White House says plans to ramp up pressure on Syria

The television station said that its reporters heard gunfire while filming the damage.

Fifteen more ceasefire monitors of a total advance team of 30 are expected to be in Syria by Monday and every effort is being made to deploy the full mission of up to 300 observers, the spokesman for international mediator Kofi Annan said.    

"We expect the 30 will be on the ground by the end of April, on Monday," Annan spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told Reuters in Geneva.    

"There is no delay... It is a whole process," he said. "They are deploying at remarkable speed."    

Syria's government and rebels have traded blame for a huge explosion which killed 16 people in Hama on Wednesday, as a two-week-old U.N.-backed ceasefire looked increasingly fragile.  

The United States is disappointed that Damascus has failed to live up to promises made to adhere to a U.N.-backed peace plan and will increase pressure on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said on Friday.   

"We intend to continue to ramp up the international pressure against the Assad regime and encourage them in the strongest possible terms to live up to the obligations and commitments that they made in the context of the Kofi Annan plan," Earnest told reporters aboard Air Force One.