2 killed in Homs as Arab League tours city

HOMS, Syria, Dec. 29 (UPI) -- Deadly violence flared in Homs, Syria, despite an Arab League observer tour, with at least two people killed away from the view of observers, activists said.

Activist video monitored by United Press International showed league observers wearing reflective orange vests visiting Homs' flashpoint Bab Amr neighborhood. The video showed shattered houses and sounds of heavy gunfire in the background.

One observer in the video, appearing calm, could be seen turning toward the gunfire and taking a photo. Someone screamed "explosions" in Arabic.

Another activist video monitored by UPI showed Bab Amr residents taking observers to see the body of a boy they said was 5 years old and had been killed by security forces. The video showed them removing blankets from the boy's body to reveal a projectile wound about the size of a golf ball below his left armpit.

The observer team was initially denied entry into the besieged neighborhood because a Syrian army lieutenant colonel was escorting them. The officer eventually stepped aside.

Activists later claimed the observers had been unable to visit a secret Assad-regime detention facility because of Syrian army gunfire, the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph reported.

The death tolls and other accounts could not be independently confirmed due to restrictions imposed on journalists by the Syrian government.

The league observers were to visit Daraa, Hama and Idlib Thursday -- cities where anti-Assad demonstrations have been violently repressed. Daraa is where the anti-regime uprising erupted March 17.

The observers are responsible for verifying Syrian compliance with a plan meant to end the violence.

Syrian army defectors in Daraa province killed at least four Syrian soldiers in an ambush on a road near the southern town of Dael, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Wednesday.

Video posted online purported to show the ambush.

Separately, the Syrian army opened fire on protesters staging a sit-in in Hama Wednesday, killing at least six and wounding seven, activist groups said.

An activist video from the Hama sit-in showed gunshots being fired and men marching through the streets chanting in Arabic, "Where are the Arab monitors?"

The official Syrian Arab News Agency reported armed men killed eight members of a family in Hama.

State television said Wednesday prisoners involved in anti-regime protests "whose hands were not stained with Syrian blood" had been released. The release of political prisoners is one of the terms of the peace deal agreed between Syria and the Arab League.

Amnesty International and other rights and activist groups say at least 15,000 and perhaps more than 30,000 Syrians remain in detention.

The regime of President Bashar Assad insists it is fighting a terrorist insurgency that has killed 2,000 soldiers and police.

The United Nations estimates more than 5,000 people have been killed since the popular uprising and harsh regime crackdown began.