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A United Nations convoy makes its way through Douma, Syria, on Tuesday.

DOUMA, Syria -- Surrounded by ancient olive groves, Douma is just ten miles from Damascus but it feels like another world. It is a city under occupation. 

In Damascus, vehicles slow to a halt due to traffic jams. In Douma, there is no traffic. Only a few empty cars are parked on the roadside. 

Shoppers crowd the capital's sidewalks and restaurants do a brisk business. But in neighboring Douma, sidewalks are empty and most of the shops are shuttered with corrugated metal sheets or padlocked steel doors. 

NBC's Ayman Mohyeldin answers Syria questions

A few people walk quickly down the empty streets on what must be only the most necessary of errands. They stare straight ahead or look down as they walk. 

Except for the noise of our three-vehicle convoy speeding through town, there is silence. 

On Tuesday, we drove behind two vans of United Nations observers on a mission to Douma and Harasta to monitor the cease-fire. 

Both cities have been bastions of resistance against the regime where residents stage flash demonstrations even after months of brutal crackdowns. 

Report: Syria rebels get better weapons as US boosts support

However, there isn't much of a cease-fire left to monitor. Syria is wracked by mounting violence and the U.N. teams have been caught up in two explosions and a shooting. 

So it's no surprise they speed down the streets and get out of their vans only twice in violence-prone Douma.

Some residents seem worried that the U.N. presence will spur attacks. A man standing with his little daughter and son pulls the girl inside and yanks his unwilling and crying son behind the metal door of his house as we pass. He slams the door shut.

A message to Assad? War games held miles from Syria border

Our driver points out snipers in the tall building in front of us. 

Every few blocks we pass through military checkpoints, with armed troops behind sand-bagged barricades.

Little interaction
Led by a Moroccan, the U.N. monitors stop briefly at checkpoints to ask Syrian security if there has been any violence. A U.N. 'blue cap' shakes hands with a tiny child in a car stopped at a checkpoint. Otherwise, we do not see the U.N. interact with or talk to civilians.

They get out of their vans at a main checkpoint and the team leader waves us away as he goes to talk with a plainclothes officer in private. As we wait, police, soldiers and plainclothes security look nervously around. 

A soldier explains why they are on edge. "They shoot at us from here and there," he says as he points to neighboring buildings.

He claims the opposition still manages to evade the tight security cordon to spirit in weapons and ammunition. But the military shoots back. 

Syria violence spills into streets of Lebanon's Tripoli

According to activists, a civilian was killed in Douma the day we visited and YouTube video which NBC News cannot verify later showed snipers shooting randomly at the city's streets.      

We cross into Harasta, a much livelier town. It is market day. A few shoppers check out vegetables heaped on trays. 

We jostle for position with other cars. Some stores are open and a few shoppers buy bread from a functioning bakery.

Oddly, the town is still silent. There is no chatter or laughter as people go about their business. 

It is as if the city is on mute. 

We pass back through the tense quiet of Douma on our way to the main highway to Damascus. 

We are rejoined by a car full of Syrian intelligence and three carloads of journalists from pro-regime Syrian TV and Al Dunya TV who accompanied us to Douma. They had elected to wait outside the city, unwilling to risk the anger of local residents. 

Our visit, however fleeting, revealed a part of Syria normally seen only in grainy activist video.

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U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon "strongly condemned" two suicide car bombings in Syria Thursday, calling for an end to armed violence on all sides.

"The secretary-general strongly condemns today's attacks in Damascus," Ban's spokesman Martin Nesirky told reporters, according to Reuters.

Photoblog: Twin Damascus blasts

"It's an urgent call from him on all sides fully to comply with their obligations to cease armed violence in all its forms, and to protect civilians, as well as to distance themselves from indiscriminate bombings and other terrorist attacks," he said.

Fifty-five people were killed and 372 were wounded when two cars exploded in Damascus earlier on Thursday, Syrian state media said.

Syria's foreign ministry said the bombing was a sign the country is facing foreign-backed terrorism and called on the United Nations Security Council to take measures against countries or groups supporting violence in the revolt against President Bashar Assad.

Syria suicide bombers kill 55, truce in tatters

"Syria stresses the importance of the UNSC taking measures against countries, groups and news agencies that are practicing and encouraging terrorism," the state news agency SANA quoted the ministry as saying in a letter addressed to the Security Council.

