Thursday, April 12, 2012

Protesters take to streets amid Syria's fragile truce

(CNN) -- Guns largely fell silent in Syria Thursday after an early morning cease-fire took effect and cast an eerie calm over restive cities and towns that had been pounded by government forces in recent days.

Amid the fragile truce, opposition groups called for peaceful demonstrations as though to test whether the government would stick to its word.

Anti-regime protesters came out onto the streets in several cities including Idlib, Homs, Deir Ezzor and Raqqa, according to the Local Coordination Committees (LCC), a network of opposition activists across Syria. It said troops opened fire at a checkpoint in Hama to prevent people from protesting.

Opposition activists reported sporadic violence and said President Bashar al-Assad had failed to pull back troops from population centers, another key condition of a United Nations-backed peace plan brokered by special envoy Kofi Annan.

Adib al Shishakly a member of the Syrian National Council, an umbrella group of exiles, said Damascus had not abided by all six points of Annan's peace plan.

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