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Syria violence kills 23 despite U.N.-monitored truce

Demonstrators protest against Syria's President Bashar al-assad in Dael, near Deraa, April 29, 2012. Picture taken April 29, 2012. REUTER/Shaam News Network/Handout

By Erika Solomon

BEIRUT (Reuters) – Violence erupted in two Syrian provinces on Tuesday, with

a rights group reporting 10 civilians dead in an army mortar attack and 12 soldiers killed in a fire-fight with rebel gunmen

as U.N. monitors sought to shore up a shaky ceasefire.

The Britain-based Syrian

Observatory for Human Rights, which tracks the 13-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, said nine members of

one family died in mortar bomb blasts in a village in the northern province of Idlib.

An activist on the Turkish

border, Tareq Abdelhaq, said 35 people had been wounded and that some were being carried 25 km (15 miles) along mountain

tracks to receive emergency treatment in refugee camps dotted along the frontier.

“Some are being smuggled over the

border to Turkey. They had to carry the wounded and go through the mountains to avoid checkpoints on the road,” Abdelhaq

said. “One guy died on the way. He was 19 years old and had very bad injuries.”

In the eastern Deir al-Zor province,

troops hit back with mortar and heavy machinegun fire after losing a dozen of their own to insurgents, killing at least one

villager and destroying a school, the anti-Assad Observatory added.

The United Nations says Syrian forces have killed

more than 9,000 people since the uprising began in March 2011.

Its special envoy for children in war zones said more

than 34 children were believed to have been killed since the U.N.-backed ceasefire nominally came into force on April

12.

Like other Arab revolts against autocratic rulers, Syria’s uprising began with peaceful protests but a violent

government response has spawned an increasingly bloody insurgency.

The government says rebels have killed more than

2,600 soldiers and police, and the speaker of Syria’s parliament, Mahmoud al-Abrach, said that outside states backing the

insurgency bore responsibility for the bloodshed.

“The escalation is continuing and it must be stopped from the

outside – I mean those who are providing those groups with weapons and money,” he told Reuters Television in Damascus. “They

need to stop this.”

The ceasefire brokered by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan briefly calmed but failed to halt the

conflict. Rebels, although low on funds and ammunition, seem to be stepping up a bombing campaign.

Explosions blew the

fronts off buildings in the north-western city of Idlib on Monday, killing nine people and wounding 100, including security

personnel, according to state television, which blamed the blasts on “terrorist” suicide bombers.

Damascus has accused

the United Nations of turning a blind eye to rebel ceasefire violations, although Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon condemned the

Idlib blasts and rocket fire on the central bank in the capital as “terrorist bomb attacks”.

CYCLE OF

VIOLENCE

The United Nations now has 30 truce monitors in Syria, a sprawling nation of 23 million people, and officials

in New York said they expected all members of the planned 300-member mission to be on the ground by the end of the

month.

Their commander, Norwegian Major General Robert Mood, has acknowledged his mission cannot solve Syria’s

fundamental problems but said the security situation was not impossible.

“We have seen this in many crises before that

if you simply keep adding to the violence with more bombs and weapons and more violence, it becomes a circle that is almost

impossible to break,” he told BBC radio. “We are not in that situation.”

Western governments have lost patience with

Assad, accusing him of breaking promises made to Annan that he would order troops and tanks back to their

barracks.

Paris has called for U.N. sanctions against Damascus, but the West can do little given the diplomatic cover

Syria enjoys at the Security Council from China and Russia. Moscow says the rebels are mainly to blame for the continued

violence.

Western states are wary of military intervention along the lines of last year’s air campaign that helped

topple Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi because of the greater diplomatic and military complexities of tackling Syria, as well as the

potential spillover effects on a volatile Middle Eastern neighbourhood.

(Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols at

the United Nations; Writing by Ed Cropley; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

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