AMMAN (Reuters) - President Bashar al-Assad, facing the gravest crisis in his 11-year rule, deployed the army for the first time in nearly two weeks of protests after 12 people were killed in the northwest port of Latakia.

  Assad, 45, who has been silent since protests started sweeping Syria, is expected to address the nation shortly, officials said, without giving further details.

  Dozens have died in pro-democracy protests in the southern city of Deraa and nearby Sanamein, Latakia, Damascus and other towns over the last week. The government blames armed groups for setting off the bloodshed.

  Soldiers took to the streets of Latakia on Saturday night to help secret police and security forces control the port, residents said. The army also beefed up checkpoints around Deraa, where Human Rights Watch says 61 people have died.

  " There is a feeling in Latakia that the presence of disciplined troops is necessary to keep order," one resident told Reuters. " We do not want looting."

  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said on Sunday the United States deplored the bloodshed in Syria but a Libya-style intervention should not be expected.

  The unrest in Syria came to a head after police detained more than a dozen schoolchildren for scrawling graffiti inspired by pro-democracy protests across the Arab world. People marched, chanting: " The people want the downfall of the regime."

  Such demonstrations would have been unthinkable a couple of months ago in this most tightly controlled of Arab countries.

  Assad, a British-educated eye doctor, made a public pledge on Thursday to look into granting greater freedom but this has failed to dampen protests, emboldened by uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia.

  Assad adviser Bouthaina Shaaban told Al Jazeera news network the emergency law hated by Syrian reformists for the far-reaching powers it gives to security services will be lifted, but did not give a timetable.

  BID TO DEFUSE PROTESTS

  In another move to placate protesters, Syrian authorities on Sunday released a lawyer, Diana Jawabra, along with 15 others who were arrested for taking part in a silent protest demanding the release of the children responsible for the graffiti.

  This follows news of the freeing of 260 political prisoners.

  Assad also faces calls to curb a pervasive security apparatus, develop rule of law and freedom of expression, free political prisoners and reveal the fate of tens of thousands of dissidents who disappeared in the 1980s.

  Syria's establishment is dominated by members of the minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam to which the Assads belong, a fact that causes resentment among Sunni Muslims who make up some three-quarters of the population. Latakia is mostly Sunni Muslim but has significant numbers of Alawites.

  " An official source said attacks by armed elements on the families and districts of Latakia in the last two days resulted in the martyrdom of 10 security forces and civilians and the killing of two of the armed elements," SANA news agency said.

  The source said 200 people, most of whom were from the security forces, were wounded in clashes. Rights activists told Reuters at least six people were killed in Latakia in two days.

  " Decades of pent up feelings are generating these confrontations. But this is not a mass Sunni-Alawite strife," the Latakia resident told Reuters by telephone. " Cooler heads are prevailing in Latakia."

  Nadim Houry, at New York-based Human Rights Watch, said four police were killed while trying to separate pro- and anti-government groups, but " were apparently killed by armed thugs close to the brother of the president."

  " A Latakia resident told me that the police were killed because they tried to separate them. I can't tell if it is true and we have not confirmed it," Houry said.

  " So far the army has sided clearly with the authorities, like in Latakia, where the army has deployed," he added, raising concern that the " killing of civilians will continue unless real reforms are enacted and security forces cease using live fire."

  STATE OF EMERGENCY

  Deraa is a bastion of Sunni Muslim tribes who resent power and wealth amassed by the Alawite minority. During protests, a statue of late President Hafez al-Assad, the current president's father who ruled Syria with an iron fist for 30 years until his death in 2000, was toppled.

  Asked about security forces opening fire, government spokeswoman Reem Haddad told Al Jazeera on Sunday:

  " The security forces were given very strict orders not to shoot at anyone and they did not shoot at anyone at all until those people shot at them and at other citizens.

  " Now obviously when you have people shooting then it becomes a matter of national security and you can't just have that happening," she said.

  On whether Assad might make an address to the Syrian nation, Haddad said: " I think it's very possible that the president will be addressing the Syrian people very soon."

  The United States, France and Britain have urged Assad to refrain from violence. A week ago they launched a U.N.-backed air campaign to protect opponents of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi.

  WEB OF CONFLICTS

  But analysts see little chance that heavily armed Syria, which is part of an anti-Western, anti-Israel alliance with Iran and sits within a web of conflicts across the region, may face the sort of foreign intervention seen in North Africa.

