AMMAN - Syrian state vehicles, accompanied by Russian military police, entered an area of Deraa city on Thursday that has been under rebel control for years to raise the national flag, witnesses said, as President Bashar Assad was poised to recover the area.Cranes from the state-run Deraa municipal council erected a flag pole near the mosque where the eruption of large protests in March 2011 was widely seen as heralding the start of the seven-year-long Syrian conflict.
