Deadly fighting grips Syria as UN ends mission

At least 32 people were killed, including two children in shelling in Daraa, the birthplace of the revolution, a watchdog said, as the United Nations brought an end to its troubled observer mission in the country.

New international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who has said he is not confident of being able to restore peace, warned Sunday that it was now a matter of ending rather than avoiding a civil war after 17 months of bloodshed.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported continued fighting Monday on the second day of Eid al-Fitr, the holiday celebrated by Muslims around the world to mark the end of the holy month of Ramadan.

It said clashes erupted between rebels and government troops in the southern city of Daraa after several areas were shelled, killing 15 people, including two children.

Government forces using combat helicopters, tanks and heavy artillery have also been carrying out “savage” attacks on Herak, the opposition Syrian National Council said, warning of a humanitarian catastrophe as supplies of food and medicines run out.

Fighting also broke out in several southern parts of the capital Damascus as the regime battles persistent pockets of rebel resistance, and in Aleppo province on the border with Turkey.

The Observatory said troops backed by helicopters pounded several areas of Aleppo city, including the Salaheddin neighbourhood where much of the regime’s military operations against the rebels have been focused.

The commercial capital has emerged as the key battleground of the conflict since rebels seized large swathes of the city in an offensive launched on July 20. Government officials have said it will be the “mother of all battles.”

Demonstrators had taken to the streets of the capital and other cities on Sunday to vent their rage at President Bashar al-Assad’s rule, as he made a rare public appearance with top officials for Eid prayers at a Damascus mosque.

“Eid is here, Eid is here, God curse you, O Bashar,” protesters in Qudsaya in Damascus province sang to the tune of Jingle Bells, according to amateur video posted on YouTube.

UN observer mission ends

UN observers wound up their troubled mission at midnight on Sunday in the face of the escalating violence and a failure by world powers to agree on how to respond to Assad’s crackdown and bring peace to the strategic Middle East state.

Created by a UN Security Council resolution adopted in April, the team of some 300 unarmed observers was progressively deployed into Syria as part of then UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan’s six-point plan to end the conflict.

Much of its operations in the field were suspended in June and its numbers cut back in the face of the mounting violence, as both sides violated a ceasefire that was meant to have been the cornerstone of Annan’s plan.

The end of the mission came just days after the veteran Algerian diplomat Brahimi was named to replace Annan.

“A civil war, it is the cruellest kind of conflict, when a neighbour kills his neighbour and sometimes his brother, it is the worst of conflicts,” Brahimi said in an interview with France 24 television in Paris.

“There are a lot of people who say that we must avoid civil war in Syria, me I believe that we are already there for some time now. What’s necessary is to stop the civil war and that is not going to be easy.”

Assad, from the minority Alawite community, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, has characterised the conflict as a battle against a foreign “terrorist” plot aided by the West and its allies in the region, led by Sunni Muslim powerhouse Saudi Arabia.

The unrelenting violence has raised fears of a spillover into neighbouring countries, which are sheltering the several hundred thousand refugees who have fled across the border into Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.

And Jordan said four rockets fired from neighbouring Syria fell inside its northern border area, wounding a four-year-old girl and sparking a letter of protest to Damascus.

Meanwhile, the Vatican said Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Lebanon next month will go ahead as scheduled, despite tensions in the country linked to the conflict in Syria, including a wave of mass kidnappings.

Turkish authorities crossed the border to distribute food and other supplies to hundreds of Syrians who have fled their homes and are massed on the Syrian side, emergency officials said.

The United Nations has warned of a deteriorating humanitarian situation with more than one million people displaced inside Syria and up to 2.5 million in need of aid.

The protest movement against Assad’s rule, which began in March 2011, has spiralled into an armed conflict with more than 23,000 people killed, according to the Observatory. The United Nations puts the death toll at 17,000.