The uprising against Assad began 14 months ago, and the United Nations reported at least 9,000 people have died.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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A Syrian official checks the identification of individuals before they vote in the parliamentary elections at a polling station in Damascus on Monday.

Updated at 11:30 a.m. ET: Polls opened in what Syria's government said were its first multiparty elections in about 50 years on Monday, after renewed fighting between rebels and President Bashar Assad's forces reportedly broke out in an oil-producing part of the country.

The opposition have said the election will change little in a rubber-stamp assembly that has been chosen by the Assad family, backed by the powerful secret police, for the past four decades. 

The voting for Syria's 250 member parliament is unlikely to affect the course of Syria's popular uprising, which began 13 months ago with anti-Assad protests. The regime has violently cracked down on dissent and many in the opposition have armed themselves, pushing the country toward civil war.

Polls opened at 7 a.m. and Syrian state TV showed voters lining up and dropping white ballots in large, plastic boxes. Election officials say more than 7,000 candidates are competing seats in the legislature in a country of almost 15 million eligible voters out of a population of 24 million.

The elections are the first under a new constitution, adopted three months ago. The charter for the first time allows the formation of political parties to compete with Assad's ruling Baath party and limits the president to two seven-year terms.

Some members of the opposition remained skeptical.

"Syria's political system remains utterly corrupt and election results will be again determined in advance," opposition activist Bassam Ishaq, who unsuccessfully ran for parliament in 2003 and 2007, told Reuters.  "There are effectively very few seats for independents, and these will go to the highest bidder."

Significant and important members of the opposition were also not able to participate in the elections, Abdulwahab Sayed-Omar, spokesman for British Solidarity for Syria, told msnbc.com.

"Arguably the most prominent political opposition group is the Muslim Brotherhood," he said. "(But) not only is it banned and illegal, but people who support it get the death penalty."

Bashar al-Haraki, a member of opposition Syrian National Council, told the BBC the elections were a "farce which an be added to the regime's masquerade."

While the opposition have dismissed the vote as a sham, authorities say they are fighting foreign-backed terrorists who are bent on sabotaging what state media describe as a reform program that is more advanced than in Western democracies.

Backed by old ally Russia, and with support from Iran's clerical Shiite rulers, Assad, who belongs to Syria's Alawite minority, an offshoot of Shiite Islam, has relied on the Alawite-dominated military to try to put down the uprising against his repressive rule. 

Unlike the autocratic leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen, who have been toppled by Arab Spring revolts, Assad has retained enough support among the military and among his Alawite sect, which dominates the army and security apparatus, to withstand the popular revolt. 

Population 'trapped'
Rebels armed with rocket-propelled grenades attacked tank positions in the east of the provincial capital Deir al-Zor on Sunday, in response to an army offensive against towns and villages in the tribal area bordering Iraq that has killed tens of people and stopped others reaching supplies and medical care, they said. 

"We do not have a death toll because no one is daring to go into the streets," Ghaith Abdelsalam, an opposition activist who lives near Ghassan Abboud roundabout that has become a flash-point for the fighting in the city, told Reuters. 

"The population has been trapped and anger has been building up," he said, adding the fighting subsided in the morning after erupting overnight. 

The army still has tanks and heavy weapons in cities and towns and rebels are continuing their attacks on military convoys and army roadblocks that have cut off swathes of the country, according to witnesses and opposition sources, both sides in violation of ceasefire being monitored by a U.N. team.

Bold move as Syria leader makes time for chess

Fifty out of a planned total of 300 U.N. observers are now in Syria to monitor the ceasefire declared on April 12, but their presence has not halted 14 months of violence. The United Nations says 9,000 have been killed during the crackdown.

The Syrian Network for Human Rights, an opposition organisation that documents the violence, said Assad's forces killed three people on Sunday, including Ali Arnous, a young man in the town of Tel north of Damascus. 

A YouTube video showed thousands of people marching at Arnous's funeral, chanting "Raise your head high, father of the martyr," and carrying a huge green Syrian flag from the era before Assad's Baath Party seized power in a 1963 coup. 

A grave containing the bodies of six other people the network said were killed by Assad's forces was discovered in Oram al-Joz, one of dozens of towns and villages in Idlib, which has been overrun by the military in the past few months. 

