UN force heads to Syria to monitor ceasefire
Government troops, rebels continue fighting
BEIRUT • Opposition activists accused Syrian troops of shelling two cities on Tuesday in a campaign to weaken forces fighting President Bashar al-assad’s government before a ceasefire deadline next week.
Rebel fighters also kept up their attacks, killing three soldiers in separate actions in northern Syria, activists said.
Mr. Assad has agreed to a ceasefire negotiated by international peace envoy Kofi Annan from April 10, the latest effort to end a year of bloodshed stemming from an uprising against his rule.
An advance team from the UN peacekeeping department is due in Damascus this week to see how observers can monitor the truce, Mr. Annan’s spokesman said in Geneva.
But Waleed al-fares, an opposition activist in Homs, said Mr. Assad was playing for time to gain the upper hand over poorly armed rebel forces that have been driven from city strongholds in the past two months.
Targets in Homs were coming under shelling on Tuesday, he said. Another opposition
The regime shows no signs of stopping
activist, Mortadha al-rashid, told Reuters from Damascus that the western border town of Zabadani was also taking a pounding.
“The regime shows no signs of stopping. There are people being shelled in Zabadani right now,” Mr. Rashid said.
In violence elsewhere, rebel fighters killed one soldier in a clash in northern Idlib province, according to the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britishbased monitor which collates reports from inside Syria.
Armed men also attacked the home of a military director of logistics in Aleppo, killing two guards, the Observatory said.
France said it would hold a meeting in the next two weeks to discuss sanctions on Syria to ensure they are implemented ahead of the next “Friends of Syria” meeting due to be held in Paris.
“Given the news that we’re getting today of the ongoing crackdown in Syria, this commitment must begin now,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said.
“There is a final date of April 10, but it’s from now that Mr. Assad must begin implementing the immediate measures he has committed to.”
“If the regime continues its refusals, its massacres, then it will be pouring scorn on and insulting the entire international community,” he said.
The United Nations estimates Assad’s forces have killed more than 9,000 people in the past year, while the government says about 3,000 security personnel have been killed by what it describes as foreign-backed gangs of terrorists.