* No clear sign of army withdrawals, activists say
* Districts in Homs, Hama bombarded, over 30 killed
* Six soldiers killed in remote eastern ambushes
* Funerals for 58 army and police in past two days
(Adds funerals, army toll paragraphs 2-9, edits)
By Mariam Karouny
BEIRUT, April 10 (Reuters) – Syrian troops killed at least
31 people and insurgents killed six soldiers on Tuesday,
opposition activists said, on the day President Bashar al-Assad
was to withdraw forces from cities 48 hours ahead of the first
ceasefire of the 13-month-old conflict.
Activists said 26 people, mostly civilians, were killed in
Homs in an army bombardment of the city’s Bayada and Khalidiya
districts. State media said over 30 security personnel killed by
rebels had been buried. Government restrictions on media hamper
independent verification of such accounts.
“They are attacking Bayada with mortars from three different
locations. People have taken refuge in some schools and now some
of the schools were hit,” said an activist calling himself Abu
Yasser. “We have at least 20 martyrs and 70 wounded, most of
them women and children,” he told Reuters by telephone.
An earlier report from activists said six people were killed
by army shelling in the Homs district of Khalidiya. Four were
identified by residents in a field hospital, but two were
disfigured beyond recognition.
A 220-second video posted on YouTube by activists filming
from a rooftop in Homs recorded mortar rounds crashing into the
Khalidiya and Bayada districts about every 10 seconds. Spouts of
pulverised debris burst high into the air with each impact and
plumes of smoke drifted over the rooftops.
Another video shot by flashlight showed the wounded
receiving emergency aid in the darkness of what appeared to be a
basement, blood splattering the tiled floor.
A civilian was killed in the Bab Tadmor quarter of Homs, and
four people were killed in a military operation in Kafar Zeita
north of the city of Hama, said Rami Abdelrahman of the
pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR).
He said six soldiers were killed early in the day in attacks
on two checkpoints on the desert highway running through the
eastern town of Marqada, south of the Turkish border.
The state news agency SANA on Tuesday reported the burials
of 33 “army and law enforcement martyrs … targeted by armed
terrorist groups”. SANA reported 25 army and police funerals on
the previous day. Those figures would raise the official death
toll among the security forces to over 2,600.
NO PULLOUT SEEN
In the days leading up to Tuesday’s deadline, violence
intensified and daily death tolls were often over 100. Syria
says it has already pulled back some of its troops from the
cities in keeping with its undertaking to United Nations and
Arab League peace envoy Kofi Annan.
His peace plan calls for rebel forces to stop shooting as
the army withdraws so that all forms of violence cease at dawn
on Thursday.
The Observatory, a British-based information clearing house
that has collated reports on the violence in Syria for the past
year, said there was no firm indication on Tuesday of the troop
withdrawals that Annan’s plan calls for.
Activists said the Homs bombardment began at breakfast time.
One 90-second video recorded surreptitiously showed a group
of soldiers in combat gear clustered on a corner at a normally
busy intersection in Homs. There was no one else on the streets.
There were no immediate reports of guerrilla actions from
the rebel Free Syrian Army, whose commanders have said they will
order a ceasefire only if they are satisfied that Assad’s forces
have indeed pulled back and stopped offensives.
The Observatory said there was an overnight bombardment in
Hama and the town of Mara in the northern province of Aleppo.
In Douma, a suburb of the capital Damascus, an activist said
tanks were still on the fringes of town on Tuesday morning. A
clash between rebels and the army was reported in southern
Deraa, where the uprising began 13 months ago.
Security forces and the army remained stationed in Deraa,
said an activist who called himself Abu Firas, and security
checkpoints still separated districts of the old city. He said:
“The troops at checkpoints are appearing in strength to say ‘we
are present’.”
(Additional reporting by Oliver Holmes and Dominic Evans in
Beirut and Suleiman al-Khalidi in Amman; Writing by Douglas
Hamilton; Editing by Alastair Macdonald)
