Syrian troops fire on funeral

A convoy of UN truce observers came under attack in a Syrian town during a funeral procession in which a monitoring group said regime forces “massacred” 20 people.
UN spokesman Martin Nesirky said a bomb exploded in front of a convoy of monitors and that three UN vehicles were damaged but that no casualties were reported.
The incidents took place as Syria’s anti-regime revolt entered its 15th month of relentless violence that has killed more than 12,000 people and growing fears that a UN-backed peace plan will fail, according to the AFP news agency.
Ahmad Fawzi, spokesman for UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, said in a statement that the UN supervisory mission had sent a patrol to help the stranded monitors.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights watchdog said the “regime committed a massacre” during the visit by UN monitors to Khan Sheikhun, in the northwestern province of Idlib.
Another 21 people were killed in violence elsewhere in the country, the Britain-based Observatory said.
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.
There were “more than 200 observers” on the ground by yesterday, and one team had set up base in Deir Ezzor on Monday, said Major General Robert Mood, the head of the UN mission in Syria.
Although the number of casualties has decreased since the observers began trickling into Syria in mid-April, the violence has not stopped.
The Syrian Observatory says more than 12,000 people, the majority of them civilians, have died since the uprising began on March 15 last year, including more than 900 killed since the April 12 truce.