  Syria has a close alliance with Iran and links to the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas and the Lebanese Shi'ite political and military group Hezbollah. Its allies in the region have yet to comment on the unrest.

  Assad was welcomed as the fresh face of reform when he replaced his father, a master of Middle Eastern politics, who brooked no dissent at home and made refusal to bend on the Arab-Israeli conflict the heart of Syrian policy for 30 years.

  But Western diplomats say resistance from the " old guard" has slowed the political and economic liberalisation promised by Assad, an articulate and mild-mannered leader, while foreign policy confrontations upset efforts to improve the Arab state's ties with the West.

  Among the targets of popular anger have been Maher al-Assad, a brother of the president and head of the Republican Guard, a special security force, and Rami Makhlouf, a cousin who runs big businesses and is accused by Washington of corruption.

  (Reporting by Yara Bayoumy and Khaled Yacoub Oweis, Writing by Peter Millership, Editing by Sonya Hepinstall)

By Angus MacSwan

  BIN JAWAD, Libya (Reuters) - Libyan rebels pushed further west on Sunday to retake more territory abandoned by Muammar Gaddafi's retreating forces, which have been weakened by Western air strikes.

  Emboldened by the capture of the strategic town of Ajdabiyah with the help of foreign warplanes on Saturday, the rebels have regained the initiative and are back in control of all the main oil terminals in the eastern half of the North African country.

  " There are no Gaddafi soldiers here. We control all the town," rebel fighter Youssef Ahmed, 22, said in the town of Bin Jawad, 525 km (330 miles) east of the capital Tripoli.

  A Reuters correspondent in Bin Jawad saw more than two dozen rebel pick-up trucks mounted with machine guns in the town centre, as fighters were shooting in the air in celebration.

  Bin Jawad is the westernmost point the rebels reached in early March, before they were pushed back by Gaddafi's better-equipped forces to their stronghold of Benghazi.

  Rebels said Gaddafi loyalists had retreated westwards and that they planned to push on towards Sirte, the Libyan leader's heavily defended home area on the Mediterranean coast.

  " We want to go to Sirte today. I don't know if it will happen," said 25-year-old Marjai Agouri as he waited with another 100 rebels along the main coastal road outside Bin Jawad with three multiple rocket launchers, six anti-aircraft guns and around a dozen pickup trucks mounted with machine guns.

  The rebel advance is a rapid reversal of three weeks of losses and indicates Western air strikes under by a U.N. no-fly zone are shifting the battlefield dynamics in their favour.

  Their gains put the rebels back in control of all the main oil terminals in the eastern half of Libya -- Es Sider, Ras Lanuf, Brega, Zueitina and Tobruk.

  In Ras Lanuf, battle debris was scattered around the eastern gate, which had been hit by an air strike.

  At least three trucks of Gaddafi's forces were smouldering. Ammunition, plastic bags of rations left behind and a tin bowl with a half eaten meal on the ground suggested Gaddafi's forces had beaten a hasty retreat.

  Mansour al-Breik, a 20-year-old shopkeeper now turned fighter, said: " The air strikes were from midnight to 3 a.m."

  REBELS TAKE PRISONERS

  On the way into Ras Lanuf a Reuters correspondent saw a bus loaded with Gaddafi soldiers who had been taken prisoner, escorted by a machinegun-mounted pickup.

  As foreign media passed, rebels chanted: " Sarkozy, Sarkozy, Sarkozy" in reference to the French president and air strikes by coalition states including France aimed at protecting civilians.

  As the front line shifted towards the heartland of Gaddafi's support, government forces pounded Misrata in the west with tank, mortar and artillery fire on Saturday, and resumed shelling on Sunday after a pause that followed an air strike.

  " Misrata is under attack, the city and the port area where thousands of workers are. We don't know whether it's artillery or mortars," the resident, called Saadoun, told Reuters by telephone from the city on Sunday.

  A Misrata resident told Reuters by phone the humanitarian situation in the city was very bad, but that rebels had said they would fight until the city was freed from Gaddafi.

  " Misrata has been under siege for 38 days," another resident, Sami, said by telephone. " Not much food, water is a rarity and people are obliged to use wells to get water. We have problems with medicines."

