Syria says will protect Arab monitors

Syria said on Tuesday it was committed to cooperating with Arab League monitors overseeing steps aimed at ending 10 months of violence, after an incident in which 11 observers were injured.
   
In a statement released on the day the Arab League said 11 of its monitors were slightly wounded in an attack by protesters, it said Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem told the head of the monitoring mission that Syria "will continue to bear its responsibility to secure and protect those monitors".

Moualem said Syria would "not allow any act to obstruct their mission," according to the Foreign Ministry statement, and expressed his "condemnation of any act that the team has been exposed to which obstructs their mission."

The Arab League earlier condemned an attack this week by protesters on monitors in the Syrian port city of Latakia and said the Syrian government had failed in its commitment to provide protection.

"Failing to provide adequate protection in Latakia and other areas where the mission is deployed is considered a serious violation by the government of its commitments," the League said in a statement.

Syrian forces shot dead 10 people in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor on Tuesday, most of them young men protesting peacefully against President Bashar al-Assad, the opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

The reported killings occurred on the same day that Assad, speaking in public for the first time in more than six months, said no instruction had been given to security forces to fire on unarmed Syrians.

The British-based Observatory also said a man was killed in Homs by gunfire coming from a checkpoint in the city.

Reuters