Syria: Scores Dead Despite “Truce”
At least 80 people were killed Monday in further violence in Syria, where 300 international observers are to be deployed from next week to monitor a fragile cease-fire seriously compromised.
Despite the truce officially declared on April 12, 80 people were killed, most of them in Hama. Five soldiers were also killed across the country.
This is the first time that so many people were killed in one day since the cease-fire declared.
For its part, the official SANA news agency reported that three soldiers were killed in Deraa and Hama by “terrorists.”
On his part, Abu Omar, an activist in Damascus, said the UN mission, which has currently less than a dozen peacekeepers, is a failure because “observers coordinate their movements with the authorities and do not work with the people on the ground “.
Several activists said that during their tour Monday in several cities in the region of Damascus, the peacekeepers had refused to follow the people who wanted to show them the places where they accuse the regime to hide its tanks.
“I do not understand exactly the purpose of this mission,” said for his part Abu Yazan al-Homsi, an activist in Homs (center), town symbol of protest and punishment where the peacekeepers are now based.
While Syrian NGOs have spoken about more than 200 deaths since the cease-fire announced, the spokesman for international envoy Mr. Kofi Annan, Ahmad Fawzi, acknowledged that “conditions are risky” in Syria.