  A rebel in Misrata told Reuters Gaddafi was putting all his weight into attacking Misrata so he could control the whole of the west of the country after losing all the east.

  Libyan government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim told reporters in the capital Tripoli that Gaddafi was directing his forces but appeared to suggest the leader might be moving around the country so as to keep his whereabouts a mystery.

  " He is leading the battle. He is leading the nation forward from anywhere in the country," said Ibrahim.

  " He has many offices, many places around Libya. I assure you he is leading the nation at this very moment and he is in continuous communication with everyone around the country."

  Asked if Gaddafi was constantly on the move, Ibrahim said: " It's a time of war. In a time of war you act differently."

  Capturing Ajdabiyah was a big morale boost for rebels a week after air strikes began to enforce a U.N.-mandated no-fly zone.

  " This is a victory from God," said Ali Mohamed, a 53-year-old teacher in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi.

  " Insha'allah (God willing), we will be victorious. After two days, we will be in Tripoli," he said.

  Fouzi Dihoum, a catering company employee, said the rebels could push forward because the area between Ajdabiyah and Sirte was desert where Gaddafi forces were easy targets for planes.

  " There is nowhere to hide. It's an open area."

  Libyan state television was on Sunday broadcasting pop songs and images of palm trees, wheatfields and vast construction projects completed in Gaddafi's four decades in power.

  Gaddafi himself has not been shown on television since he made a speech on Wednesday and his sons Saif al-Islam and Khamis -- who earlier in the conflict spoke regularly to foreign media -- have been out of sight even longer.

  Internet social networks and some Arabic-language media have reported that Khamis, commander of the elite 32nd brigade, was killed by a disaffected air force pilot who, according to the reports, flew his plane into the Gaddafi compound in Tripoli.

  There has been no confirmation and Libyan officials say such reports are part of a deliberate campaign of misinformation.

  Last week Libyan officials said nearly 100 civilians had been killed in coalition strikes, but U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates dismissed the assertion.

  NATO ambassadors were to meet on Sunday to discuss plans for broadening the alliance mandate to take full command of military operations, including attacks on ground targets.

  (Additional reporting by Alexander Dziadosz, Edmund Blair, Maria Golovnina, Michael Georgy, Ibon Villelabeitia, Tom Pfeiffer, Lamine Chikhi, Mariam Karouny and Patricia Zengerle Writing by Ibon Villelabeitia and Tom Pfeiffer Editing by Mark Heinrich)

TOKYO (Reuters) - The operator of Japan's stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant said Monday a very high radiation reading that had sent workers fleeing the No. 2 reactor was erroneous.

  Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) vice-president Sakae Muto apologised for Sunday's error, which added to alarm inside and outside Japan over the impact of contamination from the complex which was hit by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

  (Reporting by Yoko Kubota)

By Angus MacSwan

  AJDABIYAH, Libya (Reuters) - Libyan rebels backed by allied air strikes have recaptured the strategic town of Ajdabiyah, signalling that the tide may be turning against Muammar Gaddafi's forces in the east.

  In the west, France said its warplanes destroyed five Libyan aircraft and two helicopters at an air base outside rebel-held Misrata on Saturday. Pro-Gaddafi forces had earlier pounded the city with tank, mortar and artillery fire that halted only as coalition aircraft appeared overhead, rebels said.

  Western governments hope the raids, launched with the aim of protecting civilians, will also shift the balance of power in favour of the Arab world's most violent popular revolt.

  Libyan government spokesman Mussa Ibrahim told reporters in the capital Tripoli that Gaddafi was directing his forces but appeared to suggest the leader might be moving around the country so as to keep his whereabouts a mystery.

  " He is leading the battle. He is leading the nation forward from anywhere in the country," said Ibrahim.

  " He has many offices, many places around Libya. I assure you he is leading the nation at this very moment and he is in continuous communication with everyone around the country."

  Asked if Gaddafi was constantly on the move, Ibrahim said: " It's a time of war. In a time of war you act differently."

  One resident in Misrata said 115 people had been killed in the city in a week and that snipers were still shooting people from rooftops.

  In Ajdabiyah, rebel fighters danced on tanks, waved flags and fired in the air near buildings riddled with bullet holes. Half a dozen wrecked tanks lay near the eastern entrance to the town and the ground was strewn with empty shell casings.

