Syria PM flees to Jordan, joins anti-Assad camp

Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab has defected to the Opposition seeking to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad, a spokesman for Hijab said on Monday, marking the highest profile desertion from the Damascus government.

Syrian state television said Hijab had been fired, but an official source in the Jordanian capital Amman said he had been dismissed only after he fled across the border with his family. "I announce today my defection from the killing and terrorist regime and I announce that I have joined the ranks of the freedom and dignity revolution," Hijab said in a statement read in his name by the spokesman, which was broadcast on Al Jazeera television. "I announce that I am from today a soldier in this blessed revolution."

The Opposition Syrian National Council said a further two ministers and three army generals had defected with Hijab. That assertion could not be verified.

Hijab was a top official of the ruling Baath party but, like all other senior defectors so far from the government and armed forces, he was also a Sunni Muslim rather than a member of Assad's Alawite sect, which has long dominated the Syrian state.

Syrian television said Omar Ghalawanji, who was previously a deputy prime minister, had been appointed to lead a temporary, caretaker government Monday.

Earlier in the day, a bomb blast hit the Damascus headquarters of Syria's state broadcaster as troops backed by fighter jets kept up an offensive against the last rebel bastion in the capital.

The bomb exploded on the third floor of the state television and radio building. Information Minister Omran Zoabi said the injuries were not serious, and the channel continued broadcasting.

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