BEIRUT - When the aspirin and alcohol swabs fell from under her clothes at a Syrian army checkpoint, Rania stood petrified, looking first down at her fallen contraband and then up at the soldier who stared straight back at her.

Rania knew that smuggling food and medicine to Syrian opposition activists was considered by security forces to be "aiding terrorists" and treated as severely as weapons smuggling.

"I thought to myself: I am dead," said Rania, 27, recalling the incident on the outskirts of Damascus.

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She was in luck. The soldier was a sympathizer.

"Quick," she quoted him as saying. "Pick up your medicine and go, before my commanding officer comes back."

And with that pardon, she fled.

During the 13-month uprising against President Bashar al-Assad, Syrian forces have killed more than 9,000 people in shootings and bombardment of rebel areas, the United Nations says. Thousands more have been arrested.

Obama unveils sanctions on Syria, Iran for assault on activists 

Syrian authorities, who say foreign-backed militants have killed more than 2,600 soldiers and police, have supplied aid to residents they say are fleeing "armed terrorists" but have repeatedly denied access to international aid organizations.

Activists say most people wounded in the unrest will not go to state hospitals for fear they will be considered enemies of Assad and arrested rather than treated.

Amateur video shows poorly stocked makeshift hospitals in opposition strongholds, many without electricity, with doctors pleading for help from the outside world.

In the absence of international support, dissidents have found informal ways to smuggle food and medicine to injured and famished people around the country.

Rania and her friends, a group of young, liberal women, pretend to be conservative Muslims, hiding the medicines, food and money they bring out of Damascus to Homs city under thick layers of clothing and headscarves.

How many others make similar smuggling trips around Syria, they have no way of knowing. They say this method of smuggling is an open secret, but authorities are unwilling to search women, especially those who appear pious, as it would cause an outcry.

Forming the team
Rania, a qualified lawyer, operates in a team of four, including two female friends who worked as supermarket checkout assistants. The fourth team member is a doctor.

She agreed to be interviewed via Skype, but would not give her last name for fear that it could compromise their operation. Another of the girls, Ola, agreed to answer questions through a friend who sometimes helps the team, who herself asked not to be named.

All of the group are from Homs, one of the worst hit areas in Syria, where forces have been shelling central districts for months.

"Me and the girls met the doctor, who is a childhood friend, and asked him how we could help people who were injured or in need of food," Rania said.

The team rented a large apartment in a poor area of Damascus where prices are low. All quit their jobs, except the doctor who does four shifts a week; authorities suspect doctors who leave work, residents say, assuming they have joined the opposition.

"We sold everything we could, even our jewelry," said Ola. "We filled the apartment with rice, sugar, spaghetti and vegetable oil.

The doctor uses his sources to get anti-inflammatories, bandages and trauma kits." To save money, the team eats two meals a day.

To keep a low profile, they rarely make phone calls and only leave the building when necessary. They work at night.

When other activists visit, they are asked to bring their own food to keep costs low.

"Smuggling is expensive," said the friend who asked not to be named. "You need a taxi driver who will agree to go through the checkpoints out of Damascus and take the two-hour drive to Homs. It is dangerous for him, too".

Gauze and bandages
Operations start at the apartment. The women change their jeans and tank tops for long-sleeved dresses and the conservative Muslim hijab head scarf.

"I am thin so we can fit lots of medical gauze under my clothes," said the friend. "One of the girls stuffs cotton bandages in her bra."

The women, often covered in a hidden layer of antibiotics, travel alone in a private taxi or a bus north out of the capital to Homs city.

"The government knows everything, but they don't want extra trouble," said the friend. "In (the Damascus suburb of) Douma, security members arrested some women and it caused a huge amount of civil disobedience."

But not every checkpoint is safe and there are slip-ups that could land Rania and Ola in prison.

"Sometimes we are detained at checkpoints. We either pay a bribe or wait to see what will happen to us. Some of the checkpoints are manned by Assad loyalist gunmen who don't work for the regular army," says Ola. "We fear them the most."

Syrian rebels detonate a bomb on main highway

"But the worst time for me was when I was due to meet another activist to give him some blood bags, money and food," said Ola.

She waited in the rain but the man did not show.

"It was late at night, I was forced to leave the food on the side of the road as the risk of returning with it through checkpoints was too great," she said.

"I walked home, crying. The trip had been for nothing."

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Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

Updated 6:28 p.m. ET: Syrian forces pounded central districts of the flashpoint city of Homs on Sunday and rebels fighting to oust President Bashar Assad attacked a police staton in the northern province of Aleppo, resident opposition activists and a rights group said.

"Early this morning we saw a helicopter and a spotter plane fly overhead. Ten minutes later, there was heavy shelling," Walid al-Fares, an activist living in Khalidiya, told Reuters.

