Head of Arab League monitoring mission in Syria resigns

CAIRO, Feb. 12 (Xinhua)-- Chief of the Arab League (AL) observer mission in Syria Moustafa al-Dabi has resigned, an AL official told Xinhua on Sunday.

Dabi resigned after he submitted the mission performance report during the Arab ministerial meeting on Syria in the Arab League headquarter.

The resigned head of the observer mission attributed his resignation to the inconvenient conditions in Syria that can help the observer doing their mission, and also the criticism the mission are exposed to from the Syrian opposition.

The Secretary General of the Arab League Nabil al-Arabi proposed to appoint Abdel-Elah al-Khatib as an envoy to Syria, and the appointment is to be discussed during the meeting.

On Jan. 28, AL Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi asked the observers to immediately halt their operation in the violence-torn country.

The Syrian government has blamed the unrest in Syria on plots by terrorists and foreign-backed armed gangs, and said that more than 2,000 army and security personnel were killed during the past months.

The United Nations put the death toll in the Syrian unrest at more than 5,400.