DAMASCUS: Syrians took to the streets in their thousands on Friday to show their determination to oust President Bashar al-Assad's regime, as the office of envoy Kofi Annan insisted his peace plan was "on track."
The demonstrations came as government forces cracking down on dissent reportedly killed at least 10 civilians, only hours after UN peacekeepers urged Damascus to make the first move to end nearly 14 months of bloodshed.
"The Annan plan is on track and a crisis that has been going on for over a year is not going to be resolved in a day or a week," the UN-Arab League envoy's spokesman, Ahmad Fawzi, told journalists in Geneva.
"There are signs on the ground of movement, albeit slow and small. "Some heavy weapons have been withdrawn, some heavy weapons remain. Some violence has receded, some violence continues. And that is not satisfactory, I'm not saying it is," Fawzi said.
Major General Robert Mood, who heads the UN mission to oversee Annan's hard-won ceasefire agreement, had issued an appeal late Thursday for the Assad regime to make the first move to end the violence.
"The strongest party needs to make the first move," he told reporters in Syria, stressing he was referring to the government and army.
"They have the strength, they have the position and they also have the potential generosity to make the first step in a good direction," he said.
Despite the appeal, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces killed at least 10 civilians across the country on Friday.
Three died at dawn when troops fired on their vehicle near an intersection in the central city of Hama, and a fourth was shot in Homs province, said the Britain-based watchdog.
Gunfire killed a couple and their child in the northern city of Aleppo, it said, adding regime forces killed another civilian in eastern Deir Ezzor province.
Activists said pro-regime gunmen killed the family in Aleppo, scene of a bloody raid by government forces the day before that killed four university students, in response to a series of protests.
Another 200 students were arrested in what the Observatory said could prove a turning point of the uprising in the northern regional capital.
The killings marked a serious escalation in Aleppo, Syria's second city and commercial hub, largely spared the violence shaking the country for nearly 14 months.
"The city of Aleppo hasn't joined the anti-regime revolt thus far but the seriousness of these events will push residents to mobilise in solidarity with the students," the Observatory's Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
Students described scenes of panic as regime troops entered the dormitories, with some pupils jumping from windows to avoid arrest.
"Security forces raided the dormitories and threw out students and their belongings," Mohammed al-Halabi, an activist on the ground, told AFP via Skype, adding some of the rooms were torched.
And on Friday, protesters emerged from mosques in various towns and cities across Aleppo province, calling for Assad's ouster, according to the Observatory.
It said that protesters in the town of Jabal al-Zawiya, in northwestern Idlib province, were trying to gather in one area despite a heavy security presence.
Opposition activists had called for protests across the country after the weekly Muslim main prayers under the rallying cry: "Our loyalty (to the revolution) is our salvation".
Anti-regime demonstrations have been staged after prayers each Friday since the revolt against Assad's iron-fisted rule broke out in March 2011.
The violence has killed more than 11,000 people, according to the Observatory. And it has persisted despite the tenuous UN-backed ceasefire that went into effect on April 12 and the presence of UN observers monitoring the truce headed by General Mood.
The general, a veteran Norwegian peacekeeper, said it was expected that it would take time for the ceasefire to take hold.
"It is not surprising that we see sometimes spikes of violence, this cannot obviously go on forever and I call everyone to choose a political way of cessation of violence," he said ThReuters
An advance team of unarmed UN observers arrived in Syria on April 15 and their presence has slowly increased, with the monitors due to reach their full complement of around 300 in the coming weeks.
Mood said that from Friday there would be eight observers in the southern province of Daraa, 12 in Homs, eight in Hama and four in Idlib province, adding that their presence was having a positive effect.
The United Nations has accused both sides to the conflict of failing to abide by the terms of the ceasefire which it has admitted has not been holding.
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