SYRIA: Annan’s bid for peace is “dead”

President Assad, Syria.

SYRIAN CONFLICT. Rebel members of the Free Syrian Army now say they are gearing up for attacks on Syrian government, after a gruesome massacre left more than 85 people dead in one Syrian town on Friday. The Free Syrian Army stat that the U.N.-backed peace plan for the country is “dead,” it was reported on Sunday.

“After such a long wait, a test of patience and steadfastness, the joint command of the FSA inside Syria announces that it is no longer possible to abide by the peace plan brokered by Kofi Annan, (which) the regime is taking advantage of in order to commit more massacres against our unarmed civilians,” Free Syrian Army spokesman Col. Qasim Saad Eddine said in a video posted Saturday, according to CNN.

A key point of the peace plan brokered by Annan, the U.N.-Arab League special envoy to Syria, involves a cease-fire. But since the Syrian regime and opposition members accepted the plan in March, at least 1,635 people have been killed, the opposition Local Coordination Committees of Syria said Saturday, CNN reports, the latest attack being the one in Houla, where at least 32 children were reportedly killed on Friday. United Nations observers counted a total of at least 85 bodies.

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