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28 March 2024

UN stays in Homs on people's plea

Moroccan Colonel Ahmed Himmiche (left), leader of the first UN monitoring team in Syria, and Neeraj Singh, UN official from the advance team in Syria, talk to the media during their arrival at a hotel in Damascus on April 22. (Reuters)

Published
By AFP

Two UN observers set up base on Sunday in Homs, their spokesman said, a day after video footage showed residents pleading with them to stay and ensure an end to bloodshed in the Syrian city.

The spokesman, Neeraj Singh, said other members of the eight-member advance UN team of observers mandated to monitor the April 12 ceasefire were pursuing field visits elsewhere in the country.

"Yesterday (Saturday), the UN advance team visited Homs where they met with the local authorities and all the parties," Singh told AFP.

"The team drove or walked around the city of Homs and stopped at different locations to talk to the people.

"Following the visit, two UN military observers have now been stationed at Homs since yesterday evening."

On Saturday, their visit to Homs included a stop in Baba Amr, a rebel stronghold battered by a month-long army bombardment that killed hundreds, according to monitors, before it was retaken on March 1.

Video activists uploaded to YouTube showed at least four of them meeting with residents who begged them to stay in the central city. Its authenticity could not immediately be verified.

"Today is the first day since two months, exactly since 5 February... in Homs without shelling... without killing, without fire," one unidentified man said in the footage.

"Because of that, we want you to stay. Please stay. This is what we want. When you come, shelling stops. When you come, killing stops," he told the observers, who sat around a table displaying the tail ends of mortars and wore blue helmets and bullet-proof vests marked "UN".

The video can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee3A0S4P1q0.

It was shot on Saturday and shows the UN observers, including team leader Colonel Ahmed Himmiche, talking to a group of Homs residents indoors at an unspecified location.

In another video of the same meeting, a fighter from the rebel Free Syrian Army, identified as Abdel Razzak Tlass, tells the observers they are under the FSA's protection.

"You entered Syria to stop the killings," Tlass is heard telling Himmiche.

"Here in Homs the FSA is responsible for the protection of the people. We guarantee that if observers remain here they will be protected, there will be no threats to their lives," he added.

But the rebel fighter warned that if the observers "leave now, they (regime) will pursue their military operations."

"They are using tanks, mortars, rocket launchers. With you present here, all that has stopped," he said, pleading for the observers to stay put in Homs.

"We ask you to stay. At least two of you," he said.

The guns were silent in Homs for a second straight day on Sunday, activists from the city told AFP.

"This morning (Sunday) the situation is calm in the city of Homs and the province. Regime forces are respecting the ceasefire because the observers are present here," said activist Hadi Abdullah.

But he voiced concern that violence would resume once the observers leave the city.

Abdullah said the observers would visit other parts of Homs province on Sunday, including Talbisseh, Rastan and Qusayr near the Lebanese border, before heading further north to Hama province and later to Damascus.

Singh said the number of observers in the advance team stands at eight, adding however that "we are expecting at least two more military observers to arrive on Monday."

On Saturday, the United Nations Security Council unanimously voted to dispatch 300 unarmed observers to monitor the truce in Syria.

"Today (Sunday), the advance team is continuing its field visit and further updates will be provided when available," Singh said.

Under UN Resolution 2043, the 300 military observers will be sent to Syria for an initial period of 90 days if UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon determines it is safe for them to go.