Arab mission to visit more Syria cities

Observers prepare to go to three protest hubs after being caught up in violence in Homs. Arab League observers in Syria are preparing to visit more cities that have been at the heart of the anti-government uprising, amid accusations by opposition activists that the mission is not doing enough to stop the violence in the country. The monitors were due to go on Thursday to the city of  Deraa, the cradle of the uprising, as well as Hama and Idlib, as activists reported the deaths 15 people across the Syria the previous day. In its first international involvement on the ground in Syria since the protests began last March, the mission got off to a controversial start when its leader, Mustafa al-Dabi, said he had seen "nothing frightening" on his first trip to Homs on Tuesday, the deadliest city in uprising. During their second visit to the central city on Wednesday, the monitors faced angry crowds, gunfire and explosions, as fresh violence flared just a few miles away from where they were gathering accounts about the government's crackdown on dissent. Activists uploaded footage on the internet showing crowds surrounding a monitoring team's car on Wednesday shouting "those who kill their people are traitors". In another video, orange-vested monitors rushed behind a concrete building amid heavy shooting and blasts. The body of five-year-old Ahmad el Rai, who activists say was killed in the presence of the mission in Homs, was laid on the bonnet of a car used by the Arab observers, another footage showed. Activists sceptical Against the backdrop of violence, some activists called the mission a farce and accused the government of President Bashar al-Assad of trying to bide time and avoid more international condemnation. Speaking to Al Jazeera on Thursday, Hadi Abdullah, an activist in Homs, said that the mission experienced first hand the crackdown on protests, but he is suspicious it will report what it saw or act upon it. "The observers saw a lot of violence in the city. They saw how security forces shoot at protests. They also saw the bodies of dead people," he said. "The monitors also saw destruction in the city. One of the observers asked residents of Baba Amr neighbourhood ‘how can you live in this place." In Baba Amr, residents refused to allow observers in because they were accompanied by an army officer, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The standoff only ended when the officer withdrew. "We want to fully co-operate with the mission," Abdullah, the activist, said. "But we believe the officer that was accompanying the mission was responsible for massacres in the city." Activists also charged that the army had pulled back heavy armour from Baba Amr in advance of the monitors' visit, accusing the government of deception. 'For a long time' Al-Dabi, accused by activists of undermining the situation in Homs, has said the 20 observers will remain in Homs "for a long time". Meanwhile, Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, has urged Syria to give the Arab League observers maximum freedom as they go about their mission. "We constantly work with the Syrian leadership calling on it to fully co-operate with observers from the Arab League and to create work conditions that are as comfortable and free as possible," Lavrov said. The US also demanded that Syrian authorities allow the mission full access and urged monitors to report what they find to the international community. "We obviously look to these individuals to be intrepid in their search for the truth of what's happening on the ground," Mark Toner, the US state department's deputy spokesman, said. "The regime used the last several days as an opportunity to escalate their attacks on several ... neighbourhoods in Homs and other cities prior to the deployment of these monitors." The Arab League plan endorsed by Syria on November 2 calls for the withdrawal of the military from towns and residential districts, a halt to violence against civilians and the release of detainees. Syrian state television reported on Wednesday that the government has released 755 detainees "whose hands were not stained with blood". But Human Rights Watch, a US-based rights organisation, accused the government of hiding from the observers hundreds of detainees held in its crackdown on dissent. "Syrian authorities have transferred perhaps hundreds of detainees to off-limits military sites to hide them from Arab League monitors now in the country," according to an HRW statement. The UN estimates more than 5,000 people have been killed in the crackdown since anti-government protests began in mid-March. The Syrian government says most of the violence has been perpetrated by "armed terrorist groups" that are working against the government. Source : Aljazeera

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