Damascus residents reported artillery barrages by Syrian troops hours before today's scheduled start of a ceasefire to mark the Muslim holiday of Eid al-Adha.
They said that on Thursday night troops stationed on a mountain overlooking the Syrian capital targeted Hajar al-Aswad, a poor neighbourhood inhabited by refugees from the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
"Consecutive artillery volleys from Qasioun shook my home," said Omar, an engineer who lives in al-Muhajereen district on a foothill of the mountain.
On Thursday, a Free Syrian Army commander gave qualified backing to the truce, proposed by United Nations-Arab League envoy Lakhdar Brahimi, but he demanded that President Bashar al-Assad free detainees. An Islamist group said it was not committed to the truce, but may halt operations if the army did.
Brahimi proposed the temporary truce to stem, however briefly, the bloodshed in a conflict that erupted as popular protests in March last year and has since escalated into a civil war that activists say has killed more than 32,000 people.
