SAO PAULO – Tens of thousands of Brazilians again flooded the streets of the country’s biggest city to raise a collective cry against a longstanding lament – people are weighed down by high taxes and high pricesBAGHDAD – Dozens of Syrian soldiers who had crossed into Iraq for refuge were ambushed Monday with bombs, gunfire and rocket-propelled grenades in an attack that killed 48 of them and heightened concerns that the country could be drawn into Syria’s civil war.
The fact that the soldiers were on Iraqi soil at all raises questions about Baghdad’s apparent willingness to quietly aid the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The well-coordinated attack, which Iraqi officials blamed on al-Qaida’s Iraq arm, also suggests possible coordination between the militant group and its ideological allies in Syria who rank among the rebels’ most potent fighters.
Iraqi officials said the Syrians had sought refuge through the Rabiya border crossing in northern Iraq during recent clashes with rebels and were being escorted back home through a different crossing farther south when the ambush occurred. Their convoy was struck near Akashat.
Ali al-Moussawi, a spokesman for Iraq’s prime minister, provided the death toll and said nine Iraqi soldiers were also killed. The Syrians had been disarmed and included some who were wounded, he told The AP.
He said the soldiers had been allowed into Iraq only on humanitarian grounds and insisted that Baghdad was not picking sides in the Syrian conflict.
“We do not want more soldiers to cross our borders and we do not want to be part of the problem,” al-Moussawi said.
