in American diplomatic relations with Syria but was considered a strong signal that Obama administration officials believe there is nothing left to talk about with Mr. Assad. His government has been emboldened since an Arab League peace proposal for Syria appeared to collapse in a diplomatic failure over the weekend at the United Nations, where both Russia and China vetoed a Security Council resolution to endorse it. 

“The deteriorating security situation that led to the suspension of our diplomatic operations makes clear once more the dangerous path Assad has chosen and the regime’s inability to fully control Syria,” the State Department’s spokeswoman, Victoria Nuland, said in the statement. 

The acrimonious demise of the effort on Syria at the United Nations over the weekend led Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to warn of the risk of all-out civil war there, and she reiterated the American position that Mr. Assad must relinquish power. The State Department announcement did not specify where the embassy staff had gone, but American officials said they had relocated temporarily to neighboring Jordan. 

The announcement said Ambassador Ford would “continue his work and engagement with the Syrian people as head of our Syria team in Washington.” It also said American officials “continue to be gravely concerned by the escalation of violence in Syria caused by the regime’s blatant defiance of its commitments to the action plan it agreed to with the Arab League.” 

The bloodshed on Monday followed an onslaught this weekend, when opposition groups said Syrian forces shelled Khaldiya and other neighborhoods for several hours Friday and Saturday, killing more than 200 people in one of the deadliest days of the revolt. 

The government has flatly denied the tolls quoted by opposition groups. On Saturday, it said Homs was quiet. State-run media blamed the violence Monday on “armed terrorist groups” firing mortars within Homs, an opposition stronghold. 

Explosions could be heard over the phone when speaking with residents. Videos smuggled out by activists showed a chaotic scene at a clinic, as people rushed past doctors and medical staff, shouting, “Oh God.” In one video, purporting to document the scene, blood smeared the sidewalk outside. Another showed bloodied corpses. 

Two opposition groups put the death toll at 17. 

“People can’t leave their homes,” said Omar Shakir, an activist in the city. “Where can they go? It’s the government’s punishment. It’s revenge.” 

Homs, in western Syria near the Lebanese border, has grown ever more militarized as the uprising enters a more dangerous, violent and unpredictable phase. Defectors and armed allies control several neighborhoods in the city and the government so far has been unable to retake them. Defectors say they have mined entrances to two of them — Baba Amr and Khaldiya — although there was no way to confirm their claim. 

Conditions in the city itself have worsened during an unusually cold winter. Residents speak of trash piling up and electricity supplies too intermittent to keep homes warm. 

Syrian rebels gathered in an alley in Idlib, Syria, on Sunday.

Though Homs has proven the deadliest locale, government forces have kept up a campaign to retake the suburbs of Damascus and a northern region around the town of Idlib. 

The state-run news agency said gunmen had killed three soldiers and captured others at a checkpoint in Jabal al-Zawiyah, near Idlib, which is a rugged region near the border with Turkey. The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also reported a clash there, saying that insurgents had killed 3 officers and 19 soldiers. 

“We follow with great anxiety and irritation developments in the field situation in Syria, and the escalation of military operations in the city of Homs and rural areas of Damascus, and the Syrian armed forces’ use of heavy weapons against civilians,” Nabil al-Araby, the secretary general of the Arab League, said in a statement quoted by Reuters. 

The escalation pushed “conditions toward a slide towards civil war,” he said.