.Arab League officials arrived in Syria on Thursday to prepare for
monitors overseeing an Arab peace plan, after activists said President
Bashar al-Assad’s forces carried out the deadliest assault in their
nine-month crackdown on protests.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Syrian forces killed 111 civilians and activists were killed this week when Assad’s forces surrounded them in the hills of Idlib province and unleashed two hours of bombardment and heavy gunfire.France branded the killings an “unprecedented massacre” and the United States said Syrian authorities had “flagrantly violated their commitment to end violence.”
Another 100 army deserters were either wounded or killed, making it the “bloodiest day of the Syrian revolution,” the British-based Observatory’s director Rami Abdulrahman said.
Events in Syria are hard toverify because authorities, who say they are battling terrorists who have killed more than 1,100 soldiers and police, have banned most independent reporting.