Syrian shelling targets Damascus suburb despite U.N. monitors" visit The activist, who uses the pseudonym Adam Nasir, said that observers came to Douma on Wednesday after an initial visit on Monday, when they were mobbed by people eager to tell them about a months-long military crackdown and waves of arrests in the area. "I met them myself," he said. I told them everything about the humanitarian situation, the martyrs, the injured, everything we had. But on Tuesday, government forces began using heavy weapons in Douma again, Nasir said, defying a clause in the cease-fire agreement worked out by special envoy Kofi Annan and endorsed by Assad that requires a halt to shelling in urban areas. On Wednesday, according to Syrian state media, some observers went back to Douma, but Nasir said the group fled when shooting resumed. "These observers, how do they help us?" he said, expressing a frustration common among activists across Syria. The regime doesn't care about the observers. Speaking to the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, Annan emphasized concerns that people in the central province of Hama, where dozens of civilians were reportedly killed on Monday, had been targeted after opposition leaders spoke to U.N. monitors over the weekend. Independent confirmation of death tolls is impossible because of Syrian reporting restrictions. There are currently fewer than 20 monitors in Syria, and Annan has urged the rapid deployment of the 300 unarmed military personnel who are set to make up the full mission, but the head of U.N. peacekeeping operations, Herve Ladsous, has said it will take a month for the first 100 members of the contingent to reach the country. Some officials have expressed alarm at the pace of deployment of a mission that was agreed to in principle at the beginning of the month, drawing attention to the ongoing violence that, while diminished, is still causing the deaths of dozens of civilians, security forces and armed opposition members every week. "This cannot continue indefinitely," French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe told reporters in Paris on Wednesday. We want to see observers in sufficient numbers, at least 300 ... deployed as quickly as possible. Emile Hokayem of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Bahrain said there had also been no word on whether the monitors would have their own assets, such as helicopters. "The Syrian government wants to drag on the negotiations over the makeup and the nature of the operations as long as possible," he said. Although U.N. officials have conceded that the cessation of violence on which the planned peacekeeping mission depends has been repeatedly violated by both sides, they insist that Annan's plan represents the best chance for resolving the 13-month-old crisis. But some fear that the Syrian government has little incentive to withdraw military forces from urban areas. "Annan risks being dragged into conflict management instead of conflict resolution," Hokayem said.