Killings in Syria continue as Arab monitors’ mandate expires

SYRIAN forces have retreated from a rebel-held town under a local ceasefire, residents said, but deadly violence raged on elsewhere as a month-long mandate for Arab peace monitors in Syria was expiring.

Fourteen people were reported killed, adding to a death toll of more than 600 since the monitors arrived in Syria, where an insurgency is hardening what began as a mostly peaceful struggle against President Bashar al-Assad’s authoritarian rule.

Residents of Zabadani said troops and tanks that had besieged the insurgent-controlled town had pulled back after a deal to end days of fighting, according to an opposition leader. Dozens of armoured vehicles that had encircled Zabadani, a hill resort near the Lebanese border, withdrew to garrisons 8km away, Kamal al-Labwani said.

The Arab League monitoring mandate was expiring last night with Arab foreign ministers, due to weigh their next move at meetings in Cairo this Sunday, at odds over how to respond to the turmoil in which thousands of people have been killed.

An Arab League source said this week Syria might let the monitors stay on, but without any broadening of their mandate.

The leader of Syria’s Muslim Brotherhood said world powers should pile diplomatic pressure on Assad and set up a no-fly zone and “safe zones” to help the opposition.

“The international community should take the right position . . . They should fully isolate this regime, pull out their ambassadors and expel the regime’s ambassadors,” Mohammad Shaqfa said.

Assad, whose father crushed an armed Brotherhood revolt in 1982, says Syria is facing a foreign conspiracy using Islamist militants to destroy a bastion of Arab nationalism.

“The country is capable of overcoming the current conditions and building a strong Syria,” Assad told a delegation, the Arab People’s Initiative for Fighting Foreign Intervention in Syria, the state news agency SANA reported.

The UN Security Council is split over Syria, with Russia declaring it will work with China to block any move to authorise military intervention. Western powers have acknowledged a Libya-style campaign in Syria would be fraught with danger, but want the council at least to condemn Assad’s repression and impose sanctions.

Reliable casualty figures are hard to come by in Syria where media access has been limited and the outside world has had to piece together a picture from the conflicting accounts of the parties to an inchoate and increasingly bloody struggle.

The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said 454 civilians had been killed since the Arab observers deployed on December 26 to verify whether an Arab peace plan was working. It said 146 members of the security forces, including 27 who had deserted, had also been killed.

The Observatory’s figures did not include 26 people who, authorities said, were killed by a suicide bomber in Damascus on January 6.

The British-based Observatory reported at least 12 more civilian deaths across Syria yesterday.

Asked if the Arab monitors had made a difference, Rami Abdul-Rahman, the name used by the Observatory’s director, said: “Yes, in the first week, the number of deaths fell sharply. After that, no, the numbers rose.”