  Rebels said fighting had lasted through Friday night into Saturday. By the town's western gate there were bodies of more than a dozen of Gaddafi's fighters. An abandoned truckload of ammunition suggested his forces had beaten a hasty retreat.

  " Thank you Britain, thank you France, thank you America," said one rebel, praising the Western air strikes against Gaddafi's forces.

  EASTERN GATEWAY

  Capturing Ajdabiyah, a gateway from western Libya to the rebel stronghold of Benghazi and the oil town of Tobruk, was a big morale boost for the rebels a week after coalition air strikes began to enforce a U.N.-mandated no-fly zone.

  In Misrata, the only big insurgent stronghold left in Libya's west, cut off from the main rebel force to the east, shelling by Gaddafi's forces fell silent on Saturday when Western coalition planes appeared in the sky, rebels said.

  Libya's third city is only about 200 km (120 miles) from the capital and Gaddafi can ill afford to leave it in the hands of anti-government protesters.

  " He pulled his forces out of Ajdabiyah and Brega so that he puts all his weight in attacking Misrata and winning so he can control the whole west versus losing the whole east," a rebel, called Saadoun, said by telephone.

  The French armed forces said around 20 French aircraft supported by an AWACS surveillance plane struck targets during the day on Saturday, including five Galeb fighter jets and two MI-35 helicopters on the ground outside Misrata.

  Rebels said they had seized control on Saturday of the oil port of Brega, 70 km (45 miles) west along the Mediterranean coast from Ajdabiyah. But there was no independent confirmation.

  Brega, site of an oil export terminal and refinery, sprawls over a large area and overall control can be hard to determine.

  " Brega is 100 percent in the hands of liberating forces," said Shamsiddin Abdulmolah, a rebel spokesman in Benghazi.

  Last week Libyan officials said nearly 100 civilians had been killed in the coalition strikes.

  On Saturday, U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates dismissed the assertion, saying: " The truth of the matter is we have trouble coming up with proof of any civilian casualties that we have been responsible for."

  " We do have a lot of intelligence reporting about Gaddafi taking the bodies of the people he's killed and putting them at the sites where we've attacked," Gates told CBS News' " Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer."

  U.S. President Barack Obama, criticised by U.S. politicians across the spectrum for failing to communicate the goals of the air campaign, told Americans that the military mission in Libya was clear, focussed and limited.

  He said it had already saved countless civilian lives.

  Obama said Libya's air defences had been disabled, Gaddafi's forces were no longer advancing and, in places like Benghazi, his forces had been pushed back.

  " So make no mistake, because we acted quickly, a humanitarian catastrophe has been avoided and the lives of countless civilians -- innocent men, women and children -- have been saved," Obama said in a weekly radio address.

  Obama, due to speak to Americans about Libya again on Monday evening, had also been faulted by fellow politicians for taking on another military mission in a Muslim country with the United States embroiled in the Iraq and Afghan wars.

  NATO has agreed to take over that role in enforcing the no-fly zone and arms embargo against Libya, but final details have not yet been worked out for the military alliance to take over the air strikes on Gaddafi's military and its equipment.

  Libyan state television was broadcasting occasional, brief news reports of the air strikes. Mostly it showed footage -- some of it grainy images years old -- of cheering crowds waving green flags and carrying portraits of Gaddafi.

  (Additional reporting by Alexander Dziadosz, Maria Golovnina, Michael Georgy, Ibon Villelabeitia, Lamine Chikhi, Mariam Karouny and Patricia Zengerle Writing by Tom Pfeiffer and Ibon Villelabeitia Editing by Ralph Gowling)

By Shinichi Saoshiro and Taiga Uranaka

  TOKYO (Reuters) - Japanese authorities evacuated workers on Sunday from a reactor building they were working in after radiation in water at the crippled nuclear power plant reached potentially lethal levels, the plant's operator said.

  Tokyo Electric Power Co said radiation in the water of the No. 2 reactor at the Fukushima Daiichi plant was measured at more than 1,000 millisieverts an hour. That compares with a national safety standard of 250 millisieverts over a year. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says a dose of 1,000 millisieverts is enough to cause haemorrhaging.

  Japanese nuclear regulators said the water contained 10 million times the amount of radioactive iodine than is normal in the reactor, but noted the substance had a half life of less than an hour, meaning it would disappear within a day.

