Syrian activists say violence has killed at the least 23 people as more U.N. observers began deploying to back a cease-fire plan that has didn't end greater than a year of unrest.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says rebels killed 12 soldiers on Tuesday in a battle within the northeastern province of Deir Ezzor. It says one civilian was killed when government troops responded with rockets and machine guns.
Elsewhere, the Observatory says a mortar shell struck a village inside the northwestern province of Idlib, killing 10 people, nine of them from one family.
Casualties couldn't be independently confirmed.
UN repeats demands restraint
The small team of U.N. monitors in Syria has grown to 30 personnel, with more expected to reach inside the coming weeks. The U.N. Security Council has authorized a 300-strong observer mission, however it isn't clear when it will likely be fully deployed.
In a press release on Tuesday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon repeated his demand each side in Syria's 13-month conflict to forestall armed violence and cooperate with the U.N. observers to implement the April 12 cease-fire agreement. He also condemned a up to date series of bombings within the town of Idlib and inside the capital, Damascus, calling them "terrorist" attacks.
A series of attacks
Deaths across Syria through April 26, 2012Deaths across Syria through April 26, 2012News of today's violence comes an afternoon after Syrian activists said a double bomb attack near security buildings in Idlib province killed a minimum of 20 people. Syria's state news agency, which said suicide bombers triggered the blasts, gave a lower death toll of a minimum of nine, with another 100 wounded. State media also report that a suicide car bombing in Damascus killed at the least nine others on Friday. An Islamist group calling itself the al-Nusra Front claimed responsibility for the Damascus attack.
The Syrian government blames the bombings on "armed terrorists," a term it uses for rebels leading an uprising against autocratic President Bashar al-Assad. But activists accuse the govt. of orchestrating the attacks to discredit the opposition.
The United Nations estimates that at the very least 9,000 people has been killed since Assad began cracking down at the uprising in March 2011.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP and Reuters.
| Join the conversation on our social journalism site - Middle East Voices. Follow our Middle East reports on Twitter and discuss them on our Facebook page. |
From WhatNewsToday.net
0 comments:
Post a Comment