Arab observers fan out across protest-hit Syria as death toll mounts

As many as 41 people have been killed by the gunfire of Syrian security forces on Thursday, Al Arabiya reported citing Syrian activists, as Arab League peace monitors headed to three more Syrian cities on Thursday to check whether government forces have halted violence against protesters.

Regime forces fired on protesters at a protest hub near Damascus, even as peace monitors spread out across the country, activists told AFP.

At least four demonstrators were killed and more than 20 others wounded in Douma, the protest center just north of the capital, when security forces sprayed protesters with bullets outside a mosque, a rights group said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the shooting broke out as Arab League observers arrived at Douma’s city hall, on the third day of a mission designed to halt a lethal government crackdown on dissent.

The monitors were due Thursday to visit flashpoints around Damascus, as well as the northern and central cities of Idlib and Hama and southern Deraa province.

Deraa is the cradle of an unprecedented nine-month protest movement against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, which has ruled Syria with an iron fist for 11 years.

Activists say scores of civilians have been killed by security forces since a first group of monitors arrived Monday in Syria on a month-long renewable mission to implement an Arab League peace plan.

Gunfire rattled in Douma where “tens of thousands” of protesters rallied outside the Grand Mosque and regime forces opened fire on the demonstrators “as Arab observers arrived at the city hall,” said the Britain-based group.

The Arab mission is the first significant international involvement in Syria’s conflict, in which thousands have been killed in a military crackdown on the uprising against 41 years of rule by the family of President Bashar al-Assad.

“People really hope to get to reach them. We do not have much access to the team. The people stopped believing anything or anyone now. Only God can help us now,” said Abu Hisham, an opposition activist in Hama, according to Reuters.

Problem with communication

A source in the Arab League mission’s operations center in Cairo said there had been a problem with communications but the monitors’ schedule was holding up.

“We have contacted our teams ...Today’s plan will not be changed and the only problem we faced today was the bad phone network, which made our communication with the monitors harder. It took more time to reach them and determine their locations,” the source told Reuters.

The Observatory also reported that security forces shot dead some people in the Damascus suburbs of Aarbin, Kiswah, Idlib and Hama.

“Security forces are raiding a private hospital in Hama and are arresting the wounded,” it said.

“Huge protests” also took place in Hama’s Hamidiyeh and Bab Qubli neighborhoods, said the watchdog.

Emboldened by the presence of observers, Facebook activists are urging regime opponents to take to the streets across Syrian on Friday, the weekly day of rest that has been a pivotal time for democracy protests.

“On Friday we will march to the squares of freedom, bare-chested,” they said.

“We will march as we did in Homs and Hama where we carried olive branches only to be confronted by Bashar’s gangs who struck us with artillery and machinegun fire,” said the Syria Revolution 2011 activists.

The head of the Observatory, Rami Abdul Rahman, said protesters needed to make their voices heard to the monitors, describing them as a “ray of light” in a dark tunnel.

“The Arab League’s initiative is the only ray of light that we now see,” Abdul Rahman told AFP.

“The presence of the observers in Homs broke the barrier of fear.”

On Tuesday, when a group of observers entered Homs, on the first leg of their mission to end bloodshed in Syria, some 70,000 people flooded the streets, according to activists.

Security forces showered them with gunfire and tear gas and the monitors cut short their visit to Homs, described by activists as the “martyr” city where hundreds have died in a government crackdown since March.

France, the United States and Human Rights Watch have warned the Syrian regime against trying to hide the facts from the monitors and Paris charged the team was not being allowed to see what was happening in Homs.

Those concerns were highlighted when Baba Amro residents on Wednesday refused to allow in observers in because they were accompanied by a Syrian army officer. But the standoff ended when the officer withdrew.

Controversial figure

General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi, a veteran Sudanese military intelligence officer who is heading the observer mission, has told AFP the visit Homs was “good” and Syrian authorities were cooperating so far.

His remarks reportedly triggered ripples of discontent among opposition ranks but Abdul Rahman said it was too early to issue any judgment.

For some Dabi is a controversial figure because he served under Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes allegedly committed in the Darfur region.

Amnesty International said under al-Dabi’s command, military intelligence in the early 1990s “was responsible for the arbitrary arrest and detention, enforced disappearance, and torture or other ill-treatment of numerous people in Sudan.”

Haytham Manna, a prominent Paris-based dissident, urged the Arab League to replace al-Dabi or reduce his authority because “we know his history and his shallow experience in the area,” The Associated Press reported.

Omar Idilbi of the Local Coordination Committees described al-Dabi as a “senior officer with an oppressive regime that is known to repress opposition” and said there are fears he might not be neutral.

“What do you expect from the head of a monitoring mission who is accused of genocide in his own country,” asked Ausama Monajed, a member of the Syrian National Council, the main opposition group.

“SNC is deeply concerned about having Mr. al-Dabi as head of the monitoring mission given the accusations around him and we will put a motion to the Arab League requesting that he be changed,” Monajed told AP by telephone.

The mission is part of an Arab plan endorsed by Syria after weeks of stalling which also calls for the withdrawal of armed forces from towns and residential districts, a halt to violence and the release of detainees.

Violent crackdown

According to U.N. estimates announced in early December, more than 5,000 people have been killed in the Syrian government crackdown on dissent since mid-March.

Egypt’s MENA news agency meanwhile reported the head of the opposition Syrian National Council Burhan Ghalioun met with Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi in Cairo for talks ahead of conference on the Syrian opposition to be hosted by the League next month.

Relentless military attacks on peaceful civilian protests have bred armed insurgency in some as thousands of army defectors in the recently-raised Syrian Free Army (FSA) attack military and police convoys, bases and checkpoints.

A gritty video shot by rebels in Deraa showed the ambush of a security forces convoy on Wednesday by eight gunmen who opened fire from a rooftop. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said four soldiers were killed in the attack by the FSA on a road near the southern village of Dael in Deraa province.

Assad says he is combatting Islamist militants steered from abroad. He says over 2,000 security force men have been killed.

Syria resisted outside involvement for months but yielded to unprecedented pressure from fellow members of the 22-state Arab League last month, agreeing to let the monitors in to witness withdrawals of forces from the turbulent cities.

If the mission cannot credibly certify to the world that Assad is reining in his forces with a genuine will to negotiate reform with his opponents, the U.S. State Department has said “other means” of international action will be pursued.

Increasingly isolated, Assad has lost the trust of his big neighbor Turkey, which has called for him to quit and spoken of creating a buffer zone, and from whose territory rebel forces now launch attacks.