International positions:
International peace envoy Kofi Annan arrived in Damascus on Sunday, a Reuters witness said, a day after admitting that his peace plan had so far failed to end 16 months of bloodshed.
Annan arrived with deputy Syrian Foreign Minister Faisal Mekdad at the Dama Rose hotel in the capital, where United Nations observers have been staying since suspending their patrols because of a steep increase in the level of violence.
Meanwhile, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon
warned on Sunday in Tokyo that violence sweeping Syria has taken a turn for the
worse, divided along sectarian lines.
"The situation has deteriorated significantly and has become
more militarized. Appalling violations of human rights continue to take place.
The killings and violence seems to have taken on a very worrying sectarian character,"
Ban told reporters.
In turn, U.S. Secretary of State Hilary
Clinton voiced Sunday a stance that would give more moral support to the Syrian
opposition troops. Clinton said that these troops are now more efficient,
stressing the necessity to put an immediate end to violence to prevent a catastrophic
assault.
Following a meeting with her Japanese
counterpart Koichiro
Gemba on the sidelines of the "Tokyo Conference on
Afghanistan", Clinton said “the sooner there can be an end to
the violence and a beginning of a political transition process, not only will
fewer people die, but there's a chance to save the Syrian state from a
catastrophic assault that would be very dangerous not only to Syria but to the
region.”
In the field:
In the field, Sunday was
no different as shelling, clashes and destruction swept through Syria. The
Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported an attempt by the Syrian regime’s
troops Sunday at dawn to storm cities of Rastan and al-Qusayr that are not
under the regime’s control, amid indiscriminate shelling.
For its part, SANA
reported that the competent authorities clashed with an armed gang in al-Qusayr
in Rif Damascus, wounding two soldiers of the regime.
The Syrian official news agency announced that Syrian
authorities thwarted an infiltration attempt by an armed terrorist group that
was trying to cross from Lebanon into Syria in Rif Qusayr .
The agency added
that the clashes killed and wounded dozens of the armed infiltrators, killed a
sergeant from the regime’s forces and injured three others.
REUTERS/LBCI