BBC – The UN Security Council has passed a resolution authorising the deployment of an advance team of monitors to Syria to oversee the ceasefire there.
A small group of observers has been poised to leave for Syria as soon as a resolution is passed. Correspondents say they could leave within hours.
The vote comes as a BBC reporter says the ceasefire appears to be in danger of collapsing in some parts of Syria.
Activists said violence in the restive city of Homs left several dead.
The US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, condemned the bloodshed saying it raises “renewed doubts about the sincerity of the [Syrian] regime’s commitment to the ceasefire”.
She said the resolution was an important opportunity to stop the bloodshed and begin a transition, adding that the burden was now on the Syrian regime.
Eruption of violence
The resolution was passed unanimously after Russia approved a revised text, which authorised the deployment of an advance party of 30 unarmed observers.
Diplomats had revised a US-proposed draft on Friday to accommodate Russian objections. Russia had vetoed two previous resolutions which condemned Syria.
In the end, Russia’s ambassador said Moscow supported the resolution because of the need for a rapid deployment of observers;
Indeed the UN has said that it intends to increase the deployment to 250, the total which peace envoy Kofi Annan is seeking – but that will require further approval.
Meanwhile the BBC’s Jim Muir in Beirut, who has been monitoring developments in Syria, says that in parts of the country the ceasefire seems to be in danger of collapsing, unless something is done to shore it up.
In Syria’s third biggest city of Homs, government forces have been pounding some quarters with tanks and rocket fire, activists say.
They report that at least 17 people have been killed there and in other incidents, including at a funeral in Aleppo, where several people were reported shot dead by security forces.
In Homs’ Qarabis quarter the ceasefire seemed to be in tatters, our correspondent says.
In video posted on the internet by activists, the smoke of explosions swirled across an apocalyptic landscape and tanks, rockets and machine guns seemed to be firing without restraint, he said.
Qarabis and a number of other quarters that have come under attack, seem still to have a considerable presence of rebel fighters from the Free Syrian Army.
In Aleppo, in the north of the country, heavy casualties were reported from a shooting at the funeral of a protester. Activists said security forces opened fire on mourners, but state television blamed armed rebels opening fire at random, in an effort to derail the truce.
Russia’s key role
Mr Annan, the envoy for the UN and Arab League, drew up the plan which called for an advance monitoring team to be deployed immediately to Syria to observe compliance with the truce.
Mr Annan’s plan aims to end more than a year of violence in Syria which the UN says has killed more than 9,000 people, mostly civilians.
The resolution passed on Saturday expresses an intention to establish a full mission once there is a sustained cessation of violence. It also puts the onus on the Syrian government to meet its ceasefire commitments.
The text “calls upon all parties in Syria, including the opposition, immediately to cease all armed violence in all its forms.”
The BBC’s Barbara Plett at the United Nations in New York says that it provides important backing to Mr Annan’s peace plan.
Significantly, it is the first time Security Council members have been able to overcome divisions and adopt a resolution on Syria, which is a diplomatic defeat for Damascus, she says.
Analysts say Russia appears to have been key to persuading President Bashar al-Assad to accept both the Annan plan and the ceasefire.
The terms of this resolution, which Russia backed, call on all parties to observe that truce – and exerts even more pressure on Syria’s leaders to withdraw their tanks and forces even further.