Clashes erupt in Syria as UN prepares team

Demonstrators protest against Syria's President Bashar Al-Assad in Kafranbel Violence flared once again as the Syrian regime sent reinforcements into rebel areas despite a truce pledge, while the UN said it was rushing a team to Damascus to pave the way for peace monitors.
Activists in the central city of Hama claimed the army had been raiding the city since dawn on Wednesday.
Troops allegedly stormed the city with tanks and anti-aircraft guns since the morning, with a campaign of arrests of young men in the neighbourhoods Hamidiya, al Faryah and Baraziah.
Renewed clashes on Tuesday killed at least 38 people, including 25 civilians, mostly in north and central Syria, and saw a string of arson attacks on homes, activists and monitors said.
It came a day after international peace envoy Kofi Annan told the UN Security Council that Syria's president Bashar al-Assad had given assurances he would "immediately" start pulling back his forces and complete a military withdrawal from urban areas by April 10.
A Syrian government official claimed that regime troops had begun pulling out Tuesday from some calm cities and headed back to their bases a week ahead of a deadline to implement the cease-fire plan.
The claim could not immediately be verified and activists near the capital Damascus denied troops were leaving their area. They said the day regime forces withdraw from streets, Syria will witness massive protests that will overthrow the government.
"Forces began withdrawing to outside calm cities and are returning to their bases, while in tense areas, they are pulling out to the outskirts," the government official told The Associated Press in Damascus without saying when the withdrawal began. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk to the media.
Khaled al-Omar, an activist in the Damascus suburb of Saqba, denied that any withdrawal was under way in his area.
"This is impossible. I can see a checkpoint from my window," he said via Skype, adding the regime forces were still in the main square.
The United States accused Assad of failing to honour his pledged troop withdrawal, as monitors reported heavy fighting in opposition strongholds in the southern region of Daraa, the central city of Homs, northwestern Idlib province and near the capital.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the army was torching and looting rebel houses across the country in a campaign that could amount to crimes against humanity.
Dozens of armoured personnel carriers arrived in Dael, a town in Daraa province where the uprising against Assad began in March 2011, as well as in Zabadani, a bastion of the rebellion near the border with Lebanon.
Clashes in the Atbaa area of Daraa left three civilians and two soldiers dead, according to the Observatory.
In Idlib, heavy fighting took place on the outskirts of the town of Taftanaz, where five civilians, four rebels and seven soldiers were killed amid heavy machinegun fire and shelling, the Britain-based monitoring group said.
Clashes killed two civilians elsewhere in the province.
In central Homs, 10 civilians were killed in shelling and five others died in fighting elsewhere in the province.
With international concern at the situation growing, a draft UN Security Council statement was drawn up asking Syria to respect an April 10 deadline to halt its military operations in protest cities, according to a copy of the text seen by AFP.
The draft also urges the Syrian opposition to cease hostilities within 48 hours after the Assad's regime makes good on its pledges.
It also calls on all parties to respect a two-hour daily humanitarian pause, as called for in Annan's plan.
Negotiations on the text – distributed by Britain, France and the United States – began on Tuesday. France's UN envoy Gerard Araud said he hoped it would be adopted late Wednesday or on Thursday.
Russia, Assad's veto-wielding ally in the Council, has rejected the idea of a deadline, with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov saying "ultimatums and artificial deadlines rarely help matters."
Washington said on Tuesday that Assad was failing to live up to pledges for a truce.
The assertion to Kofi Annan was that Assad would start implementing his commitments immediately to withdraw from cities. I want to advise that we have seen no evidence today that he is implementing any of those commitments," US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters.
In Geneva, a spokesman for Annan said the office of the UN-Arab League envoy expected a "UN advance team on the deployment of monitors to arrive in Syria in the next 48 hours."
In a briefing Monday to the Security Council, Annan sought a broad mandate for the monitoring mission as he reported "no progress" on reaching a ceasefire, according to diplomats.
Syria's UN envoy, Bashar Jaafari, confirmed the April 10 date had been agreed "by common accord" between Annan and his government.
Seeking to assuage some of the humanitarian concerns, Syria's foreign minister, Walid Muallem, pledged Syria would do its utmost to ensure the success of a Red Cross mission as he met the organisation's head, Jakob Kellenberger, who was in Damascus to seek a daily ceasefire.
International Committee of the Red Cross chief Kellenberger, on his third mission to Damascus since it launched a protest crackdown which the UN says has killed more than 9,000 people, said ahead of his latest trip that he would seek to secure a daily two-hour humanitarian ceasefire.