Associated Press Associated Press ADVERTISING BEIRUT — A deadline for a U.N.-brokered cease-fire passed without reports of major violence at dawn Thursday, opposition activists said, just hours after Syria promised to observe a halt in fighting. Under a peace plan
Associated Press
BEIRUT — A deadline for a U.N.-brokered cease-fire passed without reports of major violence at dawn Thursday, opposition activists said, just hours after Syria promised to observe a halt in fighting.
Under a peace plan by international envoy Kofi Annan, a truce was set for 6 a.m. today, to be followed by negotiations between President Bashar Assad’s regime and the Syrian opposition on a political transition.
But there were only dim hopes for an abrupt end to the bloodshed that has roiled Syria for 13 months and claimed more than 9,000 lives.
Syria has backtracked on previous peace plans, has characterized the uprising it’s facing as a terrorist plot and has escalated shelling attacks on rebellious areas in recent weeks.
The regime also carved out an important truce condition when it announced Wednesday it would halt the fighting — saying it still has a right to defend itself against the terrorists that it says are behind the country’s uprising.
Opposition activists said the Thursday morning deadline passed without reports of major violence.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, an activist group, said some shots were fired in the Damascus neighborhood of Qadam after midnight Wednesday and that an explosion went off in a car in a Damascus suburb, causing no injuries.
Fares Mohammed, an activist in the Damascus suburb of Zabadani, said an army tank at a checkpoint fired three shells at a nearby open area between 5:50 a.m and 6:10 am. today.
