Intense shelling on Homs, regime demands written guarantee for troop pullback

Syria said on Sunday it wants "written guarantees" that insurgents will stop fighting before it implements a troop pullback agreed by President Bashar al-Assad, putting the likelihood of an imminent truce into doubt.    

Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said in a statement earlier reports that Damascus "confirmed that it will pull back its troops from and around cities on April 10 is a wrong explanation."   

U.N.-Arab peace envoy Kofi Annan, he said, "has not delivered until now written guarantees regarding the approval of terrorist armed groups to end violence and readiness to lay down its weapons."

The US ambassador to Syria posted online satellite images late on Friday that he said cast doubt on the regime's willingness to comply with a ceasefire that is just days away.         

Activists say Syrian troops are assaulting and shelling restive regions in the north and center of the country despite an international ceasefire scheduled to go into effect within days. 
     
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says dozens of army vehicles are taking part in an attack east of the northwestern town of Jisr al-Shughour. It said explosions were heard in the area Sunday morning.       

Tarek Badrakhan, who is an activist in the central city of Homs, said troops fired mortar rounds Sunday at the rebel-held neighborhood of Khaldiyeh.         

Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad shelled an area in the rebellious province of Idlib near the border with Turkey on Sunday leaving dozens dead or injured, opposition activists said.   

Around 90 tanks and armored vehicles, backed by helicopters, bombarded the al-Rouge Plain southwest of Idlib city, the provincial capital, activists inside Syria and on the border with Turkey told Reuters.   

Fighters from the rebel Free Syrian Army were surrounded in al-Bashiriya, one of about 40 villages in the plain, activists added.   

Syrian President Bashar Assad last week accepted a cease-fire agreement brokered by international envoy Kofi Annan calling for government forces to withdraw from towns and villages by Tuesday, and for the regime and rebels to lay down their arms by 6 a.m. Thursday.           

The truce is meant to pave the way for negotiations between the government and the opposition over Syria's political future.                  

However, Western leaders are skeptical about Assad's intentions because of broken promises of the past and the recent escalation in attacks on opposition strongholds, including arrest sweeps and shelling of civilian areas. 

The leader of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) said on Sunday a peace plan put forward by international mediator Kofi Annan was bound to fail because Syria's government would not implement it.   

Riad al-Asaad added his group had not been asked to deliver written guarantees to end the violence in Syria - apparently contradicting Damascus which on Sunday said it had demanded the written pledge as a condition for the withdrawal of its troops.   

"The regime will not implement this plan. This plan will fail," he told Reuters by phone from Turkey.   

The rebels had already given a verbal promise to stop fighting if the government did the same. "We have given our word that if the regime commits to the plan then we will too. We are honest."   

The plan, drawn up by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, requires Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to "begin pullback of military concentrations in and around population centres" by Tuesday for a truce to start 48 hours later.