Arab monitors arrive in Syria

BEIRUT, Lebanon?? The first group of Arab monitors arrived in Syria on Monday to assess whether Damascus is adhering to a plan to end a nine-month crackdown on protests against President Bashar al-Assad's rule, a member of the Arab delegation in Damascus said.

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"They arrived at about 8 p.m.," said the source, who was speaking by telephone from Damascus after meeting the monitors at the airport.

Their arrival came as violence escalated. At least 23 people were killed as Syrian tank forces battled opponents of Assad in Homs on Monday, residents said.

Fifty monitors and 10 officials from the Arab League secretariat were flying on a private Egyptian airplane, a Cairo airport source said before the aircraft took off. The observer mission will eventually include about 150 people, League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby told Reuters last week.

The head of observer mission, Sudanese General Mustafa al-Dabi, arrived in Damascus on Saturday. He went to Syria shortly after an advance team of Arab League officials went to Syria to arrange terms and logistics for the mission.

On Monday, four army defectors were killed by security forces in a town near the Turkish border, an activist network said. Nine soldiers killed in fighting in Homs were buried, state media reported.

There was no sign of Assad carrying out a plan agreed with the Arab League to halt an offensive against protests and start talks with the opposition.

STORY: Syrian opposition calls for UN role to end crisis

Amateur video posted on the Internet by activists showed three tanks in the streets next to apartment blocks in the Baba Amr district. One fired its main gun and another appeared to launch mortar rounds.

Video showed mangled bodies lying in pools of blood on a narrow street. Power lines had collapsed and cars were burnt and blasted, as if shelled by tank or mortar rounds.

"What's happening is a slaughter," said Fadi, a resident living near the flashpoint Baba Amr neighborhood. He said it was being hit with mortar shells and heavy machinegun fire.

Story: Syrian opposition calls for UN role to end crisis

An armed insurgency is increasingly eclipsing civilian protests in Syria. Now many fear a slide toward a sectarian war pitting the Sunni Muslim majority, the driving force of the protest movement, against minorities that have mostly stayed loyal to the government, particularly the Alawite sect to which Assad belongs. Fighting in Homs has intensified since a double suicide bombing in Damascus on Friday that killed 44 people.

Fadi told Reuters via Skype that trenches the army dug around the neighborhood in recent weeks had trapped residents and rebel fighters. "They are benefiting from trenches. Neither the people nor the gunmen or army defectors are able to flee. The army has been descending on the area for the past two days."

Video: Another vicious Syrian crackdown

Two-way fight
Other residents said the fighters have still been able to inflict casualties on the army.

"The violence is definitely two-sided," said a Homs resident who named himself only as Mohammed to protect his safety. "I've been seeing ambulances filled with wounded soldiers passing by my window in the past days. They're getting shot somehow."

Parts of Homs were defended by the Free Syrian Army, made up of defectors from the regular armed forces, who say they have tried to protect civilians.

"There are many casualties," activist Yazen Homsi told the Avaaz opposition group from Homs. "It is very difficult to access them and provide treatment as a result of the heavy shelling throughout the neighbourhood."

The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights documented names of those reported killed in Monday's clashes. It also reported three people killed on the outskirts of Hama, north of Homs, as security forces fired on protests.

It said explosions went off in Douma, a Damascus suburb, as the army clashed with rebel fighters. In a town near the Turkish border, four army defectors were killed by security forces, the Observatory reported.

Reuters and the Associated Press contributed to this report

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45790450/ns/world_news-mideast_n_africa/

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