DAMASCUS — Syrians took to the streets in their thousands Friday to show their determination to oust President Bashar Al-Assad’s regime, as the office of envoy Kofi Annan insisted his peace plan was “on track.”
The demonstrations came as government forces cracking down on dissent reportedly killed at least 10 civilians, only hours after UN peacekeepers urged Damascus to make the first move to end nearly 14 months of bloodshed.“The Annan plan is on track and a crisis that has been going on for over a year is not going to be resolved in a day or a week,” the UN-Arab League envoy’s spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi, told journalists in Geneva.“There are signs on the ground of movement, albeit slow and small. Some heavy weapons have been withdrawn, some heavy weapons remain. Some violence has receded, some violence continues. And that is not satisfactory, I’m not saying it is,” Fawzi said.Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, who heads the UN mission to oversee Annan’s hard-won ceasefire agreement, had issued an appeal late Thursday for the Assad regime to make the first move to end the violence. “The strongest party needs to make the first move,” he told reporters in Syria, stressing he was referring to the government and army.“They have the strength, they have the position and they also have the potential generosity to make the first step in a good direction,” he said.Despite the appeal, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces killed at least 10 civilians across the country on Friday.Three died at dawn when troops fired on their vehicle near an intersection in the central city of Hama, and a fourth was shot in Homs province, said the Britain-based watchdog.Meanwhile, protesters emerged from mosques in various towns and cities across Aleppo province, calling for Assad’s ouster, according to the Observatory.It said that protesters in the town of Jabal Al-Zawiya, in northwestern Idlib province, gathered in one area despite a heavy security presence.Opposition activists had called for protests across the country after the weekly Muslim main prayers under the rallying cry: “Our loyalty (to the revolution) is our salvation”.Anti-regime demonstrations have been staged after prayers each Friday since the revolt against Assad’s iron-fisted rule broke out in March last year. — AFP
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