Syria faces pressure over monitors as toll climbs

DAMASCUS - World powers piled pressure on Syria to allow observers to monitor spiralling deadly violence as activists condemned rights violations on Saturday's anniversary of International Human Rights Day. Activists said 41 civilians were killed Friday in flashpoint cities across Syria as the opposition warned the regime was planning a "massacre" in the protest hub of Homs, where another civilian was killed on Saturday. "The world celebrates human rights as human rights are being violated in Syria," the opposition Syrian Revolution 2011 said in a message posted on its Facebook page. UN Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay has said that at least 4,000 people have been killed in a government crackdown on dissent in Syria since the anti-regime protest movement started in March. Pillay is to brief the UN Security Council about Syria and the wider Middle East at a meeting on Monday-her second address to the world body since August when the number of dead was estimated at more than 2,000. "Now it is more than 4,000. Lives could have been changed if action had been taken sooner. It is not for me to determine what kind of action, it is for the Security Council," she told a UN news conference on Friday. Yemen unity government sworn in Yemen's national unity government, led by the opposition, was sworn in on Saturday in the presence of Vice President Abdrabuh Mansur Hadi, an official statement said. The statement, carried by the official Saba news agency, said the swearing-in ceremony took place at the Republican Palace in the capital Sanaa. The new 34-member cabinet will lead Yemen for a three-month transition period, after which President Ali Abdullah Saleh is expected to formally step down after 33 years in power. The unity government will carry out its duties until early elections are held in February, after which Hadi will take over the presidency for an interim two-year period as stipulated by the Gulf-sponsored deal to resolve Yemen's political crisis. Half of the new cabinet posts were entrusted to members of the opposition Common Forum, while Saleh loyalists were appointed to the other half, a condition stipulated in the power transfer deal signed by Saleh on November 23. Meanwhile: Fighting between government forces and opponents of outgoing President Ali Abdullah Saleh on the streets of the capital Sanaa has killed one soldier, the Defense ministry said. The violence late Friday near government buildings and the compound of Sadeq al-Ahmar, a foe of Saleh commanding significant forces, was the latest challenge to a Gulf-brokered transition plan to prevent civil war after 10 months of bloody anti-Saleh protests. Palestinian wounded by Israelis dies A Palestinian activist critically wounded by a tear gas canister fired by Israeli troops at a rally in the West Bank died on Saturday of his wounds, his family and Palestinian medics said. Mustafa Abelrazek al-Tamimi, 28, was taking part in a Friday protest against the West Bank barrier in Nabi Saleh, some 10 kilometres (six miles) northwest of Ramallah, when he was hit in the face by the tear gas canister, medics said. Critically wounded, he was immediately flown by helicopter to an Israeli hospital near Tel Aviv, where he died Saturday morning. Gaza militants fire four rockets at Israel Gaza militants fired four rockets at southern Israel early Saturday after Israeli warplanes attacked Gaza, in the latest tit-for-tat attack between the two sides. A police spokeswoman told AFP that none of the rockets caused casualties or damage. The Gaza militant group Popular Resistance Committees took responsibility for the Saturday firings. The low-level unrest retained between Israel and Gaza since the end of October, when violence left 12 Palestinians and an Israeli civilian dead, came to an abrupt end on Thursday when Israel killed two Gaza militants. Libya ready to forgive Gaddafi fighters Libya's new rulers are ready to forgive the forces of slain leader Gaddafi who battled rebels trying to topple his autocratic regime, National Transition Council chief Mustafa Abdel Jalil said Saturday. "In Libya we are able to absorb all. Libya is for all," Abdel Jalil said in Tripoli as he launched a national reconciliation conference organised by the NTC. "Despite what the army of the oppressor did to our cities and our villages, our brothers who fought against the rebels as the army of Kadhafi (did), we are ready to forgive them," he said.