The first team of United Nations ceasefire monitors arrived in Damascus, the Syrian capital, on Sunday as expected, a witness told Reuters. The team is expected to be deployed Monday.  

But as the monitors prepared to embark on their mission, the battled city of Homs was bombarded at "one shell per minute," activists told Reuters.   

---

Another resident told Reuters government loyalists were using heavy machine guns to shoot into the area.

 

The resumption of violence came as a small advance group of UN monitors prepared to go to Syria to oversee the ceasefire. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Saturday he would make firm proposals in days for a larger group of about 250 people, the BBC reported.

Rami Abdelrahman, head of the London-based Syrian Network for Human Rights, said shells were being fired at a rate of one a minute.

Abdelrahman said there had also been overnight clashes in rural Aleppo.

"People said they heard explosions and shooting after rebels attacked a police station and then clashed with police," he told Reuters.

The reports could not be verified.

The organization told msnbc.com in an email that it recorded 26 deaths across Syria on Saturday, most of which were in Homs. Among them were two children, two photographers, a police officer and two defecting soldiers, it said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Updated 1:07 p.m. ET: As Syrian forces shelled the battered city of Homs through Saturday morning, the United Nations Security Council authorized the deployment of 30 unarmed observers to the country.

The military observers have been tasked with monitoring a tenuous cease-fire that began three days ago. Syrian activists said the cease-fire, called for by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, was ignored by the Syrian military.

The first group of observers was on stand-by, ready to fly to Syria when the council gave the green light, according to Reuters. 

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Saturday’s resolution states that if Syria does not cooperate, the council would “assess the implementation of this resolution and to consider further steps as appropriate,” Reuters reported. 

The council reached the resolution after a 24-hour debate with Russia, according to The New York Times. It is the first resolution the 15-nation council, including China and Russia, has approved since uprisings began in Syria more than a year ago. Moscow and Beijing have twice vetoed similar council resolutions reprimanding Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Russia's ambassador to the UN made it clear that Russia would support only limited UN action, the Guardian of London reported.

On Friday, Syrian forces used live fire, tear gas and clubs to beat back thousands of protesters who took to the streets across the country in often jubilant displays of defiance, The Associated Press reported. It was the first use of force since the cease-fire began.  

The BBC reported 750 rallies, stretching from the suburbs of Damascus, the Syrian capital, to the central province of Hama, Idib in the north and southern province of Daraa, where the uprisings began in March 2011. Six people were killed.

Syrians take to streets in test of truce

"Come on, Bashar, leave!" the crowd shouted in Daraa, linking arms and stomping their feet to the beat of a drum in a traditional Arab folk dance, The AP reported, citing a video posted online by activists.

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"We tried our best to reach Assi Square in order to show the world the truth about the regime -- they are lying and will not allow us to have big, peaceful demonstrations," Mousab Hamadee, an activist in that city, told the BBC. "As we approached Assi Square, they started opening fire on us. Two of my colleagues were martyred." 

Reuters and Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Turkey and Norway closed their embassies in Syria on Monday, further isolating President Bashar Assad whose forces bombarded the battered city of Homs with mortars in an effort to quell unrest.

Video showed towering flames and thick black smoke billowing from at least two locations in Homs, Syria's third largest city, which has become the epicenter for the year-long revolt. Residents accused the army of indiscriminate shelling.

---

"Every day the shelling goes on. The regime is wiping out the city," said Waleed Faris, an activist who lives in Homs.

Sixteen people died in clashes around the country, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, with eight dying in the central city of Homs, a rebel stronghold that has become the epicenter of the year-long uprising.

Two of the dead were children, the group said.

Syria has formally responded to a peace plan put forward by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, his office said on Monday, but gave no details about the message.

"Mr. Annan is studying it and will respond very shortly," his spokesman Ahmad Fawzi said in a statement from Geneva.

Following the example of many Arab and Western states, Turkey said it had suspended all activities at its embassy as the security situation worsened.

Norway also announced it was closing its embassy.

Iranian weapons help Bashar Assad put down Syria protests, officials say

Once a close ally of Assad, Turkey has denounced his efforts to crush the rebellion and has thrown its weight behind his opponents, announcing on Sunday that it would work with Washington to provide "non-lethal" aid to the Syrian opposition.

Annan, who presented Damascus with his peace proposals earlier this month, said on Monday the crisis could not carry on forever, but added that he had not set any deadline for a resolution of the conflict.

"It is not practical to put forth timetables and timelines when you haven't got agreement from the parties," Annan told journalists in Moscow, where he met on Sunday with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.

"This cannot be allowed to drag on indefinitely and, as I have told the parties on the ground, they cannot resist the transformational winds that are blowing," he added before flying off for top level meetings in China on Tuesday.

Annan's six-point peace proposal calls for a ceasefire, political dialogue between the government and opposition, and full humanitarian access for aid agencies.

