(United Nations Photo, Creative Commons)

Only 30 monitors were approved for the mission a week ago, and this new resolution will dramatically increase that number. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon now has the authority to deploy the observers. However, it may take time before the observers will arrive in Syria.

According to the LA Times, in its decision the Security Council also “demanded an immediate end to the violence that has continued since the cease-fire went into effect more than a week ago”:

“For more than a week, world leaders, including Ban, have accused President Bashar Assad of failing to abide by the cease-fire, as his forces have continued to fire on protesters, raid neighborhoods and make sweeping arrests and shell cities.

“The battered central city of Homs had been shelled for days, but activists said the bombardment stopped Saturday as the U.N. monitors toured certain neighborhoods."

As soon as a visit was expected from the U.N. observers currently in Syria, the shelling stopped and Homs appeared “peaceful for the first time in more than a week,” the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights stated.

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