Footage and accounts by activists are hard to verify conclusively because the government restricts media access. 

Also on Sunday, Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told Syrian refugees on Sunday that victory for the rebels was not far off and that Assad was "losing blood" by the day. 

Erdogan, who is trying to rally international support against Assad, was met with enthusiastic applause and shouts of "Long live Erodgan" at the Kilis camp on Turkey's border with Syria, which is sheltering 9,000 refugees from the violence. 

"Your victory is not far. We have just one issue: to stop the bloodshed and tears and for the Syrian people's demands to be met," he told the crowd. 

Reuters, The Associated Press and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report. 

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Joseph Eid / AFP - Getty Images

A picture shows destruction in the Bayyada district of the flashpoint Syrian city of Homs on Saturday.

Heavy fighting between rebels and government troops erupted in the capital of an oil producing province in eastern Syria, residents and activists said on Sunday, the latest escalation of violence in a tribal area bordering Iraq.

Rebels armed with rocket-propelled grenades attacked tank positions in the eastern sector of the city of Deir al-Zor on the Euphrates river into the early hours of Sunday, in response to an army offensive against several towns and villages in the province that have killed tens of people in recent days, they said.

"The fighting subsided early in the morning. We do not have a death toll because no one is daring to go into the streets," said Ghaith Abdelsalam, an opposition activist who lives near Ghassan Abboud roundabout. At least five army tanks had been deployed on each street leading to the roundabout, a flashpoint for the fighting, he added. 

On Saturday, explosion killed several people in Aleppo and two blasts hit a Damascus highway on Saturday in further signs that rebels fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad are shifting tactics towards homemade explosives. 

Syria's state news agency said three people had been killed, one of them a child, and 21 wounded by a booby-trapped car in the northern city of Aleppo. 

 The British-based Syrian Observatory for Humans Rights, which monitors the 14-month-old revolt against Assad, said the blast killed five and wrecked a car wash in Tal al-Zarazeer, one of the poorest suburbs of Syria's commercial hub. 

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BEIRUT - Syrian security forces and students armed with knives stormed a protest march at Aleppo University early on Thursday, activists said, killing four and rounding up 200 demonstrators demanding President Bashar Assad step down.

The pre-dawn raid was an unusually bloody incident for Aleppo, Syria's normally fairly peaceful commercial hub, and prompted condemnation from the White House. It accused Assad of making "no effort" to honor a three-week-old U.N. truce and warned that world powers might do more to bring change to Syria.

"If the regime's intransigence continues, the international community is going to have to admit defeat and work to address the serious threat to peace and stability being perpetrated by the Assad regime," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

"Political transition is urgently needed in Syria."

Western powers back the 14-month revolt but lack appetite for the kind of military intervention seen last year in Libya. Assad has counted on support from Russia and China to block U.N. sanctions. However, Moscow and Beijing backed the ceasefire plan brokered by envoy Kofi Annan and Western states might hope to prevail on them to agree to penalize Assad if it collapses.

On Thursday, however, the head of the monitoring mission dispatched to Syria under the plan said the team of U.N. observers in the country was having a calming effect.

Bold move as Syria leader makes time for chess

Yet a Reuters team in the opposition center of Homs during the day heard continuous gunfire and the occasional sound of shelling, despite a permanent presence of monitors there.

Video posted on the Internet showed students in Aleppo chanting against four decades of Assad family rule but being drowned out by gunfire. Activists posted images of a dead student, drenched in blood, and what they said was a burning dormitory. Small solidarity protests broke out in other universities across Syria, videos uploaded by activists showed.

A British-based opposition group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said 28 other students were wounded overnight, three critically.

Knife-wielding youths attacked fellow students marching from their dormitories, the group said, followed by a security force raid on the latest march of a growing student protest movement.

"Freedom forever in spite of you, Assad!" chanted the young demonstrators in a video shot in the morning twilight.

There was no comment from officials and it was not possible to verify the account from the northern city, whose relatively prosperous, business-oriented population has been reluctant to join the 14-month-old revolt against Assad.

Many members of Syria's middle classes and religious minorities are wary of the uprising dominated by majority Sunni Muslims against Assad and the elite around him, drawn largely from his Alawite minority. They fear it could descend into the kind of sectarian and ethnic bloodbath they have watched destroy neighboring Iraq over recent years.

