EU Staff Member Killed In Damascus

A man runs among rubble as smoke rises from buildings damaged by what activists said were missiles fired by a Syrian Air Force fighter jet in Raqqa Province on March 12.

A staff member of the European Union's delegation in Syria has been killed in a rocket attack on a Damascus suburb.

EU foreign police chief Catherine Ashton in a statement said that Ahmad Shihadeh, an EU policy officer, was killed on March 12 during an attack on the capital's suburb of Deraya, where he lived.

Ashton says Shihadeh was providing humanitarian aid to the people in Deraya.

She called again on all sides to take "urgent steps to end the violence," which she says has led to the deaths of some 100,000 Syrians and driven 1 million refugees into neighboring countries.

The EU withdrew international staff from its office in Damascus in December because of the worsening violence in the two-year-long uprising against President Bashar al-Assad.

With reporting by dpa and Reuters