Syrian Forces Kill 8 Civilians, 5 Army Deserters

Syrian security forces on Monday killed at least 13 people across the country, among them five army deserters, the Local Coordination Committees, the main activist group spurring protests on the ground, said.

Eight people were killed in the flashpoint central province of Homs while five others were killed in the northwestern province of Idlib, the LCC said.

For its part, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least five people including a woman were killed and nine others wounded as armed members of the shabiha pro-regime militia shot up a bakery in Homs and burnt it down.

The Britain-based Observatory also said a 16-year-old girl was shot and fatally wounded by a sniper in Homs, and that security forces fired off mortars at Balioun village in Idlib’s Jabal al-Zawiya where hundreds of deserters had gathered.

Violent clashes pitted soldiers against defectors in the same province.

"Twenty soldiers defected. Five of them were killed, the 15 others were able to flee," the Observatory said in statements received by Agence France Presse.

In Aleppo, security forces arrested nine students in a raid on the university of Syria's second largest city, the group added.

The latest violence, defections and arrests came a day after Damascus announced a general amnesty for crimes committed since the outbreak of unrest last March 15, a move which the opposition dismissed as a sham.

The amnesty, the third of its kind, covered infringements of the law on peaceful demonstrations, the possession of unlawful weapons and army desertion, the official SANA news agency reported.

But the opposition Muslim Brotherhood, stressing more than 60,000 have been detained since the start of the unrest, dismissed the amnesty as "neither serious nor credible."

"The regime is trying to make its unrealistic plans for reconciliation and national dialogue credible, and it is in this context that it is making such announcements, for propaganda purposes," the group said.

Human rights lawyer Anwar Bunni said "only hundreds" out of "thousands of people who have been detained for exercising their right to freedom of expression and peaceful demonstration" were freed.

In the first public call by an Arab leader for a foreign military presence in Syria, the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa al-Thani, said in an interview with U.S. network CBS at the weekend that he favored dispatching Arab troops to Syria to "stop the killing."

Arab League chief Nabil al-Arabi said on Sunday that an Arab ministerial meeting this week could discuss the emir’s proposal.

"All ideas will be open for discussion," he told reporters in Manama when asked if Saturday's meeting will debate Sheikh Hamad’s proposal.

According to a U.N. official, 400 people have been killed since the beginning of an Arab League observer mission in crisis-hit country on December 26.

Former Arab League secretary general Amr Moussa also said on Sunday the League should consider sending troops to Syria.

However, Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki said in an interview published on Sunday he opposed foreign military intervention in Syria, saying it would spark an "explosion" across the entire Middle East.

"Such intervention would signify that the war will spread across the whole region, opening the way to all powers, following the example of Turkey, Israel, Iran and Hizbullah. That would mean the whole region exploding," he said.