DAMASCUS, Syria, March 10 (UPI) -- Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan met with Syrian President Bashar Assad in Damascus Saturday to try and end the violence there, Annan's spokesman said.
Meanwhile, opposition activists said 12 people died Saturday in violence across the country, CNN reported.
Annan met with Assad "to seek an urgent end to ... human rights violations and to initiate efforts to promote a peaceful solution," Annan's spokesman said.
Abdel Aziz al-Khair, a member of the opposition Executive Committee of the National Coordinating Body for Democratic Change, said he is scheduled to meet Saturday afternoon with Annan, whose visit with Assad was "a small sign of hope, yet so dim."
"There is no way that we can have any dialogue with the regime until the security campaign ends," al-Khair said. "They keep playing the victim role, (saying) that they are defending the innocent civilians while they slaughter them and blame the bloodshed on others," CNN reported.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he urged Annan in a phone call Friday "to ensure that there must be an immediate cease-fire" followed by "an inclusive political solution." Ban also asked Annan to facilitate access to people in Syria and get humanitarian aid to them.
The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said two regime soldiers and three soldiers who had defected were killed in clashes in Daraya and that a civilian was also killed there.
Six other people were killed in Idlib, Daraa and the countryside of Damascus, the opposition group the Syrian Network for Human Rights said.
The Local Coordinating Committees of Syria said the Assad regime was bombing the Daraa village of Jezah with anti-aircraft missiles.
In nearly a year of violence in Syria, the United Nations said more than 7,500 people have been killed while an activist group said more than 9,000 have been killed.