Both Russia and China have previously vetoed U.N. Security Council resolutions highly critical of Damascus, drawing accusations from critics in the West that they were giving Assad a license to kill.

However, Moscow and Beijing have given full public backing to Annan's mission and the veteran diplomat is seeking assurances from both capitals that they will bring pressure to bear on Assad to comply with his demands.
 
Syria says it is battling foreign-backed terrorist groups and the official news agency Sana reported on Monday that troops had foiled an attempt by a group of armed infiltrators trying to enter across the Turkish border near the village of Darkoush.

Heavy clashes in the province of Hama also continued, activists said. They uploaded footage of grey smoke billowing out of an old castle amid the crackling sound of gunfire in the town of Qalaat al-Madyaq, believed to be in rebel hands.

Videos and reports from inside Syria are impossible to verify as the government has restricted access to journalists and human rights workers.

Sana news agency said soldiers had killed "six of the most dangerous wanted terrorists" in a raid in the southern province of Deraa. They also thwarted a bid to blow up the al-Najih Bridge on the Damascus-Deraa highway, it said.

Security appears to be fraying in many parts of Syria despite repeated army offensives to regain rebellious territory. Activists said the government was struggling to hold such areas for long, with rebels swiftly re-emerging, as they have in Homs.

Travel restrictions
In a sign of growing anxiety about the security situation, the Syrian authorities have banned men of military age from leaving the country, Lebanese officials said on Monday.

The restrictions, issued on Saturday, require men between the age of 18 and 42 to get permission from military recruitment and immigration departments before travelling, the sources said, adding that border traffic at the main crossing between Beirut and Damascus had fallen by 60 percent since the regulation.

The move may impact the flow of thousands of Syrian workers who go to Lebanon for agricultural and construction projects, a major source of income in rural areas already hit by economic hardship as unrest grows.

The United Nations says more than 8,000 people have died in the revolt and there is little prospect of a quick resolution.

Syria is expected to be the top item on the agenda of Arab leaders meeting in Baghdad for a three-day Arab League summit, which begins Tuesday. The crisis in Syria is seen by Iraq's suspicious Arab brethren as a litmus test of whether Baghdad is with them or with their top rival, Shiite-led Iran.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Syrian President Bashar Assad’s deadly crackdown on opposition to his regime is turning once peaceful protesters into “terrorist people,” an activist hiding in a city shattered by an army bombardment told msnbc.com.

Sami Ibrahim, of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, was reacting to an open letter written by New York-based Human Rights Watch, claiming opposition members were carrying human rights abuses such as kidnappings, torture and executions.

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Ibrahim spoke Tuesday by satellite phone from Homs, a rebel stronghold until it was hit by a sustained bombardment by government troops, forcing the Free Syrian Army to withdraw earlier this month.

He said people had witnessed their wives being raped, children killed, people being tortured to death in prisons and shelling of civilian areas by tanks.

“This will cause a lot of awful reaction,” he said.

“We are dealing with humans and they have feelings,” Ibrahim added. “Thousands of people, they will change into terrorist people.”

“What he [Assad] is doing is generating a generation to go to the dark way, to go to the darkness. The Assad regime, this criminal dictatorship, transfers the people from normal people, peaceful people, to another side we cannot control,” he said.

Upscale neighborhood becomes Syria battleground

The Syrian Network for Human Rights is not politically aligned, but has been documenting abuses mainly committed by Assad's forces since the start of the uprising just over a year ago.

He said the opposition was trying to be “very careful” about human rights and tried to convince people to “control their feelings,” but not everyone listened.

Ibrahim, who said he would be tortured and killed if found by Assad’s forces, said Human Rights Watch had “made a mistake” in issuing the statement because the Assad regime’s violence was ultimately responsible for the backlash and it should instead by pressing for international action against the Syrian government.

In its letter, dated Monday and addressed to the “Leaders of the Syrian Opposition,” Human Rights Watch said it was concerned about the “increasing evidence” of abuse and urged the opposition’s leadership to work to stamp it out.

Report: Syria leader's wife says she's 'real dictator'

“While the protest movement in Syria was overwhelmingly peaceful until September 2011, since then Human Rights Watch has documented apparent crimes and other abuses committed by armed opposition elements,” the letter says.

“These crimes and abuses include the kidnapping and detention of security force members, individuals identified as government allies or supporters. They also include the use of torture and the execution of security force members and civilians,” it adds.

The letter says some attacks against Shiite and Alawite communities appeared to be “motivated by sectarianism.”

Human Rights Watch noted that a United Nations commission had found evidence of abuses in February. The commission’s report included information supplied by Assad’s regime.

From university to torture chamber: A Syrian's story

The letter said it recognized that it was not always easy to identify those involved in the abuses and that they might not follow the orders of opposition groups such as the Syrian National Council.

It also said that criminal gangs claiming to be opposition members might be responsible.

However, in its letter, Human Rights Watch said the Syrian National Council’s military bureau in particular should “condemn and forbid these abuses.”

Emails to the Syrian National Council seeking comment Tuesday did not immediately receive a response.

Mousab Azzawi, the London-based chairman of the Syrian Network for Human Rights, said there had been reports of abuses by opposition members, but that they were often difficult to verify.

Azzawi told msnbc.com by telephone that one recent case that the Network had verified was of three Assad militia members who were executed by opposition fighters in Homs on March 9. He said the three men had been part of a larger group of Assad “thugs” who had been raping women in Homs as a form of punishment.

Syria email hack points to new 'information war'

Regarding human rights violations generally, he said that “we cannot accept them under any circumstances, regardless the perpetrator.”

The Network includes doctors, lawyers and academics in Syria who follow up reports and attempt to corroborate allegations of abuses with a view to holding those responsible accountable to the International Criminal Court.

Azzawi said Syria was on the verge of a full-scale civil war that would see many more abuses committed by both sides.

But he said he was “a bit optimistic, to a small extent” that this would not happen because the leaders of the peaceful uprising “are refusing the principle of civil war.”

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The wife of Syria's President Bashar Assad declared that she was the family's "real dictator," according to an email leaked to regime opponents, a British newspaper reported Monday.

British-born Asma Assad's messages imply that she occupies an important spot the dictator's inner circle, the Daily Telegraph reported.

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This and a slew of other alleged email exchanges among members of the Syrian elite have been spilling out for days, shedding light on the workings of the embattled government as it continues its violent crackdown on protesters. More than 8,000 people have been killed since the start of the Syrian uprising just over a year ago, according to U.N. figures.

 

 

Syria email hack points to new 'information war'

Late Sunday, a firefight broke out between Free Syrian Army rebels and forces loyal to Assad in Mezze, a main district of the capital Damascus, witnesses told Reuters, while a car bomb ripped through a residential area of Syria's second city Aleppo, a day after twin blasts killed 27 in the capital Damascus.

Car bomb in Syria after activists beaten

"There is fighting near Hamada supermarket and the sound of explosions there and elsewhere in the neighborhood. Security police have blocked several side streets and the street lighting has been cut off," a housewife who lives in the area told Reuters by telephone.

Extra troops have been patrolling in Mezze, located on the Damascus-Beirut road, after thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in the neighborhood last month to denounce Assad following the killing of several protesters.

Email: 'No more messing around'
Despite the violence, the emails allegedly from Asma Assad, 38, portray a wife who is very supportive of her husband's hard-line measures. She had indicated that she was interested in liberalizing Syria before the beginning of the uprising, the Telegraph reported.

She praised a speech the president gave for displaying a sense of strength and that there would be "no more messing around," in one email to a friend on Jan. 10, the newspaper reported.

Shortly before the government onslaught that would claim hundreds of lives in Homs later in January, she circulated an email making a joke at the expense of the city, the Telegraph said.

Msnbc.com, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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A dramatic increase in the numbers of Syrian refugees fleeing President Bashar Assad's regime was reported Thursday, as his forces appeared to have routed the opposition in at least two key cities.

On the anniversary of the uprising, the opposition appeared to be in disarray, with The New York Times reporting that several prominent members of the main opposition exile group, the Syrian National Council, had resigned, claiming it was autocratic and dominated by the Muslim Brotherhood faction.

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The Times, which headlined its article "Syria Opposition Group Is Routed and Divided," said that the government's takeover of the cities of Homs and Idlib was near complete, fueling frustration among the rebels.

"What happened in Homs is betrayal,"  Kamal al-Labwani, a respected dissident who has resigned, told the paper. "There is a sense of irresponsibility on the part of the council."

Country music, Chris Brown, Harry Potter: Leaked emails reveal tastes of Syria's Assad

On the ground, Assad’s forces pressed home their military advantage, appearing to step up the offensive against rebel strongholds, sending tanks into the southern town of Deraa, where the rebellion began on March 15, 2011, after people were appalled by the torture of children over anti-Assad graffiti.

Official media announced government forces had cleared "armed terrorists" from the northwestern city of Idlib. However, there were reports of continuing clashes in areas around Idlib, as well as close to the central city of Homs.

The Turkish official said there had been a sharp increase in the flow of people fleeing the country, bringing the total number of registered Syrian refugees in Turkey to some 14,000.

"Around 1,000 people crossed the border from Syria to Turkey in the last 24 hours," the official said. "We expect this to continue as long as the operation goes on in Idlib."

Amid dire warnings that Syria is sinking into a protracted civil war, the U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan has demanded further clarification from Damascus over its response to proposals aimed at ending the violence.

He is due to report back to a divided U.N. Security Council on Friday. Russia and China remain behind a defiant Assad while exasperated Western powers push for regime change.