  A Tokyo Electric official said workers were evacuated from the No. 2 reactor's turbine housing unit to prevent them from being exposed to harmful doses of radiation. They had been trying to pump radioactive water out of the power station after it was found in buildings housing three of the six reactors.

  Tokyo Electric engineers have struggled the past two weeks to prevent a catastrophic meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi, after an unprecedented earthquake and tsunami knocked out the backup power system needed to cool the reactors.

  The work has had to be suspended several times due to explosions and spiking radiation levels inside the reactors, in a crisis that has become the worst nuclear emergency since Chernobyl a quarter-century ago.

  On Thursday, three workers were taken to hospital from reactor No. 3 after stepping in water with radiation levels 10,000 times higher than usually found in a reactor.

  The latest radiation scare was confined to inside the reactor. Radiation levels in the air beyond the evacuation zone around the plant and in Tokyo have been in normal ranges.

  Yukiya Amano, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), cautioned that the nuclear emergency could go on for weeks, if not months more. [nN2679678]

  " This is a very serious accident by all standards," he told the New York Times. " And it is not yet over."

  Radiation levels in the sea off the Fukushima Daiichi plant rose on Sunday to 1,850 times normal just over two weeks after the disaster struck, from 1,250 on Saturday, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency said.

  " Ocean currents will disperse radiation particles and so it will be very diluted by the time it gets consumed by fish and seaweed," said Hidehiko Nishiyama, a senior agency official.

  Several countries have banned produce and milk from Japan's nuclear crisis zone and are monitoring Japanese seafood over fears of radioactive contamination.

  OVERSHADOWING RELIEF EFFORT

  The crisis at the plant, 240 km (150 miles) north of Tokyo, has overshadowed a relief and recovery effort from the magnitude 9.0 quake and the huge tsunami it triggered on March 11 that left more than 27,100 people dead or missing in northeast Japan.

  The Japanese government estimated last week the material damage from the catastrophe could top $300 billion (187 billion pounds), making it the world's costliest natural disaster.

  In addition, power cuts have disrupted production while the drawn-out battle to prevent a meltdown at the 40-year-old plant has hurt consumer confidence and spread contamination fears well beyond Japan.

  Amano, a former Japanese diplomat who made a trip to Japan after the quake, said authorities were still unsure about whether the plant's reactor cores and spent fuel were covered with the water needed to cool them.

  He told the newspaper he saw a few " positive signs" with the restoration of some electric power to the plant, adding: " More efforts should be done to put an end to the accident."

  U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said it was time to reassess the international atomic safety regime.

  Japan's nuclear crisis also looks set to claim its first, and unlikely, political casualty. In far away Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel's party faces a defeat in a key state on Sunday, largely because of her policy U-turns on nuclear power.

  NOT WORSENING

  A Tokyo Electric official told a news conference on Saturday experts were still trying to figure out where to put the contaminated water they're trying to pump out of the reactors.

  They also are not sure where the radiation is leaking from -- whether it's from the spent fuel rod pools or elsewhere in the reactors.

  " That's the problem they have right now, is trying to figure out where this comes from," said Murray Jennex, associate professor at San Diego State University.

  " You let (radioactive)stuff accumulate because you don't have a place to put it. It stays down in the bottom of the plant. If nothing happens, when it comes time to shut it down you clean it up and take care of it. But if something like this happens, that stuff now becomes loose sometimes."

  Two of the Fukushima Daiichi reactors are now seen as safe but the other four are volatile, occasionally emitting steam and smoke.

  " We are preventing the situation from worsening," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference on Saturday. " We've restored power and pumped in fresh water, and are making basic steps towards improvement, but there is still no room for complacency."

  At Chernobyl in Ukraine, the worst nuclear accident in the world, it took weeks to " stabilise" what remained of the reactor that exploded and months to clean up radioactive materials and cover the site with a concrete and steel sarcophagus.

  In Tokyo, a metropolis of 13 million, a Reuters reading on Sunday morning showed ambient radiation of 0.06 microsieverts per hour, well within the global average of naturally occurring background radiation of 0.17-0.39 microsieverts per hour, a range given by the World Nuclear Association.

  (Additional reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka, Chizu Nomiyama, Shinichi Saoshiro and Phil Smith in Tokyo, Jon Herskovitz in Kamaishi writing by Bill Tarrant editing by)