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Syria steps up assault as UN moves to send monitors

03 April 2012 17:34 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Fierce clashes erupted on Tuesday as Syria’s regime sent reinforcements into rebel areas despite a truce pledge, and the UN said it was rushing a team to Damascus to pave the way for peace monitors, APA reports quoting AFP.

The surge in violence killed at least 10 people, mostly civilians in north and central Syria, and included a string of arson attacks on homes, activists and monitors said.

It came a day after peace envoy Kofi Annan told the UN Security Council that President Bashar al-Assad had given assurances he would "immediately" start pulling back his forces and complete a military withdrawal from urban areas by April 10.

Foreign Minister Walid Muallem on Tuesday pledged Syria would do its utmost to ensure the success of a Red Cross mission as he met the organisation’s head, Jakob Kellenberger, who was in Damascus to seek a daily humanitarian ceasefire.

Monitors said heavy fighting engulfed opposition strongholds in the southern region of Daraa, the flashpoint city of Homs, northwestern Idlib province and near the capital.

Dozens of armoured personnel carriers arrived in Dael, a town in Daraa province where the uprising against Assad began in March 2011, as well as in Zabadani, a bastion of the rebellion near the border with Lebanon.

Dael activist Sayyed Mahmud told AFP the situation was extremely tense in the town. "They burned down 14 houses yesterday. They are arresting people and have sent in troop reinforcements," he said.

"As part of the regime’s campaign to starve the people, troops are raiding homes, destroying food stocks and equipment. They go into bakeries and destroy the dough. There are 15-hour power cuts a day."

In Idlib, which borders Turkey, two civilians and four soldiers were killed amid heavy machinegun fire and shelling, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

"Four civilians have been wounded and several homes torched," it added. "Rebels managed to disable a troop carrier and have killed or wounded a number of government troops."

Clashes killed a civilian elsewhere in the same province.

In Homs, three civilians died in shelling of the central city’s Bayyada district while regime forces backed by tanks were said to be moving on the region of Hula.

The Observatory has charged that the army is torching and looting rebel houses across Syria in a campaign that could amount to crimes against humanity.

In Geneva, a spokesman for Annan said the office of the UN-Arab League envoy expected a "UN advance team on the deployment of monitors to arrive in Syria in the next 48 hours."

In a briefing Monday to the Security Council, Annan sought a broad mandate for the monitoring mission as he reported "no progress" on reaching a ceasefire, according to diplomats.

The Council was also told it could take at least two months to get a full mission of about 250 observers into Syria if a ceasefire is declared, one diplomat said.

Syria’s UN envoy, Bashar Jaafari, confirmed the April 10 date had been agreed "by common accord" between Annan and his government.

Opposition figure Riyad Turk urged support for Annan’s plan as he called for a national dialogue while insisting, however, that Assad must first step down.

"A political solution... must first and foremost start with the president giving up power, and launching a national dialogue that does not exclude any political component of the Syrian people, including regime members whose hands were not stained by blood," he said in a statement to AFP.

On Monday, Washington’s UN envoy Susan Rice said the United States and other countries doubted Assad would commit to reining in his forces.

"Past experience would lead us to be sceptical and to worry that over the next several days, that rather than a diminution of the violence we might yet again see an escalation of the violence. We certainly hope that is not so," said Rice.

The partial implementation of Annan’s six-point peace plan would include a full cessation of hostilities within 48 hours of the deadline, diplomats said.

The United States, Britain and France were to send the Security Council a draft statement Tuesday putting a formal stamp on the deadline and warning Assad of possible "further measures" if he reneges on the truce, they said.

Russia, Assad’s veto-wielding ally in the Council, has rejected the idea of a deadline, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying "ultimatums and artificial deadlines rarely help matters."

International Committee of the Red Cross chief Kellenberger, on his third mission to Damascus since it launched a protest crackdown which the UN says has killed more than 9,000 people, said ahead of his trip that he would seek a daily two-hour humanitarian ceasefire.

Muallem’s office said the minister "reiterated Syria’s willingness to provide the ICRC with all that is needed to ensure the success of its humanitarian mission."