Syria frees 30 detained over unrest

The Syrian government has released 30 people who were detained for their alleged role in an anti-regime uprising, but who have "no blood on their hands," state media said on Saturday. This latest move takes the number of people who had been taken into custody and released for the same reason, by the authorities since November to nearly 4,000, the state news agency SANA has reported. These events have comes at a time when a small team of UN observers is in the country to oversee a ceasefire that has been threatened by deadly violence each day since it took effect on April 12. A truce, as well as the release of political prisoners are among six points that the Syria's government has agreed to implement under international envoy Kofi Annan's UN-backed peace plan, which aims to end more than 13 months of bloodshed. The United Nations estimates more than 9,000 people have been killed in the country since the Syrian president Bashar al-Assad's regime launched a crackdown on Arab Spring-inspired protests that erupted in March 2011. However the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights puts the deathtoll at more than 11,000, far more than the state's figure, and said Friday that another 46 people have killed, including 29 civilians. The Britain based rights observatory stated that government forces have been killing and shelling civilians in rebel strongholds. However state media has said that at least 17 soldiers were killed in explosions and clashes with rebel fighters. Meanwhile, Amnesty International has expressed its concern over the fate of a cardiologist, Dr Mahmud al-Rifai, who was arrested in Damascus on February 16 and "believed to have been tortured" for having treated injured protesters. The London-based rights watchdog raised similar fears about another doctor, Mohammed al-Ammar, whom it said was a peaceful activist detained on March 19 in the southern city of Daraa, cradle of the uprising.