UN Mission in Syria Urges End of Attacks

The head of the UN observer mission in Syria has called on President Bashar Assad and the country's opposition to stop fighting to allow the cease-fire to work out.

Maj. Gen. Robert Mood spoke after arriving in the Syrian capital, Damascus, to take charge of an advance team of 16 U.N. monitors trying to salvage an international peace plan to end the country's 13-month-old crisis, as cited by the WP.

Under the plan, a cease-fire is supposed to lead to talks between Assad and the opposition on a political solution to a conflict that has killed more than 9,000 people.

On Sunday, Syrian troops killed at least 28 civilians, including 14 in a village in the central Hama province, said an activist group, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Opposition fighters shot dead three Syrian soldiers in a clash and four soldiers were killed while handling explosives, the group said.

The Observatory also said several explosions were heard in Damascus, but provided no details.

Mood told reporters that the 300 observers the UN has authorized for the mission "cannot solve all the problems" in Syria, asking for cooperation from forces loyal to Assad as well as rebels seeking to end his rule.

"We want to have combined efforts focusing on the welfare of the Syrian people," he said, "true cessation of violence in all its forms," he said.

The cease-fire began unraveling almost as soon as it went into effect April 12. The regime has kept up its attacks on opposition strongholds, while rebel fighters have continued to ambush government security forces. Defying a major truce provision, the Syrian military has failed to withdraw tanks and soldiers from city streets.

Despite the violence, the truce still enjoys the support of the international community, largely because it views the plan as the last chance to prevent the country from falling into civil war — and because it does not want to intervene militarily.

Mood, a Norwegian, was appointed head of the observer mission by U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon. One hundred monitors should be in the country by mid-May, said mission spokesman Neeraj Singh. It is unclear when or if the full contingent of 300 monitors will deploy to Syria.

Mood brings a wealth of Middle East experience to the job, including stints with U.N. peacekeepers in Lebanon in 1989-1990 and as the head of a U.N. peacekeeping mission known as UNTSO from 2009 to 2011. That mission was the U.N's first-ever peacekeeping operation, starting after the 1948 Arab-Israeli war to monitor a cease-fire. It now watches cease-fires around the Middle East.

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