Operation Ostrava: Month 14, Week 1, Day 7.

On the first full day of the total ceasefire Friday (13/4/12) Syria saw it's largest day of protest ever. In an effort to provoke Syrian forces into breaching the ceasefire the Saudi Irregular Army (SIA) attempted to flood the streets with protesters with demonstrations of varying size taking place in 750 separate locations. For the most part these were largely peaceful. However in some locations Syrian forces were forced to fire into the air as protesters attempted to storm their positions. According SIA sources 13 people were killed. However according to more credible sources 1 person was killed by stray gunfire. In the town of Khirbet Jos near the Turkish border SIA forces mounted an armed assault on Syrian positions forcing the Syrian troops to return fire. 4 SIA troops and 3 Syrian soldiers were killed in the exchange. It must be said that though that in a normal country with a population of around 20 million only 8 deaths across a 24 hour period would be considered a good result.

At around dawn today (14/4/12) there was a one hour shelling/mortar barrage in two areas of Homs in which 12-16 shells/mortar bombs were fired. Some injuries have been reported but there are no reports of deaths. Of course this breach of the ceasefire has occurred in the same area of Homs where there have been previous short shelling/mortar barrages in breach of the ceasefire. So while I don't have access to the information I'm sure it would be very easy to track this fire back to a specific mortar/artillery position and a specific commander on the ground. At around 15:00GMT today the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) is expected to vote on sending an observer mission to Syria that would be able to track specific breaches like this back to specific commanders. So I think the Syrian government want to take a long hard look at this rogue battery to find out which side they're really fighting on.

Edited at around 14:35GMT on 14/4/12 to add: Since I posted the above SIA sources are now claiming that one person has been killed in Homs as a result of the shelling/mortar fire. Also SIA sources are claiming that 13 people have been killed in Aleppo as Syrian forces opened fire on a funeral procession. Syrian sources claim that the SIA simply opened fire on the crowd themselves. Putting aside the question of given the Islamic tradition of burial within 24 hours who exactly was being buried in Aleppo this contradiction of reports is exactly the sort of thing that puts pressure on the UNSC to pass a resolution authorising observers without fully thinking through the consequences. So I'm inclined to believe the Syrian version of events.

The one thing that's for sure is that the figure of 13 dead is inaccurate because it comes from the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHA). According to this British based activist group the total death toll from the conflict in Syria is around 80,000 while the UN figure is 9000. So even you were to arbitrarily decide that the UN figure is too low and double it to 18,000 the SOHA figure is still so massively inflated it bears no relation to reality.

This raises the question of whether we need UN observers in Syria or whether we simply need to ignore groups like SOHA? After all I'm sure that if the UNSC authorise observers today we'll see more killing tomorrow.