The U.N. Security Council unanimously approved on Friday a 30-day extension to a U.N. monitoring mission in Syria that had been deployed as part of international envoy Kofi Annan's peace plan to end the 16-month conflict that has killed thousands.
The U.N. Syria mission has up to 300 unarmed military observers whose role has been to monitor a failed April 12 ceasefire in Syria. Most of their monitoring activity was suspended on June 16 due to increased risk from rising violence.
There are also some 100 civilian staff working toward a political solution and monitoring issues like human rights.
Syria's intelligence chief Hisham Bekhtyar has died of wounds suffered in a bombing on Wednesday which killed three of President Bashar al-Assad's top security officials, Hezbollah's sources reported via Reuters on Friday.
This as the burial ceremony for Assef Shawkat, Daoud Rajha and Hassan Turkmani took over the streets of Damascus, with Maher Assad and Farouk al-Sharaa among the attendees.
Syrian rebels torched a military barracks which opposition sources said was used as a training grounds for shabbiha militiamen loyal to President Bashar al-Assad on Friday in Damascus after a two-day siege, a witness said.
"The Saiqa (thunderbolt) barracks is now on fire. About 80 shabbiha and army who have been defending it have withdrawn," Abu Ilizz, a resident of the district adjacent to the Council of Ministers building, said by telephone.
On the ground, Syrian rebels withdrew from central Damascus district of Midan after coming under heavy army bombardment, activists reported.
Also on Friday, one Syrian general, 4 colonels, 17
lower-ranking officers fled to Turkey in last 24 hours, a Turkish official told
Reuters.
At least three people were killed on Friday when Syrian army helicopters fired rockets at the southeastern Damascus neighborhood of Saida Zeinab, scene of fighting between rebels and Assad's forces, opposition activists said.
Earlier in the day, the
Syrian State’s Television declared that the Army has initiated a
“cleansing operation” of Damascus’ battle front from “terrorists”, following
violent clashes.
310 people were killed across the country on Thursday in what was
the single deadliest day of fighting since the beginning of the revolt against
President Bashar Assad's regime, Syrian
activists reported on Friday.
Separately, Syrian banks are reported to be running out of cash and a rush to find safe housing has caused rents in some places to spike to $100 per night, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said on Friday.
"We've heard reports that many of the banks have just run out of money," UNHCR's chief spokeswoman Melissa Fleming told a U.N. briefing in Geneva.
Separately,the Iraqi army sealed the main border crossing to Syria with blast walls on Friday, a day after officials said Syrian rebels took control of a border post on the other side.
A Reuters photographer overlooking the border from the Iraqi side said civilians had burned and looted the main border post at Abu Kamal in Syria.
International positions:
Assad has accepted that he will have to leave power, but will only leave in an orderly way, Russia's ambassador to France said on French radio on Friday.
"At the Geneva conference, there was a final communique that foresees a transition towards a more democratic system," Alexandre Orlov told RFI radio.
"This final communique was accepted by Assad. Assad nominated his representative to lead the negotiations with the opposition for this transition. That means he accepted to leave, but in an orderly way."
Syria's Information Ministry said on Friday that comments by Russia's ambassador to France that Assad has accepted leaving power in an orderly way were "completely devoid of truth".
Earlier in the day, Russia sharply criticized the United States over what the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said were plans to work with partners outside the U.N. Security Council to pressure Syria's government after Moscow vetoed a draft resolution.
"If such declarations and such plans are elements of actual policy, I think that is a very, very alarming signal to all of us," Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told a weekly briefing.
Russia on Friday rejected Western criticism over its veto of a U.N. Security Council resolution that would have threatened Syrian authorities with sanctions if they did not halt violence against an uprising.
Russia Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said the draft resolution Russia and China blocked on Thursday was "absolutely unrealistic" and called on Western nations to put more pressure on Syrian rebels to stop fighting.
On a separate note, Russia said it endorses extending the observers’ mandate
for 45 days earlier only to change course saying that that it would use its veto power to overrule Britain's proposal to extend UN observer mission in Syria.
REUTERS/LBCI/AP