The first group of Arab League monitors has arrived in Syria amid reports that deaths are mounting from an ongoing security crackdown on anti-government protests.

The team, led by Sudanese General Mustafa Dabi, will start its mission by visiting the besieged city of Homs on Tuesday, a source told Reuters news agency.

The team is also due to visit Damascus, Hama and Idlib in the same day, the source said. The delegation expects "to be able to move freely between hospital, prisons and detention centers all over Syria”.

The arrival of 50 observers and 10 Arab League officials came as activists reported the deaths of at least 45 people around the country on Monday, 33 of them in Homs.

The observers' mission is part of a plan seeking to put an end to the government's crackdown, which the United Nations estimates to have killed more than 5,000 people since March.

Cannot work

An advance team of monitors arrived in Damascus on Thursday to lay the groundwork for the observer mission to oversee the implementation of the peace plan.

Burhan Ghalioun, head of the opposition Syrian National Council (SNC), said some of the observers were in Homs "but they are saying they cannot go where the authorities do not want them to go”.

Ghalioun also sought UN and Arab League intervention "to put an end to this tragedy", and urged the UN Security Council to "adopt the Arab League's plan and ensure that it is applied”.

"The plan to defuse the crisis is a good plan, but I do not believe the Arab League really has the means [to enforce it]," he told reporters in Paris.

"It is better if the UN Security Council takes this plan, adopts it and provides the means for its application”.

The Arab League plan endorsed by Syria on November 2 calls for the withdrawal of the military from towns and residential districts, a halt to violence against civilians and the release of detainees.

President Bashar al-Assad's government has been accused of intensifying its crackdown since signing the agreement.

Homs slaughter

Residents in Homs said on Monday that army tanks fired shells, machine guns and mortars into their neighborhoods. Amateur video filmed by anti-government activists showed carnage in the city.

"What is happening is a slaughter," said Fadi, a resident near the Bab Amr neighborhood” told Reuters "They hit people with mortar fire”."

Bab Amr has been one of the hardest hit areas of Homs, a focal point of the Assad government's crackdown on nine months of anti-government demonstrations.

Some parts of Homs have also seen fierce clashes between the Syrian army and the so-called Free Syrian Army which is made up of army defectors who say they decided to side with protesters.

There have been reports that deserters have been able to inflict casualties on the army.

"The violence is definitely two-sided," said a resident who gave his name only as Mohammed. "I've been seeing ambulances filled with wounded soldiers passing by my window in the past days. They're getting shot somehow”.

The opposition SNC said on Sunday that Homs was under siege and facing an invasion" from about 4,000 troops deployed near the city”.

PHOTO CAPTION

professor and President of the Syrian National Council, Burhan Ghalioun gives a press conference on December 26, 2011 at the Institute for Middle East Mediterranean Research and Studies (iReMMO) in Paris.

Aljazeera