Syria Troops Kill Civilian, Wound 3 a Week into Ceasefire

Syrian troops killed a civilian and three civilians were also wounded on Thursday a week into a U.N.-backed truce, a Britain-based human rights watchdog said.

Syrian security forces opened fire in the northeastern oil city of Deir al-Zour before clashes erupted between troops and rebel fighters, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in a statement.

"An assault by government forces on the Al-Tob neighborhood of Deir al-Zour killed one civilian and wounded three, and fighting is now raging between troops and deserters,” the observatory said.

Violence in Syria on Wednesday killed 30 people, 22 of them civilians, the watchdog said.

A renewed bombardment by regime forces of rebel neighborhoods of the flashpoint central city of Homs killed 13 civilians, while three more were killed in shelling of the town of Qusayr just to the north.

A further six civilians, including a nine-year-old girl, were killed in separate incidents in Idlib and Aleppo provinces in the north, Hama province in the center and Damascus and Daraa provinces to the south, the Observatory added.

Eight government troops were also killed, seven of them in a roadside bomb on the outskirts of Idlib town of Idlib, where fighters of the rebel Free Syrian Army have been active.

An observer advance party which arrived in the Syrian capital on Sunday headed out from its Damascus base on Thursday but declined to say where it was going.

"We don't discuss our plan for security raison," said its leader, Colonel Ahmed Himmiche of Morocco.

Himmiche declined to be drawn on negotiations with the Syrian government on a protocol to govern the mission's operations.

"We are military observers so I'm not dealing with the diplomatic case at all. We are doing the operations," he said.