BEIRUT, Jan 9, (Agencies): Syrian troops fired on protesters Monday in the restive city of Homs as Arab League observers toured the area to see whether President Bashar Assad’s regime is abiding by its pledge to halt the 10-month-old crackdown on dissent, activists said.
In the capital Damascus, thousands held prayers for those killed since the uprising began in March. Christian and Muslim religious leaders attended the service, and throngs packed the city’s Holy Cross church, its yards and a nearby street.
“Enough killings in our beloved Syria,” the country’s top Sunni clergyman, Grand Mufti Ahmad Badreddine Hassoun, told the crowd at the prayer service. His son was shot dead in October.
The 165 foreign monitors are supposed to be ensuring that Syria complies with the Arab League plan stipulating the regime stop killing protesters, remove heavy weaponry, such as tanks, from all cities, free all political prisoners and allow in human rights organizations and foreign journalists. Syria agreed to the plan on Dec 19.
However, the crackdown has not stopped and opposition activists say around 450 people have killed by the regime since observers began work on Dec 21. On Monday, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said security forces shot dead four people around the country.
The UN estimated several weeks ago that more than 5,000 people have been killed in political violence since March. Since that report, opposition activists say hundreds more have died.
On Sunday, the Arab League repeated its demand for the Syrian government to immediately stop all bloodshed.
It was not immediately clear whether the foreign observers witnessed the regime forces opening fire in the Khaldiyeh neighborhood of Homs. Several people were reported wounded.
Majd Amer, an activist in Homs, said the shooting started after thousands of protesters surrounded a group of observers, urging them to go to Khaldiyeh, where anti-regime protesters are known to be active. The observers’ Syrian escorts wanted to take them to the nearby Abbassiyah neighborhood, where many regime supporters live, he said.
“Sporadic shooting was heard for a few seconds,” Amer said.
The opposition has accused Syria of trying to mislead the activists by showing them areas where regime support is strong.
The Arab League on Monday pressed on with its mission to halt 10 months of bloodshed in Syria despite charges it was only serving to cover up the regime’s deadly crackdown on protests.
Turkey, which has openly called for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down, meanwhile, called on the opposition to keep up its resistance through “peaceful means.”
The opposition Muslim Brotherhood slammed the League after the pan-Arab organisation decided on Sunday to extend its observer mission.
“It is clear that the observer mission in Syria seeks to cover up the crimes of the Syrian regime by giving it the time and opportunity to kill our people and break their will,” Brotherhood spokesman Zuhair Salem said.
After a meeting with the opposition Syrian National Council on Sunday in Istanbul, a foreign ministry spokesman in Ankara urged the opposition to carry on with their resistance.

Bahrain
Bahrain’s cassation court on Monday annulled the death sentences of two Shiites and the life imprisonment of three others convicted of killing two policemen in unrest last year, a lawyer said.
Ali Abdullah Hasan al-Singace and Abdul Aziz Abdullah Ibrahim Hussein were sentenced to death by a semi-military court established under a state of “national safety” declared by King Hamad ahead of the mid-March crackdown on the Shiite-led, month-long protests demanding democratic change.
“The verdicts were annulled and sent to the lower court of appeal,” said lawyer Mohsen al-Alawi, part of the team defending Singace.
Initially, the National Safety Court of First Instance last April sentenced four defendants to death, and three to life in jail, including two tried in absentia.
An appeal court commuted the sentences of two of the convicts to life in prison and upheld the death sentence of Singace and Hussein. The verdicts against those at large were not appealed.
“This is a positive verdict. We are optimistic,” said Alawi, pointing out that a new witness, a policeman, has surfaced since the appeal verdict was announced, claiming the charges were “fabricated.”
“His statement has been taken by the public prosecution and we shall use it,” in the forthcoming retrial, he said.
The seven were accused of running over two policemen — Kashif Ahmed Manzur and Mohammed Farouk Abdulsamad.
Their trial began on April 17, with BNA state news agency reporting at the time that the defendants were accused of committing voluntary homicide of public officials with “terrorist” aims.
Witnesses addressed the tribunal and a video allegedly showing the attackers in cars hitting police was played, according to the agency.
An international probe into Bahrain’s crackdown on the protests found that 35 people were killed in the unrest, including five security personnel and five detainees who were tortured to death in custody. Hundreds were injured.
Meanwhile, Bahrain’s cabinet proposed on Sunday giving more powers to the elected chamber and allowing it to question ministers, as part of constitutional reforms in the wake of pro-democracy protests last year.
The cabinet proposed amendments to “achieve greater balance between the executive and the legislative, to strengthen the role of the legislative and regulate the questioning of ministers”, the state news agency BNA said.
The cabinet also approved a 5.35 million dinar ($14.2 million) programme to help 211,000 private sector workers making less than 250 dinars a month in the Gulf island country, a regional banking centre, the agency said.
The cabinet said the proposed reforms were the result of talks between Bahrain’s opposition and pro-government groups which began in July, aimed at healing deep rifts opened when the Western-allied state’s Sunni rulers crushed protests led by majority Shi’ites early last year.
A top official of the watchdog Physicians for Human rights on Sunday said he was barred from entering Bahrain to attend a the trial of medics for their alleged involvement in anti-government protests.
Richard Sollom, deputy director of the US-based PHR, told AFP that immigration officers told him that members of a non-governmental organisation need a special permit to enter Bahrain, although he has a five-year multiple entry visa.
“It doesn’t matter if you have a visa. We are under orders to ensure that NGO representatives got special permission,” he quoted an immigration officer as telling him.