DAMASCUS: Syria's anti-regime revolt entered its 15th month yesterday amid relentless violence that has killed over 12,000 people and growing fears by Arab states that a UN-backed peace plan will fail.
Another 16 people were killed on Tuesday in nationwide violence, including seven in the eastern province of Deir Ezzor, four in the coastal city of Banias, and four in Damascus province, among them a six-year-old girl, a watchdog said.
All of those killed were civilians except for a rebel fighter who died in Deir Ezzor, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The bloodshed comes despite a truce brokered by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan as part of a six-point plan aimed at ending violence that has swept Syria since March 2011, when the uprising against President Bashar Assad broke out. The UN has accused both sides to the conflict of violating the cease-fire and warned that Syria was edging closer to full-blown civil war.
The Damascus government maintains that foreign-backed "armed terrorist groups" are behind the unrest, trying to undermine the regime and scuttle attempts at political reform.
Officials yesterday said slightly more than half of eligible voters had taken part in legislative elections held this month but boycotted by the opposition and described as "ludicrous" by Washington.
Electoral Commission chief Khalaf Al-Azzawi said turnout stood at 51.26 percent for the May 7 vote which he declared was “transparent and democratic.”
In Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister warned Monday that confidence in Annan's peace mission was fading fast because of the bloodshed. “Confidence in the efforts of the international envoy is falling rapidly because fighting and bloodshed continue,” Prince Saud Al-Faisal told reporters, after Riyadh hosted a summit of Arab leaders of the Gulf.
Part of Annan's six-point plan includes the deployment in flashpoint areas of around 300 UN military observers. There were "more than 200 observers" on the ground by yesterday, and one team had set up base in Deir Ezzor on Monday, said Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, the head of the UN mission in Syria.
A car belonging to United Nations monitors was damaged by an explosion while they toured the central Syrian town of Khan Sheikhoun yesterday but none of the monitors was hurt, a member of the observer team said.
In addition, foreign doctors returning from a secret mission inside Syria reported that people wounded in the regime's crackdown on dissent, as well as the medics who treat them, risk arrest and even torture.
A source in Syrian National Council said that Paris-based Burhan Ghalioun was elected as the main opposition group's chief in a vote held in Rome yesterday.
Ghalioun, who has led by consensus rather than through an election since the SNC's founding in October 2011, won 21 votes compared with 11 for another opposition figure, Georges Sabra.
Fears grow over Annan’s Syria plan
