The UN eventually wants to have at least 30 monitors in Syria Damascus - Agencies    The UN Security Council on Saturday passed a resolution authorising the deployment of an advance team of monitors to Syria to oversee the ceasefire there. A small group of observers could leave for Syria within hours.
The resolution was passed unanimously after Russia approved a revised text, which authorised the deployment of a small advance party of observers.
Diplomats had revised a US-proposed draft on Friday to accommodate Russian objections. Russia had vetoed two previous resolutions on Syria.
The resolution calls for the deployment of an advance team of monitors. Additional approval will be required to increase the deployment to 250, the total which Annan is seeking.
Activists say at least 17 people were killed on Saturday.
   Security forces killed four civilians on Saturday as they opened fire at a funeral procession in the northern city of Aleppo, on the third day of a UN-backed ceasefire, a monitoring group said.
The civilians were shot dead in Izaa neighbourhood as they took part in the funeral of a demonstrator killed the day before, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Forces loyal to the Syrian government shelled two central districts in the battered city of Homs throughout Friday night and into Saturday morning, a resident activist and a human rights group said, the first bombings since a ceasefire took hold on Thursday.
Both sides in the conflict reported deaths and injuries on the third day of the UN-brokered ceasefire.
\"There was shelling last night in the old part of the city, in Jouret al-Shiyah and al-Qaradis. And I have heard eight shells fall in the past hour,\" Karm Abu Rabea, a resident activist who lives in an adjacent neighbourhood, told news agencies Saturday morning.
The British-based Observatory said shelling had wounded several people overnight.
It came after six people were killed during protests on Friday, activists said. Syrian forces used live fire, teargas and clubs to beat back tens of thousands of protesters who took to the streets across the country in powerful and often jubilant displays of defiance. But the death toll was said to be far lower than usual as the UN-brokered truce largely held up.
Opposition activists said government forces shelled the city of Homs on Saturday, injuring a number of civilians, while the state news agency SANA reported that six members of the security forces and civilians had been killed by \"terrorist groups\".
The Local Coordination Committees activist network said there were 771 demonstrations throughout Syria on Friday, more than in previous weeks.
The rallies stretched from the suburbs of Damascus to the central province of Hama, Idlib in the north and the southern province of Deraa, where the uprising began in March 2011.
The Observatory said on Saturday that troops were conducting arrests in the Damascus suburb of Dumair when a car exploded killing one civilian and wounding two others. It gave no further details.
SANA reported a series of incidents across Syria on Friday including shootings, bombings and border incursions. No reports from either side can be verified independently.
UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan had called for a team to be deployed immediately to ensure compliance with his peace plan.
Annan\'s plan aims to end over a year of violence in Syria which has killed over 9,000 people, mostly civilians.