UN appoints veteran peacekeeper for UN’s Syria mission

Just a day after a deadly suicide bombing in Syria, Norwegian veteran peacekeeper Major General Robert Mood travelled to Damascus this morning to lead a UN mission to monitor the uneasy treaty.

Uncertainty of the monitoring operation’s success has increased as a result of the bombing, but Mood was already on the way to Syria when his appointment was publicly announced by UN chief Ban Ki-moon.

The evident distrust between President Bashar Assad and the opposition was noted by Mood who will be taking over a challenging and doubt mission prior to the gathering of the UN-approved 300-member force.

More than 9,000 people have been killed since March 2011 according to UN figures and the recent bombing took the lives of 14 people on Friday, ten of which were civilians.

Mood is not a stranger to Damascus and had previously been there to negotiate the terms for an advance team of UN observers.