UN team visits Syria’s battered Baba Amr

UN monitors visited the restive province of Homs on Saturday ahead of an expected Security Council vote on deploying hundreds of observers across Syria to monitor a shaky ceasefire. “A team of international observers visited the province of Homs and met the governor,” the state-run news agency SANA reported.
The small advance team of monitors, who had previously been prevented from visiting Homs for “security reasons,” were able to tour different districts of the city of the same name, including battered Baba Amr.
Regime forces shelled Baba Amr for a month, leaving hundreds dead according to monitors, before retaking it from rebels on March 1. Two Western journalists were among those killed.
The visit came as the opposition Syrian National Council claimed that Homs neighbourhoods were being pounded, although an activist in the city said the situation was calm. But in the town of Qusayr, near the Lebanese border in Homs province, a sniper shot dead a woman on Saturday, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The monitoring group reported a huge blast at a military airport in the Damascus district of Mazzeh.
Also in the runup to the UN vote, state-media reported that authorities released 30 people detained for their alleged role in Syria’s anti-regime uprising, but who have “no blood on their hands.”
The move takes to nearly 4,000 the number of people the authorities have released since November, SANA reported.
In New York, diplomats said the Security Council had reached a tentative accord on a resolution to send in the 300-strong ceasefire observer force that could be voted later on Saturday.
Russia’s UN envoy was upbeat about the text, although his US counterpart indicated a vote was not certain as Western nations decide if the conditions for the force are strong enough.
The council approved an advanced mission of 30 observers and seven are already in Syria where the UN says more than 9,000 people have been killed in a 13-month crackdown on dissent against President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.
The Syrian Observatory reported that “a loud explosion was heard at the Mazzeh military airport in Damascus,” but provided no further details.
Activists however told AFP that the army blocked the road leading to the military airbase while snipers took positions on the rooftops of buildings in the area.