• Monitors to stay in Syria, U.N. says
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[quote] The U.N. monitoring mission in Syria will remain in place for now, despite having halted its activities amid rising violence, its leaders said Tuesday. Security Council members met in private with the mission's leader, Norwegian Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, who halted operations Saturday. He reported then that the escalating violence between government troops and opposition groups was making it too risky for the monitors to do their jobs. "I conveyed first and last that the suffering of the Syrian people -- the suffering of men, women and children in Syria, some of them trapped by fighting -- is getting worse," Mood said. However, he added, "I remain committed to the mission, in the position we are currently in. We're not going anywhere." And Herve Ladsous, the United Nations' peacekeeping chief, told reporters that, "for the time being, we have decided not to touch, not to modify" the observer mission. But a U.N. diplomat, speaking about the session on condition of anonymity, described Mood's briefing as "gloomy." He told council members that monitors had been targeted directly 10 times and indirectly 100 times, the diplomat said. Monitors' vehicles had been attacked nine times in the prior eight days, the diplomat quoted Mood as saying. Mood told reporters after the session that gunfire and shelling were "coming much closer" to the monitors, "and we have been targeted several times." He said he was reviewing conditions daily and hoped to resume operations soon. About 300 monitors are in Syria ostensibly to ensure that all sides in the conflict comply with a six-point peace plan brokered by joint U.N. and Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan. But the April cease-fire took place only in name, and fighting has increased sharply since late May. Routine government shelling and massacres of civilians have been reported in recent weeks. Opposition groups say more than 13,000 people have been killed since President Bashar al-Assad launched a crackdown on anti-government protests in March 2011. The U.N. estimates the death toll at more than 10,000. At least 52 people were killed Tuesday in Syria, according to the Local Coordination Committees of Syria, an opposition umbrella group. The Syrian government has consistently blamed the violence on "armed terrorist groups." The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency said Tuesday that terrorists sabotaged oil pipelines in Homs and Deir Ezzor. [/quote] [url]http://articles.cnn.com/2012-06-19/middleeast/world_meast_syria-unrest_1_local-coordination-committees-deir-ezzor-syrian-civilians?_s=PM:MIDDLEEAST[/url]
It's easier to deliver angry letters if you're in the country I suppose.
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