Qatar emir suggests sending Arab troops to Syria amid growing death toll

Qatar has proposed sending Arab troops to halt the bloodshed in Syria, where violence has raged despite the presence of Arab League monitors sent to check if an Arab peace plan is working.   

Asked if he was in favor of Arab nations intervening in Syria, Qatari Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani told the U.S. broadcaster CBS: "For such a situation to stop the killing ... some troops should go to stop the killing."   

Qatar's prime minister heads the Arab League committee on Syria and has said killings have not stopped despite the presence of Arab monitors sent there last month.   

In the latest violence, Syrian tanks and troops renewed an assault on the rebel-held hill town of Zabadani near the border with Lebanon on Saturday, causing about 40 casualties, an exiled opposition figure said, citing residents reached by telephone.   

Six civilians died elsewhere, including a 13-year-old boy and a man shot dead in the rebellious central city of Homs, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported.   

Syria's military held funerals for 16 soldiers killed by armed "terrorists" in the provinces of Homs, Damascus and Idlib in the northwest, the state news agency SANA said.   

SANA also said a blast set off by insurgents in Idlib had derailed a freight train carrying fuel to a power station, setting several fuel tankers ablaze and wounding three people.   

There has been no let-up in the conflict despite the Arab observer mission, which has been castigated even by some of its own members for buying Assad more time to crush his foes.   

"This is the last week in the month agreed between Syria and the Arab League and will witness a wide deployment of the monitors," said a source at the Cairo-based League, adding that 40 monitors were ready to join the team of about 165 whenever its leader, Sudanese General Mohammed al-Dabi, requested them.   

Armed clashes, now punctuating what began as a non-violent protest movement, have raised fears of a full-scale conflict in Syria, a Sunni Muslim-majority country of 23 million which also has Alawite, Druze, Christian and Kurdish minorities.   

Syria, bordering Lebanon, Turkey, Iraq, Jordan and Israel, is at the heart of the volatile Middle East, where its closest allies are Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah group.

Reuters