The United Nations estimates that more than 8,000 people, mostly civilians, have died in the fighting. Some 230,000 Syrians have been displaced from their homes, including 30,000 who have fled abroad, raising the prospect of a refugee crisis.

Syrian forces had pounded Idlib with artillery in recent days before sending in troops to regain control of the city, which had been a bastion for the Free Syria Army -- a disparate collection of lightly armed militants led by deserters.

"Security and peace of mind returned to the city of Idlib after authorities cleared its neighborhoods of armed terrorist groups which had terrorized citizens," the state news agency Sana reported on Thursday.

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The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said pockets of resistance remained in Idlib.

"The army has control of the main streets but not the alleyways and side roads," said Rami Abdulrahman, who relies on a network of Syrian residents for his information.

Reports from Syria cannot be independently verified as the authorities deny access to rights groups and journalists.

Syrian state television said there would be a "Global March for Syria" to honor those killed by the rebels and video footage showed crowds gathering in a central Damascus square.

The government has blamed foreign powers and "terrorists" for the chaos and say 2,000 soldiers have died in the conflict.

Deraa quiet on anniversary
Assad confidently predicted at the start of 2011 that Syria was immune from the "Arab Spring", in which the autocratic leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen were swept from power.

But on March 15, a few dozen protesters braved the streets of Damascus to call for more freedom. Days later riots broke out in Deraa, on the border with Jordan, to protest against the torture of local boys caught writing anti-government graffiti.

A contact in Deraa told Reuters most schools and shops in the main commercial area were closed on Thursday, with hundreds of security forces patrolling the streets. State employees were being ordered to stage a pro-Assad rally, residents said.

Despite a crumbling economy and tightening sanctions, Assad still seems to have significant support within Syria, notably in its two top cities -- Damascus and Aleppo. Its main ally Iran also remains supportive.

Diplomats say the fighting is developing along sectarian lines. The Sunni Muslim majority, who make up 75 percent of the population of 23 million, is at odds with Assad's Alawite sect, which represents 10 percent but controls the levers of power.

Other minorities, such as the Christians, are sticking with Assad for fear of reprisals should he be ousted, analysts say.

"The strategy of the regime is civil war, after it failed to silence the people. So it's trying to protect its future by moving toward dividing the country," said Najati Tayyara, a veteran dissident and Sunni liberal who has fled to Jordan.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Dozens of civilians were killed in cold blood in the Syrian city of Homs, opposition activists and Syrian state media said on Monday, although they disputed responsibility for what both sides called a massacre.

The carnage in Homs, as well as a military assault on the northwestern city of Idlib, coincided with a weekend peace mission by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, who left Damascus Sunday without agreement on a truce or humanitarian access.

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"The terrorist armed groups have kidnapped scores of civilians in the city of Homs, central Syria, killed, and mutilated their corpses and filmed them to be shown by media outlets," state news agency SANA said on its website.

 

Footage posted by opposition activists on YouTube showed men, women and children lying dead in a blood-drenched room.

The Local Coordination Committees of Syria, a network of opposition activists, said at least 45 women and children had been stabbed and burned in the Homs district of Karm al-Zeitoun.

It said another seven people were slain in the city's Jobar district, which adjoins the former rebel bastion of Baba Amr.

Activists contacted in Homs accused Alawite militiamen loyal to President Bashar Assad of carrying out the killings under the protection of regular Syrian military forces.

BBC News reported that Mulham al-Jundi, a member of the opposition Syrian National Council, said the district of Karm el-Zeitoun was being hit by a bombardment similar to the one experienced by Baba Amr recently.

Al-Jundi added that Assad’s troops were firing rockets, then going in "and killing the families who stay inside these areas."

'Why is this going on?'
American journalist Marie Colvin, who was among those killed in Baba Amr, was due to be laid to rest in the Long Island community of her childhood where she first decided to become a reporter.

A funeral was scheduled to be held Monday at St. Dominic Roman Catholic Church in Oyster Bay, N.Y., for the journalist, who worked for the U.K.'s Sunday Times newspaper and was killed while covering the slaughter of Syrian civilians.

War reporter Marie Colvin, photojournalist Remi Ochlik killed in Syria

The 56-year-old Queens native spoke her last words in a television dispatch from a village, while watching a baby boy dying. She said seeing the horror might "move people to think, why is this going on?"

At her wake Sunday, mourners passed by a portrait of Colvin by a Sri Lankan artist. She lost her left eye in 2001 in that country's civil war and wore her signature eye patch since then.

Colvin was killed on Feb. 22 when the building that served as a makeshift media center in the village of Homs was struck by a Syrian army mortar.

Only a few hours earlier, she appeared in a final live broadcast with CNN's Anderson Cooper, telling him the Syrians were shelling "a city of cold, starving civilians."

"It's a complete and utter lie that they are only going after terrorists," she added. "There are no military targets here."

The victims were civilians. "Absolutely horrific, a 2-year old child had been hit," Colvin said. "His little tummy just kept heaving until he died."

