Syria ceasefire imperiled as government vows crackdown

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Source: Reuters

Reuters) - Syria's ceasefire increasingly was under threat on Sunday as the government vowed a crackdown on a wave of "terrorist attacks" and its forces shelled Homs on the day the first U.N. peace monitors entered the country.

An initial team of five U.N. ceasefire monitors arrived in the capital Damascus as expected on Sunday evening, a Reuters witness said. Ahmad Fawzi, the spokesman for international mediator Kofi Annan, said the team would be deployed on Monday.

As the monitors prepared to embark on their mission, the city of Homs, one of the hotbeds of opposition to President Bashar al-Assad, was bombarded by government forces at a rate of "one shell per minute", activists said.

Activist sources reported six people were killed on Sunday, and four bodies were found.

The observers are due to be joined by two dozen more monitors soon in line with a Security Council resolution adopted on Saturday authorizing the deployment of up to 30 people.

Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/15/us-syria-un-vote-idUSBRE83D09620120415

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1. Aljazeera: UN monitors arrive in Syria as fighting rages

City of Homs shelled as advance UN team of observers arrives in Damascus to reinforce Annan's six-point peace plan.

The first international observers tasked with monitoring a tenuous United Nations-backed ceasefire have arrived in Syria, where activists said government forces were continuing to attack opposition neighbourhoods.

The Syrian government said that it would not be responsible for the safety of the monitors, however, unless it was involved in "all steps on the ground", Bouthaina Shaaban, a spokesperson and presidential adviser, said.

She said Syria reserved the right to agree on the nationality of those participating in the mission.

Government forces on Sunday subjected the Khalidiyeh and Bayada neighbourhoods of Homs to fierce bombardment, despite the fact that both the government and opposition had agreed to a ceasefire that came into effect at dawn on Thursday.

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/04/2012415221212358802.html