Syrian forces attack as UN sends monitors The Syrian government shelled the central city of Homs hours before a UN peacekeeping team was due to arrive on Sunday, activists said, stoking fears that the country's shaky three-day truce is unravelling. Government forces pounded Syria's third biggest city for a second consecutive day, according to the UK-based Syrian Human Rights Observatory, killing at least two people. Rebels meanwhile were reported to have attacked a police station in rural Aleppo governorate in northern Syria, as state news said the government would confront the "terrorist groups" it accuses of having stepped up operations since a UN brokered ceasefire came in to effect on Thursday. However, despite several reported violations of the ceasefire, casualty levels have dropped significantly since the truce was agreed. "All I can say is that it (the ceasefire) is fragile, very fragile, that's why we need to move quickly," said UN spokesperson Ahmad Fawzi. An advance team of six unarmed UN ceasefire monitors was due to arrive in Syria on Sunday evening after the Security Council's first resolution on Saturday on the thirteen-month old crisis, which authorised the deployment of up to 30 ceasefire monitors. The team, which is led by a Moroccan colonel, will be supplemented in the coming days from existing peacekeeping deployments in the region, Mr Fawzi said. Increasing the deployment to the 250 the UN wants to send will require another resolution from the UN Security Council. Saturday's Security Council resolution also called on the government to pull back its military and stop using heavy weapons in populated areas in line with its commitment to the UN's six point plan for ending the crisis in Syria, of which the ceasefire is just one component. The plan, put forward by UN and Arab League envoy Kofi Annan to address rising violence, calls for an eventual political solution to the crisis. Many doubt the sincerity of the regime's public commitment to the Annan plan however, and there are concerns that UN mission is not strong enough to effectively monitor its implementation. The resolution calls on the Syrian government to allow the monitors "full, unimpeded and immediate freedom of movement and access" and private communication. Syrian government spokesperson Bouthaina Shaaban said on Sunday that Damascus had to participate in deciding "the duration of the work of observers and priorities of their movement," because it could not otherwise be responsible for their security. "This is an extremely tough regime, and you need a very robust mandate to deal with them because they'll attempt at every stage to undermine the mission," said Michael Williams, a fellow of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and former UN official. An official from the much-criticised Arab League monitoring mission, which was disbanded amid a surge in violence earlier this year, said that the UN observers risked encountering the same problems they did. "From what we have now its difficult to assess it would be different (to the Arab League mission)," said the official