| Submit your comments on this article | |
| Syria-Lebanon-Iran | |
| Syria peace chance faints | |
| 2012-04-08 | |
At least 15 rebels and 17 security force members were also killed, raising the death toll in violence to over 100. Each side has accused the other of intensifying assaults in the run-up to the truce due to take effect early Thursday if government forces begin pulling back from towns 48 hours earlier in line with UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan’s peace plan. The military shelled Deir Baalba district in the restive city of Homs, killing four people, the grassroots Local Coordination Committees opposition group said. Thirteen men were also found killed in cold blood in the same area, it said. Amateur activist video showed scenes of carnage said to be the aftermath of the shelling. Mangled limbs and body parts in blankets were being loaded on a pick-up truck. A second video showed 13 men who appeared to have been tied up and executed. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 53 people had been killed, including 40 in an army attack on Al-Latmana, in Hama province, that began on Friday. In an activist video from the town, mourners held aloft the limp corpse of a child. Bodies were laid out in a row on the ground. A rocket hit a bus traveling from Lebanon to Syria at Jousa just inside Syria, a Lebanese security source said. Witnesses said six Syrians were killed. Lebanese medics confirmed two dead and nine wounded. It was not clear who had fired the rocket. Rebels trying to oust President Bashar Assad attacked army posts north of Aleppo before dawn, killing an officer and two men, and assaulted a helicopter base, activists said. Syrian commandos shot dead three rebels in an overnight raid on a “terrorist den,” Syria’s state news SANA agency reported. Country towns north of Aleppo have endured days of clashes and bombardment, prompting 3,000 civilians to flee over the Turkish border on Friday alone — about 10 times the daily number before Assad accepted Annan’s plan 10 days ago. | |
| Posted by:Steve White |