The UN and Arab League special envoy to Syria, announced that President Bashar al-Assad had accepted his initiative..
Syrian forces mounted a multi-pronged offensive against rebel strongholds throughout the country on Tuesday in open defiance of a pledge to begin the immediate implementation of a UN-backed peace plan.
Opposition districts in the city of Homs and nearby towns came under a sustained artillery barrage less than 24 hours after Kofi Annan, the UN and Arab League special envoy to Syria, announced that President Bashar al-Assad had accepted his initiative.
Under the terms of the plan, government forces were expected to begin an immediate withdrawal of tanks, artillery and armoured vehicles from towns and cities, completing the process by next Tuesday. A full ceasefire, which would see rebel forces also withdraw, is meant to follow within two days.
The Syrian government claimed that a troop withdrawal was under way but rebels and independent witnesses said the reality was very different.
A convoy of armoured personnel carriers was seen advancing on the town of Dael in the southern province of Deraa. Residents said that government soldiers had burned down homes in the town.
Heavy fighting - some of which was reportedly initiated by the rebels - was reported in Hama province, in villages near the northern city of Idlib and in the greater Damascus area.
Rebel commanders claimed that the Assad regime was seeking to capture as much territory as possible before the truce came into effect, a strategy they said was doomed to fail.
"He thinks he can win more time to take control of all Syrian cities," Adel al-Omari, an opposition activist in Dael, told the Associated Press. "This won't happen, because as soon as he withdraws his tanks from the cities, the people will come out and push to topple the regime."
Predictions of Assad's imminent downfall also came from his estranged uncle Rifaat, who told the BBC that the president was unlikely to survive much longer. Rifaat al-Assad, who has lived in enforced exile in Europe for more than 20 years, is a prominent critic of the regime.
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