President Bashar al-Assad has said that the country's three-year civil war is turning in the government's favour, state news agency SANA reported. 
 
 "This is a turning point in the crisis, both militarily in terms of the army's achievements in the war against terror, and socially in terms of national reconciliation processes and growing awareness of the truth behind the (attacks) targeting the country," he said. 
 
 Syria's army has made a series of advances in recent months, overrunning opposition bastions near the Lebanese border and in the central province of Homs. 
 
 "The state is trying to restore security and stability in the main areas that the terrorists have struck," said Assad, adding "we will go after their positions and sleeper cells later." 
 
 But there is still no political solution in sight for the war, which has war that has cost more than 150,000 lives, caused massive destruction, forced nearly half the Syrian population to flee their homes. 
 
 Syrian warplanes on Sunday launched fresh strikes on rebel strongholds on the edge of Damascus, some of which used highly destructive barrel bomb attacks, a monitoring group said. 
 
 "Warplanes carried out two air strikes against areas of Duma," northeast of Damascus, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said adding that 13 people, including three children and three women, were killed in that particular raid. 
 
 The raids came as fighting raged on the edges of Daraya between rebels and the army, which for more than a year has battled to secure the capital. 
 
 On the economic front, prime minister Wael al-Halqi said Sunday a "fierce economic war" was behind the sharp fall in the value of the Syrian pound against the US dollar. 
 
 "A fierce economic war ... is being waged against the national economy aimed at destabilising the Syrian pound," he said, quoted by state news agency SANA. 
 
 The pound was trading on Sunday at 176 against the dollar, compared to 156 last week, in a trend which has seen it lose more than three-quarters of its value against the US currency since March 2011. 
 
 Central bank governor Adib Mayaleh said his institution would sell around $20 million (13 million euros) on April 21 in an effort to support the Syrian pound. 
 
 Since the start of a revolt against Assad in 2011, Damascus has blamed all violence in the country on a foreign-backed "terrorist" plot, denying the existence of any grassroots movement for political change. 
 
 Like its allies Iran and Lebanese Shiite movement Hezbollah, the government has said the violence in Syria is rooted in a bid to break the anti-Israel "resistance axis". 
 
 Assad said the country "is not only being targeted because of its geo-political significance... but because of its historic role in the region and its big influence on the Arab street." 
 
 Syria, he said, "is subject to a bid to take control of its independent decision-making, and an attempt to change its policy from one that suits the Syrian people's interests, rather than the interests of the United States and the West's interests in the region." 
 
 On Sunday, Assad reiterated his belief that Israel "has played a key role in supporting the terrorist groups". 
 
 Lebanon's Hezbollah, a strategic ally of Assad's regime which has sent thousands of fighters into Syria, has played a key role in helping turn the tide in his favour. 
 
 A series of truces have also been agreed, mainly in southern Damascus and the outskirts of the capital. 
 
 The ceasefires came after months of suffocating army sieges that had led to the deaths of scores of people, as a result of medical and food shortages. 
 
 The agreements stipulate rebels should hand over their heavy weapons in exchange for aid deliveries, but opposition activists in some areas where truces have been reached have accused the regime of violating the deals. 
 
 Syria's conflict broke out after the regime unleashed a brutal crackdown against an Arab Spring-inspired peaceful protest movement. ||||| THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The chief of the international chemical weapons watchdog says Syria has to ratchet up its movement of raw materials for poison gas and nerve agents if it is to meet deadlines for destroying the stockpile. 
 
 The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says a 13th consignment of chemicals was shipped out of Latakia port Monday, bringing to just over 65 percent the amount of Syria's internationally declared stockpile removed from the civil war-torn country. 
 
 OPCW Director-General Ahmet Uzumcu has welcomed the shipment as "necessary and encouraging," but stressed he wants to see more. 
 
 He says "the frequency and volumes of deliveries have to increase significantly" to get Syria back on track to have its entire stockpile destroyed by June 30.
– The Syrian government and the opposition have blamed each other for reported poison gas attacks in the rebel-controlled village of Kfar Zeita; now, the opposition says it has images that point the finger at the regime. Activists released images and video of an unexploded canister marked with the chemical symbol for chlorine. They say the canister turned up in Kfar Zeita, though Reuters notes it can't verify the report. A UK-based expert isn't certain, but he tells Reuters that "It looks like (the government has) taken an industrial chlorine cylinder, put it in (an) improvised barrel bomb, and dropped it out of a helicopter." The government, for its part, is blaming an al-Qaeda-linked group, the Nusra Front. Both sides agree that chlorine gas was used. The chemical isn't among those Bashar al-Assad declared to international officials in a deal to destroy toxic weapons, Reuters notes. In other news from Syria: A 13th batch of chemical weapons was shipped today from Syria, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons says, per the AP. That means 65% of the declared substances have left the country. But "the frequency and volumes of deliveries have to increase significantly" if Syria is to meet a June 30 deadline to destroy the full stockpile, says the watchdog's director. Assad says the war has reached a "turning point"—"both militarily in terms of the army's achievements in the war against terror, and socially in terms of national reconciliation processes and growing awareness of the truth behind the (attacks) targeting the country," AFP notes, via the Guardian. Syrian warplane attacks yesterday on the edge of Damascus killed 13, says the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.