Syria protests Live Blog

Reuters reports that activist video posted online shows bulldozers, which activists say were used to dig mass graves.
Dozens of men stand around the vehicles, purportedly preparing the bodies for burial.

Violence in Syria killed four civilians on Saturday, one of them a woman, a rights watchdog said, even as a UN mission
charged with overseeing a battered truce neared half its planned strength.

In Idlib province, a stronghold of rebels fighting President Bahar al-Assad's regime, security force gunfire killed a man and a woman during a series of raids, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

A third civilian was killed during pre-dawn shelling of the village of Mork in central Hama province, the Britain-based watchdog said, while a fourth was killed by sniper fire in the northeastern city of Deir Ez-zor.

Troops clashed with rebel fighters in Idlib, in the flashpoint central province of Homs, in southern Daraa province, and in several areas of Damascus province, the Observatory said, without any immediate word of casualties.

The persistent violence came as the UN mission in Syria said it now had 145 military observers on the ground, just shy of half the force of 300 authorised by the Security Council.

They are backed by 56 civilian staff. [AFP]

Two Turkish journalists who were detained for two months in Syria are on their way home following mediation by Iran,
Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced Saturday.

"I have just spoken with Iranian Foreign Minister [Ali Akbar] Salehi. Our two journalists, Adem Ozkose and Hamit Coskun, about whom we had no news since they left for Syria, are on their way to Tehran now," Davutoglu said on Twitter.

"We expect them to arrive in Tehran shortly. At the request of our prime minister we are sending a plane to Iran to pick up our journalists," he added.

The minister did not state whether the pair had been handed over to Iranian authorities.

Coskun, a cameraman, and reporter Ozkose of the newspaper Milat entered Syria in early March to film a documentary on the bloody crackdown on dissent in the country.

They were last seen on March 9 near the rebel stronghold of Idlib, in the northwest near the border with Turkey. [AFP]

UN leader Ban Ki-moon has said that ceasefire monitors had reported Syria is 'in contravention' of an agreed
peace plan by keeping troops and heavy weapons in cities.

Ban also said he was "gravely alarmed" by reports of shelling of populated areas in Syria, in a statement released by his office.