No major violence reported as Syria ceasefire begins
A deadline for a United Nations-brokered ceasefire passed today without reports of major violence, opposition activists said, hours after Syria promised to observe a halt in fighting.
Under a peace plan by international envoy Kofi Annan, a truce was set for 6am local time (4am Irish time), to be followed by negotiations between President Bashar Assad's regime and the Syrian opposition on a political transition.
But there were only dim hopes for an abrupt end to the bloodshed that has rocked Syria for 13 months and claimed more than 9,000 lives.
Syria has backtracked on previous peace plans, characterised the uprising as a terrorist plot and has escalated shelling attacks on rebellious areas in recent weeks.
The regime also carved out an important truce condition when it announced yesterday that it would halt the fighting - saying it still has a right to defend itself against the terrorists it says are behind the country's uprising.
Opposition activists said the today's deadline passed without reports of major violence.
The British-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, an activist group, said some shots were fired in the Damascus neighbourhood of Qadam after midnight and that an explosion went off in a car in a Damascus suburb, causing no injuries.
Fares Mohammed, an activist in the Damascus suburb of Zabadani, said an army tank at a checkpoint fired three shells at a nearby open area between 5.50 and 6.10am.
The rebel Free Syrian Army, a fighting force determined to bring down Assad, has said it will abide by the ceasefire. But the opposition is not well organised and there are growing fears of groups looking to exploit the chaos.
A ceasefire could pose a major risk for the Assad regime.
Many activists predict that huge numbers of protesters would flood the streets if Assad fully complies with the agreement and pulls his forces back to barracks. But Syria has ways to maintain authority even without the military, in the form of pro-regime gunmen called "shabiha" and the fiercely loyal and pervasive security apparatus.
Over the course of the uprising, the military crackdown succeeded in preventing protesters from recreating the fervour of Egypt's Tahrir Square, where hundreds of thousands of people camped out in a powerful show of dissent that drove long-time leader Hosni Mubarak from power.
Yesterday the White House warned that the Assad regime had reneged on promises to stop the violence in the past.
"What is important to remember is that we judge the Assad's regime by its actions and not by their promises, because their promises have proven so frequently in the past to be empty," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.
Former UN secretary general Mr Annan will brief the UN Security Council by videoconference from Geneva, Switzerland, today.
Rami Abdul-Rahman, who heads the Observatory for Human Rights, said all of Syria's flashpoints in the central provinces of Hama and Homs, the northern regions of Idlib and Aleppo, the capital Damascus and its suburbs, as well as Daraa to the south and Deir el-Zour to the east were quiet.
"Nothing is happening in these hotspots so far," he said, referring to the areas that have witnessed intense attacks by government forces and clashes between troops and defectors over the past few weeks.
In Homs, activist Tarek Badrakhan said no explosions or shelling had been heard since 10pm yesterday, but army vehicles were still in the streets today.
Mr Badrakhan said nights were usually quiet, with shelling resuming in the mornings, and that it was too early to judge whether attacks had been halted.
Homs has been battered by daily shelling for the past three weeks.
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