AMMAN — Two Syrian journalists were killed in the capital Damascus, state media and an Arab satellite television station reported on Sunday.

 

Syrian state news agency SANA also reported that security forces ambushed an armed group in Aleppo and killed and wounded some of them. It said that al-Safira residents in Aleppo prevented gunmen riding in five cars mounted with machine guns from entering their area.

 

SANA said one of its reporters, Ali Abbas, was killed at his residence in Damascus. The report blamed an "armed terrorist group" but gave no further details.

 

Al-Arabiya television said that Bara'a Yusuf al-Bushi, a Syrian national and army defector who worked with the station and several other international news organizations, was killed in a bomb attack while covering a story in al-Tal, a suburb in northern Damascus.

 

Both reporters were reported killed on Saturday.  

 

Syria has been experiencing unrest since March 2011. Damascus says outlaws, saboteurs, and armed terrorists are the driving factor behind the unrest and deadly violence while the opposition accuses the security forces of being behind the killings. 

 

Western states have been calling for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down. However, Russia and China are strongly opposed to the Western drive to oust Assad.

 

The Syrian government says that the chaos is being orchestrated from outside the country, and there are reports that a very large number of the armed militants are foreign nationals, mostly from Egypt, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan.