Syrian army continues offensive despite ceasefire deadline

Doubts have been cast over the possibility of  Al-Assad complying with a UN-brokered ceasefire deadline The United Nations and Arab League special envoy for Syria, Kofi Annan, has welcomed Iranian support for his efforts to secure peace in the country, telling

Tehran that it can be "part of the solution".
Annan was speaking in the Iranian capital on Wednesday following talks with Ali Akbar Salehi, the Iranian foreign minister.
The peace envoy stressed on the need to find a way to end the killing and start the process of providing humanitarian assistance to those in need.
"The political process must be Syrian-led and respect the aspirations of the Syrian people," Annan said. "What is important is that governments in the region and beyond working  with Syria to resolve the crisis.
"The geopolitical position of Syria is such that any miscalculation can have unimaginable consequences."
Replying to a question on whether he supported calls by countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar to arm the Syrian opposition, Annan said "any further militarisation will be disastrous".
The Iranian foreign minister, Salehi, stated Iran supported Annan's efforts but that President Bashar al-Assad's government needed to be given time to implement promised reforms.
Syria faced a deadline on Tuesday to withdraw its forces from urban areas to comply with a UN-brokered ceasefire, but regime troops were accused of massacres in the early hours which rounded off a previous day of shelling villages and firing across frontiers.
Students were reportedly protesting against the Syrian regime at Aleppo University on Wednesday.
There were clashes between student protesters and the security forces at the university dorms on Tuesday, with teargas fired and projectiles thrown.
The Local Co-ordination Committees (LCC) activist network said there had been shelling in the Homs neighbourhoods of Qarabees and Jourah al-Shiah. The Committees also reported renewed shelling in Zabadani, in the western mountains, in Damascus suburbs. "Mortar fire started at 7 this morning. I can hear one explosion every five minutes," said opposition activist Waleed al-Fares from the central city of Homs. The Khalidiya neighbourhood, where bombardment killed at least 26 people on Tuesday, was again under attack, he said. In southern Deraa, birthplace of the 13-month-old revolt against four decades of Assad family rule. Activists said many busloads of troops backed by armoured vehicles had flooded the city and were making house-to-house raids. Activist Omar al-Hariri said he had never seen so many troops: "The army is exploiting the ceasefire to arrest more dissidents than ever and security forces are burning houses. It also reported tanks firing in the southern town of Deraa and military aircraft flying over Latakia and Duamair, in Damascus suburbs.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "tens of army vehicles" were deploying in the southern town of Maaraba, in Deraa, amid intense shooting.
The Syrian foreign minister, Walid al-Muallem, claimed "the Syrian government has withdrawn army units from some provinces, yet terrorism activities escalated and spread to other areas".
Also on Wednesday Turkish media reported shots fired by Syrian forces,  hit a Syrian refugee camp just across the border with Turkey.
The Turkish news channel CNN-Turk showed images of machine gunfire towards Turkish territory from a border surveillance building flying the Syrian flag near Kilis in southeastern Turkey.
Several local television stations reported that regime troops had fired at local Syrians trying to cross the border to seek refuge from the violence affecting their homeland.
There were no casualties.
Annan, using his position as special envoy to full effect in his shuttle diplomacy with all parties, stated that he was told by Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov that his Syrian counterpart informed him that Damascus no longer wanted written communication.  "I asked Annan to contact the armed groups and the countries supporting them ... I asked him to send me a letter on the results of these communications," said Muallem after his meeting with Lavrov, affirming that the Syrian government was prepared for national dialogue when the opposition was ready for it.
Lavrov also cited a little-remembered fact - that there are more than 100,000 Russians living in Syria, and the Russian embassy in Syria sends information that show that the opposition in Syria wasn't entirely peaceful. He explained that Russia received information about the discovery of landmines, explosives and weapons and many terrorist activities that affected several cities and the shelling of Syrian armed forces by the opposition.
Annan had insisted his plan "has not failed" and that Syria still had time to comply with the ceasefire deadline.
Muallem said observers would be accepted "as long as Syria has a say in the choice of countries from which the observers come and that they respect Syria's sovereignty".
The plan stipulated that Syrian government forces should pull back from populated areas from April 10, which would allow for cessation of all hostilities 48 hours later.
The previous day Annan told a press conference in Turkey's southern Hatay province, where he visited Syrian refugee camps that he had information the Syrian military was withdrawing from some areas but moving to others not previously targeted.
He said: "We still have time between now and the 12th (Thursday) to stop violence," he said.
"I appeal to all, the government in the first place...to halt fighting."He also said that the violence must stop without conditions.
The opposition Syrian National Council however indicated it was prepared to wait until Thursday to see if progress was made.
"If the regime continues its shelling with mortars and tanks and does not commit to a ceasefire and to pull back the tanks and the troops, then we will resume the fight to defend our people," said Colonel Qassem Saad al-Deen, a spokesperson of the Free Syrian Army.
The United Nations says Syrian forces have killed 9,000 people in 13 months, while Assad’s government says rebels have killed more than 3,000 soldiers and security personnel.
Government curbs on the media limit independent reporting from inside Syria.