Assad says he is fighting foreign-backed "terrorists" and his international friends, including in Moscow, point out that rebels too have mounted attacks in breach of the ceasefire.

Another truce breach
From Aleppo, anti-Assad activists uploaded video of a burning residence block, its windows shattered. Dormitory hallways appeared to have been smashed up and men were dragging furniture outside as students screamed.

Other videos showed crowds of students leaving the campus with suitcases and bundles of clothes. Activists say busloads of security forces had taken over the dormitories, which were where students usually began the protests. Student activists said they had been ordered to move out by Thursday afternoon.

The truce brokered by former U.N. Secretary General Annan has led to a small reduction in the daily carnage, mostly in cities were monitors are deployed permanently.

The head of the monitoring mission, Major General Robert Mood from Norway, told reporters during a trip to Hama on Thursday that observers were having a "calming effect" and that state forces appeared willing to cooperate with the truce.

"There have been steps taken by the government forces on the ground that indicate a better willingness to live up to the commitments made in the agreement," he said, giving no details.

Still, the Reuters team could hear mortars exploding in the Khalidiya neighborhood of Homs at a rate of one a minute. They also reported the sound of heavy gunfire but did not know where it was coming from.

Explosions rocked the rebellious Jabal al-Zawiya area in Idlib and at least one woman was killed by security force fire, the Observatory said. Security forces followed up by raiding the area and arresting several men.

Clashes between rebels and the army also flared in Palmyra, home to historic Roman ruins in central Syria.

Mood, speaking in Homs later on Thursday, said that observer mission was growing as a steady pace, with a total of 50 monitors in the country which would be doubled within weeks.

"We have reinforced our permanent teams in Hama and Deraa with an extra two monitors in each city," he said from the al-Safir hotel in Homs, where six monitors are based permanently.

Around 300 monitors will be deployed by the end of May.

In Washington, the White House spokesman expressed doubts at whether the truce would hold, however:

"It is certainly our hope that the Annan plan succeeds," Carney said. "We remain, based on the evidence, highly skeptical of Assad's willingness to meet the conditions of that plan, because he has so clearly failed to meet them thus far."

'They have to shoot us all'
While the city of Aleppo itself has rarely seen clashes, it has not been free of assassinations, apparently by rebels. The Observatory reported the killing overnight of Ismail Haidar, son of the head of a pro-Assad political party.

Syria's news agency said another state figure, national basketball team player Bassel al-Raya, succumbed to his wounds on Thursday after being attacked by unidentified gunmen a week earlier.

At Aleppo University, activists said small protests continued to break out sporadically on the campus. "Our anger will breed more hope. If we have to go to the streets, we will," said a student activist called Mustafa. "They can't stop the students, even if they have to shoot us all."

While most opposition areas in Syria have been overtaken by an armed revolt, peaceful anti-Assad protests had continued almost daily at the university in Aleppo.

It is hard to assess if those protests reflect widespread sentiment among the younger generation native to the city or whether students living there who come from rebellious hotspots such as Idlib and Deraa might be taking a lead in Aleppo.

Syria's uprising began in March 2011 with peaceful demonstrations inspired by a wave of Arab revolts against long-ruling autocratic leaders, but it has become increasingly militarized in response to Assad's violent crackdown.

The U.N. says more than 9,000 people have died in the crackdown, while the Syrian government says it has lost at least 2,600 of its forces to "foreign-backed terrorists".

Despite the turmoil, Syria plans to hold a parliamentary election on Monday under a new constitution which has allowed the creation of new political parties and formally ended decades of monopoly by Assad's ruling Baath Party.

Authorities say the election is part of a reform process, but the opposition dismisses it as a sham.

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Syria blamed "terrorist" bomb-makers on Thursday for an explosion that ripped through a building and killed 16 people in the restive city of Hama, where hostility to President Bashar Assad runs deep.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based anti-Assad organization tracking the 13-month-old conflict in which the United Nations says at least 9,000 people have died, gave the same death toll but said the cause of Wednesday afternoon's blast was not clear.

The Local Coordination Committees, a grassroots opposition group, had said earlier that a military rocket had inflicted the carnage and put the death toll at more than 50.

