Damascus: An advance team of observers was touring Syrian hot spots yesterday, laying the ground for a larger mission unanimously backed by the UN to monitor a shaky ceasefire aimed at ending bloodshed.
The UN Security Council voted on Saturday to send an extra 300 unarmed observers to Syria, but the United States warned it may veto a new mandate for the mission.
Two members of the advance team remained in the restive city of Homs yesterday, a mission spokesman said, a day after they made their first visit to the central protest hub since being deployed in Syria a week ago.
On Saturday, their visit to Homs included a stop in Baba Amr, a rebel stronghold battered by a month-long army bombardment that killed hundreds, according to monitors, before it was retaken on March 1.
Video uploaded to YouTube showed four of them meeting with activists who begged them to stay in the central city. Its authenticity could not immediately be verified.
"Today is the first day since two months, exactly since February 5... in Homs without shelling... without killing, without fire," one unidentified activist said in the footage.
"Because of that, we want you to stay. Please stay. This is what we want. When you come, shelling stops. When you come, killing stops," he told the observers, who wore blue helmets and bullet-proof vests marked "UN".
The visit came as the activist in Homs said the situation in the city was calm.
In Banias, meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said an overnight ambush on a patrol killed one security forces member and wounded three others, the first such incident in the coastal city for nearly a year.
Only days after being deployed, the team of seven observers in Syria acknowledged they faced a tough task to firm up the ceasefire agreed to last week by embattled President Bashar Al Assad.
A spike in violence had already forced the Arab League to end its own Syrian monitoring mission in late January, barely a month after it was launched.
Under UN Resolution 2043, adopted unanimously on Saturday, 300 military observers will be sent to Syria for an initial period of 90 days if UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon determines it is safe for them to go.
SNC hails vote
The UN says more than 9,000 Syrians have been killed since democracy protests erupted in March 2011, inspired by uprisings that toppled autocratic regimes in Tunisia, Egypt and a revolt that ousted Libya's Muammar Gaddafi.
Monitors put the figure at more than 11,000, including at least 200 people killed in sporadic violence which has persisted since a UN-backed ceasefire went into effect on April 12.
The opposition Syrian National Council and the rebel Free Syrian Army hailed the UN Security Council vote, saying it responds to the Syrian people's demands.
"Undoubtedly, the sending of new monitors is a demand of the Syrian people and of the revolutionaries who protest every day," SNC spokesman George Sabra said, welcoming the unanimous council decision.
Meanwhile, UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan singled out the government of Al Assad in an appeal for an end to hostilities by both loyalist forces and rebel fighters seeking to oust him.
"I urge all forces whether governmental, opposition or others to put down their weapons and work with the United Nations monitors to consolidate the fragile cessation of violence," Annan said in a statement. "The government in particular must desist from the use of heavy weapons and, as it has committed, withdraw such weapons and armed units from population centres and implement fully its commitments under the six-point plan."
