A long-delayed peace conference on Syria's bloody conflict will be held on December 12, a Syrian newspaper said Thursday, as mortar shells and two blasts killed three in Damascus. The date was reported as the head of Lebanon's Shia group Hezbollah, which backs Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, said his forces would continue to fight alongside the regime in Syria.
The Syrian daily Al-Watan, citing diplomatic sources in Paris, said that US Secretary of State John Kerry had told his French counterpart Laurent Fabius that UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would announce the date on November 25. The newspaper said a source in the Syrian government declined to confirm the report, and an adviser to the president of the opposition National Coalition also said a date for talks had not been finalised. "The organisers of Geneva II want the conference to be held before the end of the year," Munzer Aqbiq told AFP. "Dates have been proposed around mid-December. These are not official dates. They are proposals which must be discussed."