Ceasefire violated in Syria

U.N. observers on Thursday inspected the site of a deadly explosion that flattened a block of houses in the central Syrian city of Hama a day earlier and killed at least 16 people, CBS reports.

The government and the opposition traded blame for the blasts. Syrian state-run media said rebel bomb-makers accidentally set off the explosives, while anti-regime activists said intense shelling by government forces caused the extensive damage. It was impossible to independently verify the conflicting accounts because President Bashar Assad's regime, facing a 13-month-old uprising, has restricted access to journalists and other outside witnesses.

The spokesman for U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan, Ahmad Fawzi, said observers visited the site but there was no immediate word on what they saw. A pair of U.N. observers is stationed in Hama, part of an advance team of 15 that is to be expanded in the coming weeks to up to 300 as part of a truce plan to end the Syrian crisis.

A U.N. official said on Thursday that the United Nations has so far negotiated for countries to provide 100 unarmed truce monitors to be on the ground in Syria, in addition to civilian support staff, within 30 days of the April 12 cease-fire. But he said differences between politicians and military officials in potential contributing nations have slowed the negotiations for more troops.