A handful of UN observers toured Syria yesterday as violence claimed the lives of another 30 people and France said the UN-backed peace plan was “seriously compromised.”

UN-Arab League envoy Koffi Annan had urged a rapid deployment of the full, 300-strong observer team agreed by the UN Security Council, and French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said they should be on the ground in a fortnight, not three months.

At least 27 civilians were killed across the country, including in cities visited by monitors, taking to nearly 300 the number of people who have died since a tenuous ceasefire went into effect on April 12, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Among them were four people whose bus was raked with gunfire by security forces at a checkpoint near Khan Sheikhun, a town in the restive province of Idlib.

The Britain-based watchdog said two civilians were also killed by regime forces in the Harasta suburb of Damascus. Another two civilians, including a teenage girl, were killed by sniper fire in Douma, a suburb of the capital, where regime forces conducted raids. It was unclear whether UN monitors, who visited Douma yesterday, were present before or after the shootings and raids took place.

300 people killed since a tenuous ceasefire came into effect on April 12 – Syrian Observatory for Human Rights

Three soldiers died in clashes with armed rebel groups in the southern province of Daraa, cradle of the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, where two civilians also died. And a child was shot dead in a village in Deir Ezzor, according to the Observatory. Regime forces also reportedly killed one citizen in Rastan, in the flashpoint central province of Homs.

Mr Annan has branded the bloodshed “unacceptable”.