Rebels Want Armed Peacekeepers

We need boots on the ground, the leading Syrian opposition group told the United Nations on Sunday in a statement that asked for armed peacekeepers in the country. The statement comes a day after the U.N. cut its mission of unarmed observers a month short, citing spreading violence. The Syrian National Council wrote in its statement that the U.N. had failed “to pinpoint the source or type of violence in question” and that its decision to withdraw monitors “serves the criminal regime’s interests and denies the Syrian people the little protection they had.” Four people were killed in violence Sunday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group.