The UN observer chief in Syria, General Babacar Gaye, left Damascus on Saturday after the Security Council called time on the mission.

The UN observer chief in Syria, General Babacar Gaye, left Damascus on Saturday after the Security Council called time on the mission.

Gaye’s aides said that the head of the mission left Syria after the mandate has expired at midnight last Sunday.
Created by a Security Council resolution in April, a team of some 300 truce monitors was progressively deployed into Syria as part of former UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan's six-point plan to end the bloodshed.

Last week, Gaye accused both the Syrian army and the armed groups of failing to protect civilians as the fighting escalated.
"Both parties have obligations under international humanitarian law to make sure that civilians are protected," he told reporters in Damascus last Saturday. "These obligations have not been respected."

Annan himself, a former UN secretary general, formally steps down as international envoy on Syria at the end of this month after complaining about a lack of international support in the face of the mounting violence.

The United Nations plans to maintain a political liaison office in Damascus to support the mediation efforts of his successor, veteran Algerian diplomat al-Akhdar al-IBrahimi, who said Friday he was "scared" of the scale of the task ahead.

Officials have said the liaison office would probably be made up of between 20 and 30 people, including political, humanitarian and military experts.