By ELIZABETH KENNEDY
By ELIZABETH KENNEDY
Associated Press
BEIRUT — Syrian troops defied a U.N.-brokered cease-fire plan on Tuesday, launching fresh attacks on rebellious areas, but special envoy Kofi Annan said there was still time to salvage a truce that he described as the only chance for peace.
More than a year into the Syrian uprising, the international community has nearly run out of options for halting the slide toward civil war. On Tuesday, Annan insisted his peace initiative remains “very much alive” — in part because there is no viable alternative.
The U.N. has ruled out any military intervention of the type that helped bring down Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi, and several rounds of sanctions and other attempts to isolate President Bashar Assad have done little to stop the bloodshed.
“If you want to take (the plan) off the table, what will you replace it with?” Annan told reporters in Hatay, Turkey, where he toured a camp sheltering Syrian refugees.
Facing a Tuesday deadline to pull back its tanks and troops, the Syrian government had said it was withdrawing from certain areas, including the rebellious central province of Homs. But France called the claims a “flagrant and unacceptable lie,” and activists said there was no sign of a withdrawal.
Residents of Homs reported some of the heaviest shelling in months.
“Hundreds of mortar rounds and shells were falling around all day,” resident Tarek Badrakhan told The Associated Press. He said a makeshift hospital housing wounded people and dozens of corpses was destroyed in the shelling.
In a letter to the U.N. Security Council, obtained by The Associated Press, Annan said Syria has not pulled troops and heavy military equipment out of cities and towns.