Whatever its origins, the blast dealt another blow to a two-week-old U.N.-backed truce that has failed to halt violence on both sides of the conflict, one of a string of uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa against autocratic rule.

An activist said seven civilians and two rebel militiamen were killed in fighting in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor, while a resident of Zamalka on the outskirts of Damascus reported intense gun-battles.

"There have been heavy clashes today, really heavy over the past couple hours," the man said. "I couldn't get close enough to see. There are checkpoints everywhere."

Meanwhile the state news agency, SANA, said a school headmaster was blown up in a booby-trapped car in the northern city of Aleppo, and an "armed terrorist group" had shot dead four members of the same family in Erbin near Damascus.

It also said two members of the security forces were killed in Deir al-Zor.

Russian monitors
United Nations monitors charged with checking the ceasefire engineered by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan are trickling in to and two are now based permanently in Hama, where many thousands of people were killed when Assad's late father, Hafez Assad, crushed an armed Islamist uprising 30 years ago.

Activists have been dismayed at the pace of the observer deployment, and a senior U.N. official said this week it would take a month to put the first 100 monitors on the ground.

Only 15 are in place so far out of an envisaged full-strength team of 300 to be led by Norwegian General Robert Mood.

Sana said four monitors from Russia, Syria's most powerful ally, were on their way.

The killing of a Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteer on Tuesday underscores the dangers the monitors may face.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said three other aid workers were wounded when the clearly marked ambulance in which they were traveling came under fire near Damascus.

Syria says it has completed withdrawing tanks and troops from populated areas in line with Annan's peace plan, but the former U.N. chief said on Tuesday Damascus had failed to meet all its commitments and the situation remained "unacceptable".

France, leading Western calls for tougher action against Assad, says it planned to push next month for a "Chapter 7" Security Council resolution if Assad's forces did not pull back.

Chapter 7 of the U.N. charter allows the Council to authorize actions which can include military force. But Western powers have disavowed any intention to intervene militarily in Syria, as they did last year in Libya.

The U.N. is drawing up a major humanitarian effort for more than a million people affected by the conflict. A report seen by Reuters on Thursday said sewage networks had been damaged and water contaminated, setting the stage for outbreaks of water-borne diseases such as cholera. 

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The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said Thursday that the United States will not send troops to Syria or act unilaterally there. Gen. Martin Dempsey's statement came only 24 hours after NATO Secretary-General Anders-Fogh Rasmussen said the organization has no intention of intervening in Syria.

During a House Armed Services hearing, Dempsey was asked whether the United States could send troops to Syria for a possible peacekeeping mission.

"At this point in time, congressman, a decision is that we will not have any boots on the ground and that that we will not act unilaterally in that part of the world," Dempsey said.

He added that one day Syria could be a stabilizing force in that region, but that is more than a decade away.

"Long term this will become a stabilizing influence," Dempsey said, adding, "but I think getting from here to there is going to be a wild ride."

"I think we're in for 10 or 15 years of instability in a region that has already been characterized by instability."

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta echoed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the State Department's recent warnings that military intervention could ultimately bring more civilians deaths.

"We must also be mindful, as Secretary Clinton has noted, of the possibility that outside military intervention will make a volatile situation even worse and place even more innocent civilians at risk," Panetta said, adding that the United States stands with the Syrian civilians and that "they must know that the international community has not underestimated either their suffering or their impatience."

After 13 months of bloodshed, the Assad regime's attacks have left more than 9,000 dead, according to the United Nations, and displaced tens of thousands.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Updated 11:51 a.m. ET: The wives of two United Nations ambassadors have produced an Internet video appealing to Syria's first lady, Asma Assad, to "stop your husband" Bashar in his bid to thwart a popular uprising that has left thousands dead. 

The film, posted on YouTube, contrasts the lavish lifestyle of 36-year-old mother-of-three Asma with images of dead and injured Syrian children and asks viewers to sign a petition demanding the U.K.-born first lady speak out to "stop the bloodshed." 

"Some women care for style... and some care for their people," it says, in a reference to her frequent shopping trips to Europe.

"Stand up for peace, Asma. Speak out now. For the sake of your people. Stop your husband," asks the video. "Stop being a bystander. No one cares about your image. We care about your action." 

