Syrian official: Our troops are now pulling back Updated 10:19 p.m. (AP) BEIRUT - Syrian troops began pulling out Tuesday from some calm cities and headed back to their bases a week ahead of a deadline to implement an international cease-fire plan, a government official said. The claim could not immediately be verified and activists near the capital Damascus denied troops were leaving their area. They said the day regime forces withdraw from streets, Syria will witness massive protests that will overthrow the government. "Forces began withdrawing to outside calm cities and are returning to their bases, while in tense areas, they are pulling out to the outskirts," the government official told The Associated Press in Damascus without saying when the withdrawal began. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media. President Bashar Assad agreed just days ago to an April 10 deadline to implement international envoy Kofi Annan's truce plan. It requires regime forces to withdraw from towns and cities and observe a cease-fire. Rebel fighters are to immediately follow by ceasing violence. Red Cross presses for aid access in Syria Clinton: Assad regime showing some weakness Syrian forces, rebels fight ahead of deadline Khaled al-Omar, an activist in the Damascus suburb of Saqba, denied that any withdrawal was under way in his area. This is impossible. I can see a checkpoint from my window," he said via Skype, adding the regime forces were still in the main square. Earlier in the day, opposition activists charged that the regime was racing to crush opponents ahead of the cease-fire deadline by carrying out intense raids, arrests and shelling on Tuesday. Opposition activists have blasted Annan's plan as too little, too late and are particularly angry that it does not call for Assad to leave power - the central demand of the uprising. They suspect Assad will manipulate the plan and use it to stall for time while his forces continue to crack down. "He thinks he can win more time to take control of all Syrian cities," activist Adel al-Omari said by phone from the southern town of Dael, where regime forces have been torching activists' homes since they raided on Monday. Also Tuesday, Amnesty International said people are still being arrested across Syria, including 13 students who were beaten at their school in the Damascus suburb of Daraya. The organization said it received the names of 232 individuals, including 17 children, who were reported to have been killed since Syria agreed to the plan on March 27. "The evidence shows that Assad's supposed agreement to the Annan plan is having no impact on the ground," said Suzanne Nossel, executive director of Amnesty International USA. She said the government must released thousands of prisoners, stop arrests and halt violence "Otherwise, the only conclusion we can draw is that Syria has made empty promises once more," Nossel said. Russia's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that Syria had informed its close ally Moscow that it has started implementing the plan. The ministry's statement did not say which troops - if any - had been withdrawn or provide further details. Another activist group, the Local Coordination Committees, said at least 13 people were killed nationwide, six of them in Homs province and 5 in the raid of Taftanaz.