BEIRUT — U.N. cease-fire monitors toured a rebel-held town in central Syria on Sunday with army defectors, while government troops pounded a Damascus suburb with artillery and heavy machine guns, activists said.
The shelling in Douma highlighted the need for more observers a day after the Security Council voted to expand the number of U.N. observers from 30 to 300 in hopes of salvaging an international truce plan marred by continued fighting between the military and rebels.
An eight-member team is already on the ground in Syria, and since Thursday has visited flash points of the 13-month-long conflict.
Fighting generally halts temporarily when the observers are present in an area, but there has been a steady stream of reports of violence from towns and regions where they have not yet gone.
“This U.N. observers thing is a big joke,” said Douma-based activist Mohammed Saeed. “Shelling stops and tanks are hidden when they visit somewhere, and when they leave, shelling resumes.”
His comments reflect a widespread lack of faith among many Syrians in international envoy Kofi Annan’s cease-fire plan for ending the violence in Syria and launching talks between President Bashar Assad and those trying to oust him.
Syria’s opposition and its Western supporters suspect Mr. Assad is largely paying lip service to the truce since full compliance - including withdrawing troops and heavy weapons from populated areas and allowing peaceful demonstrations - could quickly sweep him from power.
A previous observer team, dispatched by the Arab League at the start of the year, withdrew after a month after failing to halt the fighting.
Syria’s state-run news agency SANA said U.N. monitors on Sunday visited the central city of Hama, where they met with the governor, while opposition activists said observers visited Rastan, a rebel-held town south of Hama.
An amateur video posted online showed two white U.N. vehicles driving in Rastan accompanied by a red pickup truck with the words “Free Army” written on it.
Other videos showed two U.N. monitors wearing blue helmets and body armor touring Rastan along with officers from the rebel Free Syrian Army who point to damaged buildings and a large crowd of people shouting “Bye bye, Bashar” and “The people want to topple the regime.”
Mr. Saeed, the activist, said two people were killed Sunday by indiscriminate firing in Douma, which was the scene of intense clashes between rebels and security forces before the U.N.-brokered cease-fire went into effect more than a week ago.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based opposition group with a network of activists on the ground, confirmed the deaths. It said four soldiers also were killed when a roadside bomb hit an armored personnel carrier in the town later Sunday.
The Observatory also reported that security forces killed three people in the northern province of Idlib and one person in the village of Hteita outside Damascus when troops opened fire from a checkpoint.
It was not immediately clear what prompted the attack on Douma. Mr. Saeed said loud explosions that shook the city early Sunday caused panic among residents, some of whom used mosque loudspeakers to urge people to take cover in basements and in lower floors of apartment buildings.
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