It includes a file clip of Asma, a former investment banker, telling an audience, "We should all be able to live in peace, stability and with our dignities."

The video then asks: "What happened to you, Asma?"

The video was produced by Sheila Lyall Grant, the wife of Britain's U.N. envoy and Huberta von Voss-Wittig, the wife of Germany's U.N. ambassador. Britain and Germany are both members of the U.N. Security Council. 

"We strongly believe in Asma's responsibility as a woman, as a wife and as a mother. As the vocal female Arab leader that she used to be, as a champion of female equality, she can not hide behind her husband," Lyall Grant and Wittig said in a statement, according to Reuters.

Report: 'I am the real dictator,' wife of Syria's Bashar Assad says

The European Union has banned Asma Assad from traveling to the EU or shopping from European companies.

The video follows a similar online appeal from human rights group Rise 4 Humanity.

Asma and her husband were shown on Syrian state TV Wednesday packing food aid, an apparent effort to change their public image.

State television broadcast pictures on Wednesday of the Assads receiving a rapturous welcome at al-Fahya stadium in Damascus.  They joined hundreds of volunteers boxing cartons full of flour, sugar, cooking oil and pasta for victims of fighting in Homs, where the president's forces are crushing an uprising. 

The Assads have long worked to manage their image, but it backfired a year ago when a glamorous photo shoot and gushing profile of Asma appeared in Vogue magazine just as her husband launched his violent crackdown on pro-democracy protests. 

The U.N. estimates Assad's forces have killed more than 9,000 people in the uprising. Syrian authorities say foreign-backed militants have killed over 2,600 soldiers and police. 

The 15-nation U.N. Security Council voted unanimously on Saturday to authorize an initial deployment of 30 unarmed observers to monitor a shaky truce that started on Thursday.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Updated 6:28 p.m. ET: Syrian forces pounded central districts of the flashpoint city of Homs on Sunday and rebels fighting to oust President Bashar Assad attacked a police staton in the northern province of Aleppo, resident opposition activists and a rights group said.

"Early this morning we saw a helicopter and a spotter plane fly overhead. Ten minutes later, there was heavy shelling," Walid al-Fares, an activist living in Khalidiya, told Reuters.

The first team of United Nations ceasefire monitors arrived in Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Sunday as expected, a witness told Reuters. The team is expected to be deployed Monday.  

But as the monitors prepared to embark on their mission, the battled city of Homs was bombarded at "one shell per minute," activists told Reuters.   

The resumption of violence came as a small advance group of UN monitors prepared to go to Syria to oversee the ceasefire. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Saturday he would make firm proposals in days for a larger group of about 250 people, the BBC reported.

Rami Abdelrahman, head of the London-based Syrian Network for Human Rights, said shells were being fired at a rate of one a minute.

Abdelrahman said there had also been overnight clashes in rural Aleppo.

"People said they heard explosions and shooting after rebels attacked a police station and then clashed with police," he told Reuters.

The reports could not be verified.

The organization told msnbc.com in an email that it recorded 26 deaths across Syria on Saturday, most of which were in Homs. Among them were two children, two photographers, a police officer and two defecting soldiers, it said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Shaam News Network / AFP - Getty Images

A picture released by the opposition Shaam News Network shows an anti-government demonstration in the al-Waer neighborhood of the restive city of Homs on Friday.

At least one anti-government protester was shot dead, Reuters reported, after Syrians poured into the streets Friday in the first major test of a fragile United Nations-brokered truce.

Opposition leaders called for widespread demonstrations. The Associated Press, citing activists, said thousands of people were responding to those calls.

Syrian forces tightened security in public squares and outside mosques Friday. President Bashar Assad's regime has cracked down on such rallies in the past and has suggested it would not allow them to resume, insisting protesters need to seek permission first.

McCain, Lieberman demand Syrian rebels be armed

An outbreak of violence at a chaotic rally could give government forces a pretext for ending the truce, which formally took effect the day before.

The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told Reuters that sources in the city of Hama said one person was shot dead by security forces as people tried to converge on a central square.

Syria truce claim is 'blatant lie', says France

However, an activist with the anti-Assad Local Coordination Committees said put the death toll at two. It was unclear if they were reporting the same or different incidents.

Activists said security forces had fired in the air to scatter protesters in at least one area in the restive Idlib province, The Associated Press said.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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