Citizens of Damascus
woke up on Sunday morning with news of a United Nations-brokered peace plan a
day earlier that calls for the creation of a transitional government in Syria. This as
Turkey's armed forces command said it had scrambled a total of six
F-16 fighter jets in three separate incidents responding to Syrian
military helicopters approaching the border on Saturday, but there was
no violation of Turkish airspace.
At Russia's
insistence the compromise agreement left the door open to Syria's
president being part of it.
The US
backed away from insisting that the plan should explicitly call for President
Bashar Assad to have no role in a new Syrian government, hoping the concession
would encourage Russia
to put greater pressure on its longtime ally to end the violent crackdown that
the opposition says has claimed more than 14-thousand lives.
But even with Russia's
most explicit statement of support yet for a political transition in Syria,
it is far from certain that the plan will have any real effect in curbing the
violence.
For his part, French Foreign
Minister Laurent Fabius said Geneva text on Syria
implies Bashar Al-Assad must go.
Meanwhile, Syrian opposition figures immediately
rejected any notion of sharing in a transition with Assad, though the agreement
also requires security force chiefs and services to have the confidence of the
people.
Assad's government had no immediate reaction, but he
has repeatedly said his government has a responsibility to eliminate terrorists
and will not accept any non-Syrian model of governance.
The UN plan calls for establishing a transitional
government of national unity, with full executive powers, that could include
members of Assad's government and the opposition and other groups.
Syria, verging on a full-blown civil war, has endured a
particularly bloody week, with up to 125 people reported killed nationwide on
Thursday alone.
The United Nations says violence in the country has
worsened since a cease-fire deal in April, and the bloodshed appears to be
taking on dangerous sectarian overtones, with growing numbers of Syrians
targeted on account of their religion.
The increasing militarization
of both sides in the conflict has Syria heading toward civil war.
On the ground, Opposition activists said Syrian forces
killed more than 30 people on Saturday when they fired a mortar bomb into a
funeral procession in Damascus
for a man who died in shelling 24 hours earlier.
They said amateur video footage,
posted on a website, showed the moment the bomb hit the crowd. Another video
showed the aftermath - grey smoke filling the air before clearing to show
bodies.
The pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the death
toll was likely to rise due to the number injured.
Reports later said that 21 people died on Sunday.
The
Syrian authorities severely restrict the media, making it extremely difficult
to verify such reports.
Another car bomb exploded in the northern city of Aleppo, damaging a government building but causing no
casualties as the building was closed for the weekend, according to SANA, the state-run
Syrian news agency.
Activists also reported shelling by government troops
and clashes between rebels and government forces in the central
provinces of Hama and Homs, the eastern region of Deir el-Zour, as well as Idlib
and Aleppo to
the north.
REUTERS/AP