The surge in violence killed at least 29 people, more than half of them civilians in north and central Syria, and included a string of arson attacks on homes, activists and monitors said.
Fierce clashes erupted n Tuesday as Syria's regime sent reinforcements into rebel areas despite a truce pledge, and the UN said it was rushing a team to Damascus to pave the way for peace monitors.
The surge in violence killed at least 29 people, more than half of them civilians in north and central Syria, and included a string of arson attacks on homes, activists and monitors said.
It came a day after peace envoy Kofi Annan told the UN Security Council that President Bashar al-Assad had given assurances he would "immediately" start pulling back his forces and complete a military withdrawal from urban areas by April 10.
Foreign Minister Walid Muallem today pledged Syria would do its utmost to ensure the success of a Red Cross mission as he met the organisation's head, Jakob Kellenberger, who was in Damascus to seek a daily humanitarian ceasefire.
Monitors said heavy fighting engulfed opposition strongholds in the southern region of Daraa, the flashpoint city of Homs in central Syria, northwestern Idlib province and near the capital.
Dozens of armoured personnel carriers arrived in Dael, a town in Daraa province where the uprising against Assad began in March 2011, as well as in Zabadani, a bastion of the rebellion near the border with Lebanon.
In Idlib, heavy fighting took place on the outskirts of the town of Taftanaz, where five civilians, four rebels and seven soldiers were killed amid heavy machine gun fire and shelling, the Observatory said.
Clashes killed two civilians elsewhere in the province.
In central Homs, nine civilians were killed in shelling of several neighbourhoods of the city and two others died in fighting elsewhere in the province.
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