- Samar Yazbek's Syria memoir lauded with PEN Pinter award
- Death toll across country for Tuesday climbs to 71
- U.S. troops are in Jordan, helping with refugee crisis
- Rebels post video that appears to show regime forces surrendering
(CNN) -- Here are the top five things happening Syria on Wednesday that you need to know:
1. Syrian novelist Samar Yazbek, who risked her life to document her countrymen's suffering, has won the prestigious PEN Pinter International Writer of Courage Award. Her memoir "A Woman in the Crossfire: Diaries of the Syrian Revolution," chronicles the first months of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad. Yazbek writes about standing at a rally and having a man next to her shot down by a sniper. She recalls trying to save a fleeing boy who was orphaned when his parents were taken by police because they were protesting.
Well known in her country before the civil war, Yazbek is also an Alawite, the same sect as the Assad family. For taking a position against al-Assad, her family disowned her. She dedicated her book to "the martyrs of the Syrian revolution" and "those who move among the downpour of bullets and artillery fire, the tanks and the fighter jets, in order to carry on the revolution of the Syrian people toward establishing a free and democratic society."
Read excerpts of the book and a profile of Yazbek
Syrian writer was beaten, humiliated 
Syrian defector speaks 
Syrian rebels take up positions inside a building during clashes with government forces in Aleppo on Saturday, October 6. Click through the gallery to view images of the fighting in October. See photographs of the fighting in September. 
Syrian members of the Al-Saiqa rebel brigade clean weapons on Saturday before going to the front line in Aleppo. 
A Syrian rebel runs across a heavily damaged street to dodge sniper fire during clashes on Saturday. 
Syrian rebels patrol a neighborhood in Aleppo on Friday, October 5. 
A Syrian demonstrator shouts during an anti-regime protest in Aleppo on Friday. Tensions rippled across Turkey a day after Syrian shells struck a Turkish border town and killed five people. 
A Syrian rebel takes position during clashes with government forces in Aleppo on Friday. 
An injured Free Syrian Army fighter rests after receiving treatment at Dar al Shifa hospital in Aleppo on Thursday, October 4. 
A child covers his wounds from a Syrian army sniper at Dar al Shifa hospital on Thursday. 
A Free Syrian Army figther cries after one of his friends was injured in fighting with government forces outside the Dar El Shifa hospital on Thursday. 
A Dar El Shifa worker cleans the floor outside the hospital in Aleppo on Thursday. 
Syrian rebel fighters look at a multirocket launcher in Tal Abyadh, a Syrian town close to the Turkish border, on Thursday. 
Rebels climb the stairs of a destroyed building Thursday in Tal Abyadh. 
Smoke rises from the explosion area after several Syrian shells crashed inside the town of Akcakale in Turkey, killing at least five people on Wednesday, October 3. It wasn't the first deadly cross-border incident between the two neighbors during the 18-month-long uprising in Syria. 
A police officer is injured in Wednesday's attack on Akcakale in Turkey's Sanliurfa province. 
Three car bombs destroyed the area around a military officers' club and a hotel in Aleppo, Syria, on Wednesday. At least 40 people were killed and 90 wounded, most of them soldiers, a monitoring group said. 
Car bomb explosions on Wednesday left a crater in the ground. 
A nurse helps treat a 7-year-old girl who's neck was badly wounded by shrapnel at the Dar Al Shifaa hospital in Aleppo on Monday, October 1. 
Friends lay a rebel fighter on a gurney after he was shot in the chest during heavy battles in the Midan neighborhood on Monday. 
Photos: Showdown in Syria 
Romney supports arming Syrian rebels? 2. The war has dragged on for more than a year and a half. Each day, death tolls are high. Wednesday is no different. The Local Coordination Committees in Syria, those who speak for activists trying to oust al-Assad, said 71 people across the country have died so far Wednesday. In the capital of Damascus and its suburbs, 44 people were killed.
That includes 20 who were found dead in Deir Asafeir and 17 in farms in Daraya. Fourteen died in Idlib, 10 in Homs and three in Aleppo. One rebel commander was killed after rebel groups clashed with government troops on the Damascus Aleppo International Highway.
Regime shells began raining down on neighborhoods of Khalidiya, Jouret Shiyah and Homs old city.
Syrian State TV also reported Wednesday that a state TV cameraman, Mohammed Al-Ashram, was "killed by terrorist gunfire in Deir Ezzor." For some time, al-Assad has blamed terrorists for the violence in Syria. Activists say his forces are behind the brutality.
There may be more fallout as details continuing to come in about a huge explosion Monday night outside Damascus at an important Air Force Intelligence compound. Opposition representatives said Tuesday that "hundreds of regime forces" may have been killed in the attack, but concrete casualty figures were impossible to obtain. The AFI is considered the elite, primary branch of Syria's 17 intelligence services.
Read more about what two women experienced when the explosion happened
3. The New York Times reported Wednesday that the U.S. military has secretly sent a task force of more than 150 planners and other specialists to Jordan to help Jordanian troops deal with the estimated 180,000 Syrian refugees that have flooded the country. In May, CNN reported that the U.S. sent troops to Jordan for a training exercise called Eager Lion. CNN has continuously covered the work of the task force, a joint special operations group of about 150 that has been in and out of Jordan regularly. U.S. special forces have, since April, been working on a variety of potential scenarios in Jordan, CNN's Barbara Starr has reported. Those scenarios include border protection, moving into Syria to secure chemical weapons and debriefing defectors. The group is also offering advice on humanitarian relief and corridors.
4. The civil war has been covered in videos posted inside Syria. CNN, like other news organizations, is unable to verify the authenticity of the videos because foreign journalists have been largely prevented from entering the country to cover the violence. Activists posted videos showing government soldiers apparently surrendering in the city of Maarat Nouman, which is south of Idlib. One of the rebel fighters screams "Don't shoot at anyone!" Another rebel shouts "God is great, this is the surrender of al-Assad's dogs!"
Another long video detailed a description of the end of two days of battle. It appears to show rebels taking over what they describe as the main security center that was used by government forces to detain and torture anti-regime activists. One of the rebels shouts "We announce a liberated city, God willing!"
More footage online shows rebels celebrating in Maarat Nouman. One of the rebels chants, "We are coming to get you, oh Bashar!"
5. Al-Assad has finally replaced Nawaf al-Fares, Syria's ambassador to Iraq, who defected on July 11. SANA, the state-run news agency, reported that the former ambassador was "relieved of his duties" after he "made press statements that contradict the duties of his position of defending the country's stances." Syria's new ambassador to Iraq, Sattam Jad'an al-Dandah, was sworn in during a ceremony Tuesday, and al-Assad wished him well, SANA reported.
Meanwhile, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that the situation in Syria has "dramatically worsened."
"It is causing serious risks to the stability of Syria's neighbors and the entire region," he said. "The escalation of the conflict, along the Syrian-Turkish border and the impact of the crisis on Lebanon are extremely dangerous. This is a regional calamity with global ramifications. I am deeply concerned by the continued flow of arms to both the Syrian government and opposition forces.
"I urge again those countries providing arms to stop doing so," he said. "Militarization only aggravates the situation."
The Syrian Ministry of Foreign and Emigrants Affairs responded by saying that Syria has tried twice before to issue cease-fires that did not work, spokesman Jihad Makdissi said in written release. The release accused Ban of presenting "only half of the truth."
