Syrian authorities told international mediator Kofi Annan they had started withdrawing troops from three areas as part of a peace plan to end more than a year of fighting with rebels, his spokesman said on Thursday.

Demonstrators gather during a protest against Syria's President Bashar al-Assad, after Friday Prayers in the town of Hula near the city of Homs, March 30, 2012. , Photo: REUTERS/Handout/Files

But the report was undermined by news of fresh clashes between government forces and insurgents in another area in a town near the capital Damascus.

Fighting shows no sign of abating even though Syrian President Bashar al-Assad agreed more than a week ago to a six-point peace plan drawn up by Annan, the joint U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria.

"Yes they have told us that they have begun withdrawing troops from certain areas," Annan's spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told a news briefing in Geneva. "They have specified three cities - Deraa, Idlib and Zabadani."

Fawzi said U.N. member states were being asked to provide troops for a ceasefire monitoring mission, to be deployed in Syria after April 10.

Media reports that 200 to 250 unarmed monitors would be deployed were "not very far off", he told journalists, adding the force would be deployed incrementally.

Fawzi said the mediators were trying to verify the reported withdrawals.

An advance team sent by Annan was due to arrive in Damascus on Thursday to begin discussing their full deployment, which requires a U.N. Security Council resolution.

The peace plan set out by Annan, a former U.N. Secretary-General, sets a deadline of April 10 for withdrawing troops and heavy weaponry, followed within 48 hours by a halt to the fighting by both sides.

"What we expect on the 10th of April is that the Syrian government will have completed its withdrawal from populated centers, the withdrawal of military units from populated centres, that it would have stopped moving any military units into cities and that we begin a 48-hour period during which there will be a complete cessation of all forms of violence by all parties with 48 hours that includes of course the Syrian opposition and the Syrian government," Fawzi said.

"So the clock starts ticking on the 10th for both sides to cease all forms of violence," he added.

Annan would hold talks in Tehran on April 11 with senior Iranian officials on Syria, he said, referring to Syria's major ally in the region.

Source: Reuters