Syrian government restrictions make it difficult to assess conflicting reports by the authorities and their opponents since a popular uprising against Assad began a year ago.

SANA said the Homs killings reported Monday were "perpetrated by the armed terrorist groups and aired by (satellite TV channels) al-Jazeera and Arabiya ... coincide with today's U.N. Security Council session to call for foreign interference in Syria."

Syria launches fierce attack as UN envoy tries talks

The Security Council holds a special meeting on Arab revolts later Monday and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on the sidelines.

Russia and China have blocked attempts to pass a Security Council resolution condemning Damascus for its attempts to crush the rebellion, in which the United Nations says well over 7,500 people have been killed. Syrian authorities said in December insurgents had killed over 2,000 soldiers and police.

Syria opposition chief rejects UN peace talks

The United States has drafted a new resolution, but Washington and Paris say they doubt it will be accepted.

China sounded an optimistic note, but gave no details.

"China has actively participated in discussion about this draft resolution, and raised its ideas about revising it," Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Weimin said Monday. "We also support the international community playing an active role in a political solution to the Syria issue."

China and Russia, as well as Western and Arab nations, have voiced support for Annan's peace mission, but no common ground has emerged between Assad, who is bent on crushing dissent, and his opponents, who are determined to overthrow him.

"The situation is so bad and so dangerous that all of us cannot afford to fail," Annan said in Damascus Sunday.

Rebels: Four more generals defect from Syrian army

Moscow and Beijing want any international blame for the violence to be apportioned evenly and say both sides should be encouraged to stop fighting. Saudi Arabia and Qatar have taken a hawkish line, calling for the rebels to be armed.

"The regime in Syria is committing a massacre of its own citizens," Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said Sunday after talks with his German counterpart, Guido Westerwelle.

Westerwelle said in Riyadh: "We cannot accept the completely unreasonable continuation of the atrocities being perpetrated by the Assad regime against its own people."

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Updated 12:15 p.m. ET: BEIRUT -- U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan said it would be hard to reach a deal to halt bloodshed in Syria, but expressed optimism after meeting President Bashar al-Assad for a second day on Sunday.

"It's going to be tough. It's going to be difficult but we have to have hope," he told reporters in Damascus.

"I am optimistic for several reasons," Annan said, citing a general desire for peace in Syria. "The situation is so bad and so dangerous that all of us cannot afford to fail."

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The former United Nations chief, who is from Ghana, said: "I have urged the president to heed the African proverb which says: 'You cannot turn the wind, so turn the sail.' "

Annan, speaking before departing for Qatar, said he had left "concrete proposals" with Assad for a way out of a conflict that has cost thousands of lives.

"You have to start by stopping the killings and the misery and the abuses that are going on today, and then give time (for a) political settlement," he said.

There was no immediate word from Syrian officials on the outcome of the talks, but Assad told Annan on Saturday that "terrorists" spreading chaos and instability were blocking any political solution, according to the state news agency SANA.

But it said the 46-year-old president had also told Annan he would help in "any honest effort to find a solution".

Syrians involved in a popular uprising against Assad say there can be no meaningful dialogue with a leader who has inflicted such violence and suffering on his own people.

"Him (Assad) stepping down is definitely a first condition of any discussion or negotiation," Bassma Kodmani of the opposition Syrian National Council told the BBC on Sunday.

The United Nations says Assad's forces have killed more than 7,500 people in a year-long crackdown on protesters and insurgents. Authorities say rebels have killed 2,000 soldiers.

Annan's mission has coincided with a Syrian military offensive against opposition strongholds in the northwest.

Activists said at least four people were killed in the town of Idlib on Sunday after troops and tanks moved in a day earlier. Three soldiers and a civilian were also killed in fighting in the village of Janoudiya in Idlib province on Sunday morning, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

State news agency SANA said "terrorists" shot dead a former boxing champion, Ghiath Tayfour, in the city of Aleppo and also killed a leading Baath Party member in Homs province.

The Observatory said 39 civilians, including 25 in Idlib province, were killed on Saturday, along with 39 rebels and 20 government soldiers, giving an overall death toll of 98.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who met Annan in Cairo on Friday, told the Arab League his country was "not protecting any regime," but did not believe the Syrian crisis could be blamed on one side alone.

He called for a ceasefire and humanitarian aid access, but Qatar and Saudi Arabia sharply criticized Moscow's stance.

Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim al-Thani, who has led calls for Assad to be isolated and for Syrian rebels to be armed, said a ceasefire was not enough. Syrian leaders must be held to account and political prisoners freed, he declared.

Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal said shortcomings in the U.N. Security Council, where Russia and China have twice vetoed resolutions on Syria, had allowed the killing to go on.

Their position, he said, "gave the Syrian regime a license to extend its brutal practices against the Syrian people."

