Syrian deserters battle army as tensions soar

“There are fierce battles in Daraa between groups of deserters and the regular security forces trying to break into Dael and raid the town to make arrests,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement.

It said the security forces were making arrests around Dael, and “carrying out acts of vandalism, burning motorcycles and shops and wildly firing live ammunition and sound grenades to terrify residents.”

The Observatory said landlines and cellphone telecommunications in the area were also cut off from early morning.

On Monday, the watchdog had said mutinous soldiers killed four members of the security forces, including an officer, in Dael.

The violence comes as the Arab League examined conditions set by President Bashar al-Assad’s regime for observers to enter Syria, where the UN says a crackdown on dissent since March has killed 4,000 people.

The Cairo-based League, which has threatened to impose new sanctions on Damascus if it fails to comply with a plan for monitors, said it was considering a conditional Syrian offer to allow them into the country.

Syria had initially refused to sign an Arab proposal to send in observers to monitor its forces accused of rights violations by the United Nations.

But in a letter sent to the Arab League late on Sunday as a League deadline was set to expire, Assad’s regime said it would accept monitors if its conditions were met.

“The Syrian government responded positively to the signing of the protocol” on observers “based on the Syrian understanding of this cooperation,” foreign ministry spokesman Jihad Makdisi told reporters.

While confirming the receipt of a letter from Damascus outlining the about-face, Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi said it contained “new demands.”

“We’ve contacted Arab foreign ministers and they have been apprised of the Syrian letter,” Arabi said, adding that consultations were under way.

Adding to the tensions, and with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton set to meet Syrian dissidents in Switzerland on Tuesday, state news agency SANA reported that military manoeuvres on Sunday night.

It said they were “part of a 2011 training programme... to deter any enemy attack.”

An opposition figure said this was an act of defiance to signal that “the regime is ready to up the stakes if serious pressure continues to be exerted on it.”

Makdisi denied to reporters that the exercises were meant as a message “to anyone,” but acknowledged “Syria finds itself in a complicated situation.”

In Israel, Defence Minister Ehud Barak said Syrian long-range missile tests detected by the Jewish state show that the Assad regime was doomed.

“Just a few days ago, just a few hundred kilometres (miles) northeast of this spot, we saw the firing of all sorts of rockets,” Barak’s office quoted him as saying during a tour of the Israeli-annexed Golan Heights.

“The Assad family is losing its grip and Bashar al-Assad is doomed to fall,” Barak added. “I don’t know if it will take weeks or months but there is no redemption for that family which today is slaughtering its own people.”

The Britain-based Observatory on Monday reported that militiamen loyal to the regime killed 34 civilians and dumped their bodies in a city square in the restive central city of Homs.

It said one activist reported seeing “the bodies of 34 civilians, in a square in the pro-regime neighbourhood of Al-Zahra, who had been abducted by the shabiha (militiamen) on Monday.”

The civilians, it said, had been seized from several “anti-regime neighbourhoods” in the city.

In addition to its suspension from the Arab League and sanctions by the 22-member pan-Arab body, Syria has also been hit by a raft of EU and US sanctions.

The UN Human Rights Council has also passed a resolution “strongly condemning the continued widespread, systematic and gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms by the Syrian authorities.”

Damascus blames “armed terrorist groups” for the unrest and rejected the resolution as “unjust,” saying it was “prepared in advance by parties hostile to Syria.”

Clinton is due to meet seven political opponents of Assad in Geneva on Tuesday, as Washington sees Damascus increasingly isolated over its crushing of pro-democracy protests.

She first met members of Syria’s disparate opposition in Washington on August 2.