BEIRUT/BRUSSELS: Syrian government tanks and armored vehicles have pulled back from an embattled mountain town near Damascus, activists and witnesses said Thursday, but at least 16 people were killed by security forces elsewhere as a month-long Arab League fact-finding mission expired. The pullback from Zabadani left the town under the control of the opposition, activists said. The besieged town of Zabadani has witnessed heavy exchanges of fire between army troops and anti-government military defectors over the past six days.

The 10-month uprising against Syrian President Bashar Assad has turned increasingly militarized as more frustrated regime opponents and army defectors arm themselves and fight back against government forces. The capital has seen two incidents of suicide bombings since late December which the government blamed on terrorist extremists.

Arab League foreign ministers will consider extending the observer mission in Syria in a meeting Sunday in Cairo, officials said Thursday.

Although the mission expired Thursday, Adnan al-Khudeir, head of Cairo operations room that handles reports by the monitors, told the Associated Press that observers will remain in Syria until a decision is made Sunday.According to Khudeir, the meeting chaired by the Qatari foreign minister will discuss a report by the head of the mission Gen. Mohammad Ahmad al-Dabi who is arriving in Cairo from Syria Thursday.

The monitors will remain in 17 different places around Syria until the Arab League makes a final decision, he said.

The mission has been mired in controversy, with the opposition claiming it served as a cover for the regime to continue its brutal crackdown against protesters. Rejecting charges that the observers have been ineffective in reducing violence, he said extending the mission would help the opposition more than the regime.

“The killings are less, the protests increase,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity because no decision has been made. “The mission’s presence offers assurance to the people because the observers can spot any violations. There is a conviction even among Syria opponents that the extension is better than withdrawal.”

U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Thursday the monitors have had a “mixed picture” of results, enabling some protests and some media coverage. “We believe that we’ve got to increase the economic pressure on the Assad regime to change course,” she said.

Last week, Russian Security Council secretary Nikolai Patrushev claimed that NATO members and some Arab states, using lessons from Libya, “intend to turn the current interference with Syrian affairs into a direct military intervention.”

Qatar, whose Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani chairs the Arab League panel on Syria, has been pressing for an observer mission to be given teeth through the deployment of Arab peacekeeping troops.

But Thursday, the alliance’s most senior officer said NATO is not planning or even “thinking” of intervening in Syria.

“There is no planning and we are not thinking about an intervention,” Gen. Knud Bartels, head of NATO’s Military Committee, told a news conference after a two-day meeting of the alliance’s military chiefs.

More than 5,400 people have been killed since the uprising erupted.

Activists reported continued violence Thursday. In Damascus, a Syrian security agent was wounded when a small explosive device tore through his car in the Tadamon neighborhood, a Syrian official said. No other damages were reported from the morning explosion. A military security brigadier, Adel Mustafa, also was killed by soldiers who had defected and refused his orders to shoot at civilians in the Bab Qibli area of Homs, according to the Local Coordination Committees, an umbrella group of activists. The officer had previously overseen many killing and arrest operations, according to the LCC.

In Zabadani, activist Fares Mohammad said Syrian forces withdrew Wednesday night to two military barracks on the outskirts.

“There is a cautious calm, but fear of another major assault being prepared against Zabadani,” he told the Associated Press by telephone from the resort town, located alongside the Lebanese border 27 kilometers west of Damascus.

The Syrian opposition has on several occasions throughout the uprising gained control of a town or city, but ultimately forces loyal to Assad retook them. It is unusual however for the army to take so long to recapture a town so close to the capital.Mohammad said the siege had eased, although heating oil has not been allowed into the town, where it snowed earlier this week. Military checkpoints surrounding Zabadani were still in place, he said, while about 100 armed defectors were “protecting” it. Residents said government mortars had shelled the town Wednesday, but that too had stopped. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed the pullout from Zabadani, saying only two armored personnel carriers were left behind at one of the checkpoints near the town.

Activists said at least 16 people were killed by security forces across Syria Thursday.