* Nine family members killed in single attack – opposition
group
* Wounded carried into Turkey for treatment
* Rebels reported to kill 12 soldiers in firefight
* U.N. says will have 50 monitors in Syria by end of week
(Adds UN on monitor arrivals, truce breaches)
By Erika Solomon
BEIRUT, May 1 (Reuters) – Violence hit two Syrian provinces
on Tuesday with a rights group reporting 10 civilians dead in an
army mortar attack and 12 soldiers killed in a firefight with
rebel gunmen as U.N. monitors sought to shore up a flimsy
ceasefire.
The United Nations accused both sides of breaching the truce
and said it had credible reports that at least 34 children had
been killed since the accord took effect on April 12.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which
tracks the 13-month-old uprising against President Bashar
al-Assad, said nine members of one family died in mortar bomb
blasts in a village in the northern province of Idlib.
An activist on the Turkish border, Tareq Abdelhaq, said 35
people had been wounded and that some were being carried 25 km
(15 miles) along mountain tracks to receive emergency treatment
in refugee camps dotted along the frontier.
“Some are being smuggled over the border to Turkey. They had
to carry the wounded and go through the mountains to avoid
checkpoints on the road,” Abdelhaq said. “One guy died on the
way. He was 19 years old and had very bad injuries.”
In the eastern province of Deir al-Zor, troops hit back with
mortar and heavy machinegun fire after losing a dozen of their
own to insurgents, killing at least one villager and destroying
a school, the anti-Assad Observatory added.
The United Nations says Syrian security forces have killed
more than 9,000 people since the uprising began in March 2011.
Like other Arab revolts against autocratic rulers, Syria’s
revolt began with peaceful protests but a violent government
response has spawned an increasingly bloody insurgency.
The government says rebels have killed more than 2,600
soldiers and police, and the speaker of Syria’s parliament,
Mahmoud al-Abrach, said that outside states backing the
insurgency bore responsibility for the bloodshed.
“The escalation is continuing and it must be stopped from
the outside – I mean those who are providing those groups with
weapons and money,” he told Reuters Television in Damascus.
“They need to stop this.”
The ceasefire brokered by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan
briefly calmed but failed to halt the conflict. Rebels, although
low on funds and ammunition, seem to be stepping up a bombing
campaign.
Explosions blew the fronts off buildings in the northwestern
city of Idlib on Monday, killing nine people and wounding 100,
including security personnel, according to state television,
which blamed the blasts on “terrorist” suicide bombers.
Damascus has accused the United Nations of turning a blind
eye to rebel ceasefire violations, although Secretary-General
Ban Ki-Moon condemned the Idlib blasts and rocket fire on the
central bank in the capital as “terrorist bomb attacks”.
CYCLE OF VIOLENCE
The United Nations now has 30 truce monitors in Syria, a
sprawling nation of 23 million people, and officials in New York
said they expected all members of the planned 300-member mission
to be on the ground by the end of the month.
Their commander, Norwegian Major General Robert Mood, has
acknowledged his mission cannot solve Syria’s fundamental
problems but said the security situation was not impossible.
“We have seen this in many crises before that if you simply
keep adding to the violence with more bombs and weapons and more
violence, it becomes a circle that is almost impossible to
break,” he told BBC radio. “We are not in that situation.”
Western governments have lost patience with Assad, accusing
him of breaking promises made to Annan that he would order
troops and tanks back to their barracks.
Paris has called for U.N. sanctions against Damascus, but
the West can do little given the diplomatic cover Syria enjoys
at the Security Council from China and Russia. Moscow says the
rebels are mainly to blame for the continued violence.
Western states are wary of military intervention along the
lines of last year’s air campaign that helped topple Libya’s
Muammar Gaddafi because of the greater diplomatic and military
complexities of tackling Syria, as well as the potential
spillover effects on a volatile Middle Eastern neighbourhood.
(Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols at the United
Nations; Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
