BEIRUT — Syria launched a blistering assault Thursday on the outskirts of its capital, shelling residential areas and deploying snipers on rooftops as international envoy Kofi Annan demanded every fighter lay down arms in time for a U.N.-brokered cease-fire.
The bloodshed undermined already fading hopes that more than a year of violence will end soon. France accused President Bashar Assad of trying to fool the world by accepting Annan’s deadline to pull back the army from population centers by next Tuesday.
According to the plan, rebels are supposed to stop fighting 48 hours later, paving the way for talks to end Assad’s violent suppression of the uprising against his rule. The U.N. says more than 9,000 people have died.
“Can we be optimistic? I am not. Because I think Bashar Assad is deceiving us,” French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told reporters in Paris.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said the crisis was getting worse, even though the Syrian government accepted Annan’s plan March 27. Activists have accused the regime of stepping up attacks, and they described Thursday’s assault in Douma as among the worst around the capital since the uprising began.
Black smoke billowed from residential areas of Douma, about 8 miles outside Damascus, amid heavy cracks of gunfire. Douma, which has seen anti-Assad activities since the uprising began, has been subjected to several campaigns by Assad’s regime over the past year.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said troops clashed with army defectors in the northern towns of Hraytan and Anadan near Syria’s largest city of Aleppo.
Observers have expressed skepticism that Assad will abide by the peace plan, in part because large swaths of the country could slip out of his control if he pulls back the troops. Analysts say Syria likely will to try to manipulate the terms of the plan to buy more time, or to argue that the regime cannot lay down its arms when “terrorists” are on the attack.
Even as the death toll mounts, there is little prospect for international intervention of the type that helped topple Libya’s Moammar Khadafy. Western leaders have pinned their hopes on Annan’s diplomacy, with the U.S. and its allies unwilling to get deeply involved in another Arab nation in turmoil.
Still, the regime is under great pressure to comply with Annan’s plan in some way because Russia and China have thrown their support behind it.
Annan traveled to Moscow and Beijing to secure that support.
On Wednesday, the former U.N. chief is expected in Iran — Syria’s last significant ally in the Middle East — for another diplomatic push on Assad’s supporters.
