DAMASCUS: Lebanese intelligence officers were questioning the crew of a Sierra Leone-flagged vessel on Sunday over allegations it was carrying arms to Syrian rebels as fighting raged between the insurgents and regular troops.
Ten rebel fighters were among 32 people killed on Saturday as bloodshed persisted more than two weeks into a promised UN-backed truce, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
The interception of the ship byLebanon-- currently governed by a largely pro-Syrian coalition -- gave grist to Russian opposition to the tough Western and Arab line taken against its longtimeMiddle Eastally.
Lebanonsaid it had intercepted three containers of heavy machineguns, artillery shells, rockets, rocket launchers and other explosives destined for rebel forces on a ship originating inLibya.
Syrian authorities have repeatedly charged that weapons are being smuggled fromLebanonto rebels.
On Saturday, government newspaper Tishrin wrote that UN chief Ban Ki-moon "avoids talking about abuses by armed groups and focuses his blame solely onSyria, as usual. He encourages these groups to continue to commit more crimes and terrorist acts."
The Russian foreign ministry said "we are convinced that the terrorists operating inSyrianeed a decisive rebuff, and that all domestic and outside players need to prevent any support" from reaching the rebel forces.
Government troops killed at least 10 rebel fighters in theDamascusregion on Saturday, the Britain-based Syrian Observatory said.
Twenty-two civilians also died -- eight in flashpoint centralHama, two in nearbyHoms, three in Idlib near the Turkish border, four inAleppo, four inDamascusprovince and one in Al-Raqqah in the northeast.
Separately, the officialSANAnews agency reported three soldiers and two "terrorists" killed inSyria's second-biggest cityAleppoin clashes between troops and "armed terrorist groups."
An activist said the fighting began as "officers and soldiers of a military base near the presidential palace... deserted with their weapons."
And in what was believed to be the first case of Westerners going missing in the violence-swept country,Budapestsaid two Hungarians had been kidnapped.
A putative truce, which technically came into effect on April 12, has taken a daily battering, and the European Union on Friday expressed extreme concern about the persistent bloodshed.
The latest violence came as veteran Norwegian peacekeeper Major General Robert Mood was en route forSyriato take the helm of a fledgling monitoring mission after being appointed by UN chief Ban Ki-moon, diplomats said.
Mood takes over a mission already facing major obstacles before the full 300-member force approved by the UN Security Council has even gathered.
He has himself highlighted the "abyss of suspicion" between President Bashar al-Assad and the opposition, in the face of an uprising that has killed more than 9,000 people since March 2011, according to UN figures.
Mood "is on his way toDamascusand arrives there tomorrow," Sunday, international peace envoy Kofi Annan's spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told AFP inGeneva.
Saturday's violence came the day after a suicide car bombing inDamascusthat the Observatory said killed two andSyria's state media said killed 11.
The opposition blamed government forces for the bombing and demanded an international inquiry.
"The Syrian National Council condemns this criminal act which is aimed at further undermining the security and stability of our country and at terrorising our people," a statement said.
After theDamascusblast,SANAquoted the interior ministry as saying "it will not tolerate the armed terrorist groups and vowed to strike with an iron fist those who are terrorising citizens."
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