Syrian forces resume shelling

BEIRUT – Activists said Syrian troops yesterday fired mortar shells and machine-guns at a Damascus suburb that was visited repeatedly by United Nations observers, prompting calls for the international mission to stay on in flash points to prevent regime attacks.

Activists say government troops have targeted opposition strongholds, such as the suburb of Douma, after monitors leave. They say the regime has halted shelling attacks in other areas where observers are deployed for longer periods.Currently, 13 monitors are in Syria, but the team is to grow to 100 in a month and eventually to up to 300.Yesterday, regime forces pounded Douma for a second day, despite a visit by observers, said local activist Mohammed Saeed. He said regime forces fired before, during and after the visit, their third to Douma in three days.Persistent bloodshed has tarnished efforts by observers to salvage a Syria truce that started to unravel almost as soon as it began on April 12. Despite the violence, the international community still sees the peace plan as the last chance to prevent the country from falling into civil war – in part because there are no real alternatives.Violence in Syria erupted more than 13 months ago, triggered by a brutal regime crackdown on what began as peaceful protests but gradually turned into an armed uprising.The truce is intended to pave the way for talks between President Bashar Assad and those trying to bring him down on Syria’s political future, but so far it appears to have only a limited impact on the violence.Rebels have also kept up attacks. The state-run Syrian news agency Sana said a suicide bomber detonated a car packed with explosives near an army checkpoint along a highway in northwestern Syria on Wednesday, killing one member of the security forces and wounding two. Elsewhere, a roadside bomb went off in the northern Aleppo province, critically wounding three people, the agency said.Syria restricts access to foreign journalists, and reports by activists and state media cannot be confirmed independently.International envoy Kofi Annan told the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday that the situation in Syria is ‘bleak’ and expressed alarm at continued regime attacks on towns where U.N. observers are not present. But he also expressed hoped that a speedy deployment of a 300-strong observer force authorized by the council could potentially ‘change the political dynamics’ in Syria.Opposition activists have said observers appear to make difference in areas where they stay for longer periods, such as the central city of Homs, where a pair of monitors has been deployed since the weekend. – Nampa-AP