Ten Syrian security personnel were killed on Friday in a roadside bomb planted by "terrorists" in Sahm al Golan village in the southwest of the country, state television said.
It said that the bomb weighed 100 kilogrammes (220 pounds) but gave no other details.
The full advance team of 30 ceasefire monitors should be deployed in Syria in the coming week and preparations are under way for up to 300, whose deployment is expected to be approved by the U.N. Security Council in the next few days, mediator Kofi Annan's spokesman said on Friday.
The week-old ceasefire is "very fragile" and the situation on the ground is "not good", with incidents and casualties reported every day, spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said.
"We have seven observers on the ground today, two more are arriving on Monday, to bring those on ground to nine," Fawzi told a news briefing in Geneva.
Meanwhile, the French
presidential frontrunner, Socialist Francois Hollande, said on Friday that if
he wins the election he will support France joining a U.N.-backed military
intervention in Syria.
"If
done within a U.N. framework, we would participate in such an
intervention," Hollande told Europe 1 radio.
Separately, China's Foreign Ministry said on Friday that the country was willing to contribute members to a United Nations observer team in Syria.
Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin made the comment at a daily news briefing in Beijing.
Meanwhile, Russia’s ministry
of foreign affairs considered that the ceasefire in Syria is “generally”
respected despite some violations and provocations.
Syrian troops shelled a rebel-held neighborhood and sent reinforcements to border areas as the opposition called for fresh protests Friday after the United Nations accused Syrian President Bashar Assad of failing to honor a peace plan that went into effect a week ago.
The latest violence came hours after Western and Arab diplomats from the "Friends of Syria" group met in Paris. At the meeting Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called for the U.N. Security Council to adopt an arms embargo and other tough measures against Syria.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said a mortar round was hitting the rebel-held neighborhood of Khaldiyeh every five minutes.
Citing its network of sources on the ground, the group said explosions and cracks of gunfire rang out in the town of Qusair, near the border with Lebanon. Activists said regime forces were sending reinforcements to Qusair.
"Regime forces are fortifying their positions in eastern and western Qusair," about 10 kilometers (7 miles) from Lebanon, said the head of the Observatory, Rami Abdul-Rahman.
Activists called for anti-government protests after the Friday prayers.
AP/Reuters