BEIRUT — Fighting raged across Syria on Monday, including just a few miles from where President Bashar Al-Assad had unveiled a “peace plan” that Syrians on both sides said would do nothing to end a 21-month-old uprising. Hours after Assad addressed cheering loyalists at the Damascus Opera House on Sunday in his first public speech in months, clashes erupted near the road to the city's international airport, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The opposition-linked group said artillery hit the district of Arqaba, 3 miles (5 km) from the Opera House. Fighting continued all night and into Monday around the capital, as well as in the northern provinces of Idlib and Aleppo, it said. In central Syria, the towns of Taybet Imam and Halfaya were bombarded with aerial strikes and artillery, said Abu Faisal, an activist speaking over the Internet from Taybet Imam. “Every four to five minutes, we hear the burst from a rocket. We cannot get any wounded out because we are essentially under siege by the shelling,” he said, adding that many civilians had fled. Taybet Imam sits on an entrance to Syria's main north-south highway, close to the central city of Hama. The government restricts access by international media and the accounts could not be verified. Damascus residents said Assad's speech, which offered no concessions to his foes, was met with celebratory gunfire in pro-Assad neighborhoods. But even there, some saw no sign peace was closer: A loyalist resident of southern Damascus reached by Internet said the speech was eloquent but empty. France, the United States, Britain and Turkey all said Assad's speech, his first to an audience since June last year, showed he had lost touch with reality after unrest that the United Nations says has killed 60,000 people. The United States, Britain and Turkey have all dismissed the speech and France used similar language on Monday. “Bashar Al-Assad's speech is further evidence of just how far he has cut himself off from reality in order to justify his repression of the Syrian people,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Philippe Lalliot said. There was no immediate response from Moscow, which has acted as Assad's main protector on the diplomatic stage. Russian state offices were quiet for the Orthodox Christmas holiday. In Vatican City, Pope Benedict urged the world on Monday to end what he called the endless slaughter in Syria before the entire country becomes a “a field of ruins”. He was speaking in his yearly “state of the world” address to diplomats from nearly 180 countries and global organizations. Syria is bring “torn apart by endless slaughter and (is) the scene of dreadful suffering among its civilian population,” he said. The pope called for an “end to a conflict which will know no victors but only vanquished if it continues, leaving behind it nothing but a field of ruins”. — Reuters
