FRANCE PRESS

DAMASCUS: The unrest in Syria edged closer to an all-out armed conflict Monday as 41 people were killed, including 11 soldiers reportedly in clashes with army defectors, as the U.N. chief urged an immediate end to the bloodletting.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that 27 people, most of them civilians but some of them police, were killed in the flashpoint city of Homs as President Bashar Assad’s regime pressed its brutal crackdown on dissent.

Three other civilians, including a 13-year-old boy, were also shot dead in other parts of the country, the Britain-based Observatory said.

“Gunmen suspected of being army defectors blew up a bomb by remote control as an army vehicle passed by Ehssem in the countryside of the [northwestern province of Idlib], killing an officer and three soldiers, and wounding others,” the Observatory’s Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP in Nicosia.

The Britain-based watchdog said that another seven soldiers were killed in clashes with gunmen suspected too of being army defectors in the flashpoint central province of Homs.

U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon meanwhile urged Assad to immediately stop the killings of civilians, a day after the Arab League called for “national dialogue” to end the violence.
“There are continuous killings of civilian people. These killings must stop immediately,” Ban said in Bern.
“I told Assad: ‘Stop before it is too late,’” he said.

“It is unacceptable that 3,000 people have been killed. The U.N. is urging him again to take urgent action.”
Ban also called on Assad to accept an international commission of inquiry into rights violations ordered by the U.N. Human Rights Council in April.

Damascus has blocked investigators from entering the country.
The Observatory reported that scores of soldiers were also wounded in confrontations Monday with suspected army defectors, including at least 17 in Idlib province.

It said that 27 people, including policemen, died as the army and security forces carried out raids in Homs.The Local Coordination Committees, an activist network spurring protests, meanwhile issued a statement accusing security forces of intensifying their crackdown on doctors who treat wounded demonstrators.
“Security forces recently intensified their campaign against doctors, hospitals and private clinics suspected of treating people wounded in pro-freedom rallies” without notifying security services, the LCC said.

Doctors are required to immediately notify security services of the arrival of a wounded person, regardless of the severity of his injuries, which invariably leads to the patient’s arrest, it said.
The Violations Documenting Centre, a partner of the activist network, said 250 doctors and pharmacists have been arrested since mid-March, 25 of them in the past few weeks.