Violence in Syria on the rise

The violence in Syria is getting worse as the military steps up assaults on civilian centres and the opposition increasingly turns to coordinated attacks on Syrian government forces, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's office said on Monday.

“The secretary-general expresses his deep concern at the dangerous intensification of armed violence across Syria over the past several days, and the grave danger facing civilians in areas under fire,” Ban's press office said in a statement. “The bloodshed and fighting must stop at once.”

It said unarmed U.N. observers in Syria have reported an increased level of armed clashes between government and rebel forces.

Ban’s office added that the secretary-general urged both sides to comply with their commitment to peace which they made when they accepted international mediator Kofi Annan's six-point peace plan earlier this year.

U.N. observers, tasked with monitoring Annan's April ceasefire deal, which never took hold, have instead been cataloguing mass killings, bombings and clashes in which many hundreds of Syrians have died.