BEIRUT: Clashes between the Syrian army and rebel fighters broke out Friday for the first time since a hard-won ceasefire came into force a day earlier, a monitor said.
"Fighting with heavy machineguns took place in Khirbet al-Joz, located (in Idlib province) on the Turkish border, between regime soldiers and (army) deserters," Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP in Beirut.
Abdel Rahman, speaking on the phone from Britain where his monitoring group is based, said the fighting was the first between the two sides since the UN-brokered ceasefire took effect at dawn on Thursday.
Opposition activist group Local Coordination Committees reported that dozens of tanks were deployed on the outskirts of Khirbet al-Joz and near the border with Turkey, while heavy gunfire was heard as regime forces attacked a unit of the rebel Free Syrian Army.
On Thursday, army deserters who were guarding a demonstration killed two soldiers who had tried to disperse a demonstration in the village of Bardeej, in central Hama province, Abdel Rahman said.
Apart from the few skirmishes, the ceasefire brokered by UN-Arab League peace envoy Kofi Annan appeared to be holding for a second day, after world powers called for swift action to send in UN observers to monitor the fragile truce.
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