Saudi Arabia and Qatar, which are both ruled by autocrats and espouse a strict version of Sunni Islam, are improbable champions of democracy in Syria. Riyadh has an interest in seeing Assad fall because this could weaken its Shi'ite regional rival Iran, which has been allied with Syria since 1980.

Syria opposition chief rejects UN peace talks

International rifts have paralyzed action on Syria, with Russia and China opposing Western and Arab calls for Assad, who inherited power from his father nearly 12 years ago, to quit.

The United States has drafted a fresh U.N. Security Council resolution, but Washington and Paris have said they are not optimistic it will be accepted.

Despite their differences, Lavrov and Arab ministers said they had agreed on the need for an end to violence in Syria.

They also called for unbiased monitoring of events there, opposition to foreign intervention, delivery of humanitarian aid and support for Annan's peace efforts.

But the exiled opposition Syrian National Council ruled out talks while Assad is in power.

"Negotiations can never take place between the victim and torturer: Assad and his entourage must step down as a condition before starting any serious negotiations," it said.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will meet Lavrov in New York on Monday when the Security Council holds a special meeting on Arab revolts, with Syria likely to be in focus. 

Syrian forces have been building up for days around Idlib, the capital of a hilly, agricultural province along the Syria-Turkey border that has been a hotbed of protests against Assad's regime.

Saturday morning, troops blasted Idlib for hours with dozens of tank shells as the forces moved to encircle the town, an Associated Press team in Idlib reported.

Families fled their homes, carrying blankets and a few other meager belongings. Others huddled in homes.

'I join the revolution': 1st senior Assad official defects

The Idlib operation raised fears that Assad is set to launch an all-out offensive in Idlib like the one that captured captured part of Homs in the south.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

 

Updated 11:30 a.m. ET: U.N. cultural agency UNESCO is set to condemn Syria at its executive board meeting on Wednesday but fall short of Western and Arab hopes of expelling it from its human rights committee, according to a draft resolution obtained by Reuters.

Also on Wednesday, a team of aid workers from the Syrian Arab Red Crescent entered the devastated Homs district of Baba Amr.  The team was accompanied by U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos, who recently arrived in the city.

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"The Syrian Arab Red Crescent stayed inside Baba Amr for about 45 minutes. They found that most inhabitants had left Baba Amr to areas that have been already visited by the ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent in the past week," ICRC spokesman Hicham Hassan told Reuters in Geneva.

An ICRC aid convoy has been unable to enter Baba Amr since reaching Homs a day after rebel fighters fled.

The long delay in securing access for relief agencies trying to deliver supplies and evacuate the wounded has fuelled international concern about the fate of survivors in Baba Amr.

UNESCO board
The U.N. Education, Scientific and Cultural Organisation's (UNESCO) executive board, which includes the United States, France and Russia, elected Syria to two panels in November, including one that judges human rights violations.

NYT: Across a murky river, Syrians flee to safety

A group of Western and Arab nations had sought the expulsion of Syria from the U.N. cultural agency's human rights committee, the latest international effort to isolate Damascus over its violent crackdown on domestic unrest.

The resolution submitted by countries including Saudi Arabia, the United States and the Britain condemns Damascus for "the continued widespread and systematic violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms by the Syrian authorities."

The resolution also requests for UNESCO's Director General to report on the matter in the future. It makes no mention of Syria's membership of the human rights committee.

Report: Syrian military hospitals torturing patients

A vote was pushed back to Thursday, a source said.

Diplomacy has yet to brake a conflict likely to have cost more than 10,000 lives: the United Nations says security forces have killed well over 7,500 people and Syria said in December that "terrorists" had killed more than 2,000 security personnel. 

Amos in Homs
Amos had wanted to visit Syria last week, but was denied access. The Syrian military drove armed rebels from the battered Baba Amr district on Thursday after a month-long siege and state media say civilians have begun returning there.

In another effort to stop the violence, former U.N. chief Kofi Annan plans his first visit to Damascus as joint envoy of the United Nations and the Arab League on Saturday.

There was no information on what food or medical aid the Red Crescent workers were able to take with them into Baba Amr. The ICRC had not gained permission from Syrian authorities to enter the area since last Friday, raising fears about the fate of survivors in Baba Amr.

Saudi Arabia: Syrians have right to defend themselves

Syrian tanks bombarded other opposition areas in Homs overnight, anti-Assad activists said, although an ICRC spokesman in Damascus said the city was quieter than before.

No independent witnesses have been allowed into the devastated Baba Amr district since rebels withdrew.

In the latest of several accounts of killings and other abuses, local activist Mohammed al-Homsi said troops and pro-Assad militiamen had stabbed to death seven males, including a 10-year-old, from one family on Tuesday. "Their bodies were dumped in farmland next to Baba Amr," he told Reuters.

