Syria: Renewed clashes as UN monitors due

Fresh clashes have erupted in Syria as a vanguard of UN monitors prepares to arrive to oversee the shaky ceasefire.

Activists said there was heavy shelling in the city of Homs, while rebel fighters reportedly attacked a police station in Aleppo province. Syrian state media claim that attacks by “terrorists groups” have intensified since Thursday’s truce. The United Nations passed a resolution on Syria on Saturday, authorising the deployment of unarmed observers. A spokesman for international peace envoy Kofi Annan said that an advance party of six observers would arrive in Syria on Sunday evening and would “be on the ground in blue helmets tomorrow [Monday]”. Ahmad Fawzi said the six would be “quickly augmented by up to 25 to 30 from the region and elsewhere”. A ceasefire came into effect on Thursday morning but there have been many violations since, and the BBC’s Jim Muir in Beirut says the monitors will arrive to find a truce in dire need of reinforcement. On Sunday, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported heavy shelling in the Khaldiyeh and Bayada districts of Homs. Three people have died in that shelling, the Observatory says.