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Despite the latest violence, the Arab League appeared to be going ahead with plans to send in its first delegation of monitors on Thursday. The advance team, led by the League's assistant secretary-general, Sameer Seif el-Yazal, was to arrive in Syria later in the day. The team is to arrange logistics for an upcoming mission of around 20 experts in military affairs and human rights, which will head for Syria on Sunday, led by Lt. Gen. Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa of Sudan. Another team of 100 observers will leave for Syria within two weeks, according to the plan. Fresh raids and indiscriminate shooting by government forces on Thursday killed at least six people in the central city of Homs, and in the south and northern provinces, according to the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the Local Coordination Committees. Syrian activists have accused Assad's regime of an "organized massacre" in Kfar Owaid, in Syria's Idlib province about 30 miles from the northern border with Turkey. Members of Syria's opposition said the bloodshed was evidence of the authoritarian leader's intent to intensify its crackdown on the uprising before the Arab observers arrive. The death toll from two days of violence this week topped 200, including up to 70 army defectors killed near the city of Idlib, the activists said.
[Associated
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