Is Syria's ceasefire officially dead?

Anti-government forces resume attacks, saying the Assad regime never respected the peace deal, leaving little hope for an end to the fighting

Members of the Free Syrian Army prepare to fight on February 23, 2012: The anti-Assad group has taken up arms once again because, it says, the Assad regime had never taken the April 12 ceasef
(Image credit: Alessio Romenzi/CORBIS)

Syrian rebels announced Monday that they were abandoning their commitment to U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan's ceasefire plan, because, they said, the regime of President Bashar al-Assad had never respected it anyway. In the wake of the May 25 Houla massacre, which has been blamed on pro-Assad forces, opposition fighters had given the government until last Friday to end the violence. After the deadline passed, Free Syrian Army forces reportedly killed 80 government soldiers in a surge of attacks over the weekend. Annan, who is briefing the United Nations Security Council and meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton this Friday, called on international leaders to step up their efforts to enforce his peace plan, which he said was the "only option on the table." At this point, though, is it safe to say that the ceasefire deal is a lost cause?

The ceasefire is history: The latest violence makes it official: "The Annan plan is dead and there is no Plan B," says Linda Carbonell at Lez Get Real. Russia and China say they're on board with Annan's plan, but "they are still resisting any new sanctions or intervention," and "Russia, like Iran, is ignoring bans on arms sales to Syria's government." Assad compares the killing in Homs and Houla "to a surgeon removing a cancerous growth to save the life of the patient" — when a leader considers his people to be a cancer, there can be no peace.

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