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With one day left until the United Nations' special envoy Kofi Annan's cease-fire plan comes into effect, Syrian security forces are waging an unyielding campaign of violence against rebel forces across the country. Last week, Annan announced that Assad had agreed to a 6-point peace plan stipulating the withdrawal of government forces from population centers by tomorrow. The rebels warned the agreement was a ploy for Assad to buy time and kill as many rebels as possible. It's becoming difficult to see the U.N. peace deal in any other light. Is this what the beginnings of a cease-fire looks like?
On Sunday, Syrian soliders killed 87 civilians, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, half of them in a raid on the central village of al-Latamneh. Today, security forces killed 50 people, according to Al Arabiya. “Mortar rounds are falling like rain,” activist Tarek Badrakhan told the Associated Press. In a description of an assault on the central city of Homs, he told the news agency the regime was exploiting the peace deal to “to kill and commit massacres.” The fighting has even spread beyond Syria's borders. Today, Turkey is protesting cross-border shootings targeted at refugees housed in Turkey who were attacked by security forces, reports the BBC. Additionally, a Lebanese cameraman was shot killed on the Syria-Lebanon border. At the same time, the AFP news agency has uncovered a video of Syrian troops allegedly torturing an anti-government rebel in the capital, Damascus. The video (Warning: graphic content) shows a man lying on his stomach getting beaten and kicked, with a man in fatigues pressing his boot to his neck: