Air raids, car bombs ravage Damascus

Syrian jets bombed suburbs of Damascus and a car bomb killed 10 people in the capital on Monday, the last day of a four-day truce, which U N chief Ban Ki-moon acknowledged, had failed.

Each side blamed the other for breaching the Eid-ul-Zuha truce arranged by international envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, who nevertheless promised to pursue his peace efforts.
“I am deeply disappointed that the parties failed to respect the call to suspend fighting,” Ban said in Seoul, where he was visiting to receive the Seoul Peace Prize.

“This crisis cannot be solved with more weapons and bloodshed ... the guns must fall silent,” he said. Brahimi, after meeting Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, voiced regret that the ceasefire had not worked better. Asked whether U N peacekeepers might be sent to Syria, he said there was no immediate plan for that. According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition watchdog, 420 people have been killed since Friday.