Syria imposes severe media restrictions, making such reports hard to verify, although U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has voiced alarm at reports that Syrian government forces have executed, imprisoned and tortured people in Baba Amr.

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 The U.N. Security Council is deploring the rapidly deteriorating humanitarian situation in Syria and calling on authorities there to grant U.N. humanitarian chief Valerie Amos "unhindered access," according to The Associated Press.

A statement -- the first on Syria to be approved by the council in seven months -- is significant because it requires the agreement of all 15 council members, including Russia and China, who last month vetoed two resolutions condemning the Syrian government's bloody crackdown and calling for President Bashar Assad to step down.

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While a U.N. statement is not legally binding on Syria, it does reflect the growing concern of the council about the impact of the year-old conflict on Syria's civilian population.

Syrian rebels retreated Thursday from a neighborhood in Homs that they had held for months, saying they were running out of weapons and humanitarian conditions were catastrophic after almost four weeks of government bombardment.

Graphic: The siege of Homs

Within hours of the rebels' withdrawal, President Bashar Assad's government granted permission for the International Committee of the Red Cross to enter the besieged neighborhood of Baba Amr in Homs on Friday. Human rights workers have been appealing for access to Baba Amr for weeks.

"The ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent received today from the Syrian authorities the green light to enter Baba Amr tomorrow to bring in much-needed assistance including food and medical aid, and to carry out evacuation operations," spokesman Hicham Hassan told The Associated Press.

Earlier, rebels told journalists that a few fighters had remained behind in the shattered quarter to cover the "tactical withdrawal" of their comrades. The withdrawal appeared to be an agreement between the two sides in order to avoid a showdown, the BBC reported.

Syrian forces, which shelled Baba Amr earlier in the day despite world alarm at the plight of civilians trapped there, said they were in full control of the district, the BBC reported.

The head of the Free Syrian Army, Col. Riyad Assad, told the BBC that government troops had moved in and were combing the area. The Free Syrian Army is composed mainly of Syrian soldiers who have defected and volunteer civilians.

Images: The fear of carnage to come

A senior official in the FSA earlier told Reuters that rebels in Baba Amr were fending off more than 7,000 government troops. Opposition forces had promised to step up attacks elsewhere in Syria to try to relieve the pressure.

Reports from the city could not be verified immediately due to tight government restrictions on media operations in Syria.

Also on Thursday, Kuwait's parliament said it would support the rebel Free Syrian Army, and called on the Kuwaiti government to cut ties with Assad.

The parliament, which has limited legislative powers, called for Assad to be prosecuted for crimes against his people.

'Whatever the cost'
The 4th Armored Division, which was leading the assault on Homs, is commanded by Maher Assad, the president's younger brother, who has won a reputation for ruthlessness during the past year of revolt against the government.

A Lebanese official close to Damascus said Assad's government was determined to regain control of Homs, Syria's third city, which straddles the main north-south highway.

"They want to take it, whatever happens, without restraint, whatever the cost," the official told Reuters, asking not to be named.

He said defeat for the rebels in Homs, a city of 1 million people, would leave the opposition without any major stronghold in Syria, easing the crisis for Assad, who remained confident he could survive.

Smugglers take 'path of death' to supply Syria revolt

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told members of Congress on Tuesday that Assad could be considered a war criminal.

The U.N. estimates that more than 7,500 people have been killed since the anti-Assad struggle started in March 2011, when protesters inspired by successful Arab Spring uprisings against dictators in Tunisia and Egypt took to the streets in Syria.

Syria's government said in December that "armed terrorists" had killed more than 2,000 soldiers and police during the unrest.

Journalists escape to Lebanon
On Thursday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy said wounded French freelance journalist Edith Bouvier had arrived in Lebanon from Syria along with French photographer William Daniels.

Bouvier's family confirmed the news of her arrival in Lebanon to French TV channel France24.

Sarkozy, in Brussels for a European summit, told reporters that Bouvier would be flown home to France in a government plane. The flight could happen as soon as Thursday evening if doctors agreed, he said.

"Edith Bouvier and William Daniels are safely in Lebanon and will very shortly be under the protection of our embassy in Beirut," he said.

Bouvier's femur was shattered during heavy shelling of Homs's rebel-held Baba Amr district, which killed veteran Sunday Times war correspondent Marie Colvin and French photographer Remi Ochlik last week.

Meanwhile, Spanish reporter Javier Espinosa, one of several Western journalists trapped in Baba Amr for a week, crossed to Lebanon on Wednesday, an activist said, following the escape on Tuesday of wounded British photographer Paul Conroy.

Thirteen Syrians were killed while aiding Conroy's escape, the activist group Avaaz said.

The Local Coordination Committees, a human rights monitoring group, said Bouvier had previously refused to leave Baba Amr without the Syrians who were wounded by shelling while attempting to help her escape, and she has called on the French ambassador for help.

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Msnbc.com staff, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.