Fierce clashes between rebel fighters and Syrian troops rocked a Damascus district bristling with security facilities on Monday, as experts sent by peace envoy Kofi Annan flew in to the capital.
Amid international efforts to set up a monitoring mission and initiate a brief daily ceasefire to allow for humanitarian operations, the security forces also launched attacks in several parts of the country, opposition activists said.
The fighting in western Damascus, the capital’s heaviest since a revolt against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime erupted a year ago, came as residents were still reeling from deadly bombings at the weekend. State television said three “terrorists” and a security force member were killed in the clashes before dawn in the upscale and heavily-guarded Mazzeh area of Damascus that hosts several security facilities.
It said several people were also wounded on both sides.
Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said at least 18 security troops were wounded. “The clashes were the strongest and the closest to security installations in the capital since the outbreak of the revolt a year ago,” Abdel Rahman told AFP, adding that by 4:00 am (0200 GMT) the fighting had died down.
On the diplomatic front, a mission sent by UN-Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan arrived in Damascus for talks on a monitoring operation to end the year-long conflict which monitors say has cost more than 9,100 lives. “There are five people with expertise in political, peacekeeping and mediation,” Ahmad Fawzi, spokesman for Annan, told AFP in Geneva, declining to disclose their precise plans or whereabouts.
“They will be staying for as long as they are making progress on reaching agreement on practical steps to implement Mr Annan’s proposals,” he added.
Any new Annan visit to Damascus, following a trip earlier this month, would “depend largely on progress being made by the Syrians in working with the mission,” Fawzi said.
Technical experts from the UN and Organisation of Islamic Cooperation were on Monday also working in Syria to assess the humanitarian impact of the regime’s deadly crackdown on protests.
“The joint OIC-UN mission entered Syria on Friday to carry out an evaluation of humanitarian aid,” on a mission led by the Syrian government, OIC assistant secretary general Atta al-Mannan Bakhit told AFP. The seven-to-10-day mission, with three OIC experts in the team, would cover 15 cities, on the first such assignment in Syria since the violence started.
International Red Cross head Jakob Kellenberger, meanwhile, was to hold talks on Monday with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the “extremely difficult” humanitarian situation in Syria’s battered protest hubs.
Two more Syrian generals defect: Turkish diplomat
Two more generals have fled Syria and linked up with rebels trying to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Damascus, a Turkish diplomat said on Monday. The latest defections mean a total of nine generals have deserted since the revolt against Assad’s rule erupted a year ago, many of them seeking refuge in neighbouring Turkey. In addition, around 200 more Syrians crossed into Turkey on Sunday, bringing the total number of refugees to 16,100, the same official added on condition of anonymity. “The generals arrived Friday and nearly 200 other peope, most of them women and children, have crossed over since yesterday”, the official told AFP.
