Syrian forces reportedly killed four civilians in shelling of rebel areas and clashes with gunmen on Sunday, testing a shaky UN-backed ceasefire as international monitors prepared to fly in. Forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad subjected the Khaldiyeh and Bayada neighbourhoods of the flashpoint central city of Homs to their fiercest bombardment since the truce came into force at dawn on Thursday, monitors said. “The bombardment of Khaldiyeh intensified this morning with an average of three shells a minute,” the head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Rami Abdel Rahman, told AFP. He said one civilian was killed in Khaldiyeh, another was killed in shelling of the Jobar neighbourhood, and a third was shot dead by a sniper in Qsour. With clashes warming up and both sides blaming each other for the violence, shabiha pro-regime militiamen also shot dead a civilian in the town of Aqrab, in the central province of Hama. Three civilians died in Homs shelling on Saturday, among 14 people reported killed nationwide ahead of a UN Security Council vote approving the dispatch of the observer mission to monitor the truce. Elsewhere, rebel fighters clashed with security forces in Al-Bab in the northern province of Aleppo, near the town’s State Security police headquarters, the Britain-based Observatory added. Opposition group the Local Coordination Committees said the army shelled the village of Khirbet al-Joz in the northwestern province of Idlib, which is base to fighters from the rebel Free Syrian Army. Thirty-two people have been killed since the ceasefire brokered by UN-Arab League peace envoy Kofi Annan took effect, most of them civilians, the Observatory said.
