Updated at 11:19 a.m. ET: Mortars rained down on a crowded marketplace in a Palestinian refugee camp in the Syrian capital, killing 21 people as regime forces and rebels clashed on the southern outskirts of Damascus, activists said Friday.

With the civil war in Syria getting increasingly vicious, chances for a diplomatic solution to the 17-month-old conflict were fading after the resignation Thursday of Kofi Annan, the U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria. Annan cited divisions within the Security Council preventing a united approach to stop the fighting.

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The developments came as the U.N. General Assembly prepared to denounce President Bashar Assad's regime for unleashing tanks, artillery, helicopters and warplanes on the people of Aleppo and Damascus, its two largest cities. The resolution was also to demand that Syria keep its chemical and biological weapons warehoused and under strict control.

The attack on Yarmouk camp came as the government battled rebel fighters in the nearby Damascus suburb of Tadamon on Thursday evening. Clashes there continued on Friday and sounds of explosions from the neighborhood could be heard as far as the mostly deserted Damascus downtown, with plumes of smoke seen rising into the sky.

The U.N. agency running Palestinian camps confirmed that at least 20 people had died in the shelling of Yarmouk. The Britain-based Syria Observatory for Human Rights, which first reported the deaths, said the mortars hit as shoppers were buying food for the evening meal. The activists with the group would not speculate on who was firing.

"We don't know where the mortars came from, whether they were from the Syrian regime or not the Syrian regime," said Rami Abdul Rahman, director of the Observatory.

The state news agency blamed the bombardment on "terrorist mercenaries" — a term the government uses for rebel fighters — and said they had been chased away by security forces.

Kofi Annan quits role as UN's Syria envoy

The incident highlights the precarious situation of not just Palestinian refugees but all civilians in Syria who are increasingly getting caught in the crossfire of this bloody uprising that has claimed 19,000 lives since it erupted in March 2011. Every day hundreds of civilians are uprooted by the violence, according to the United Nations, which estimates that 1.5 million people have been force to abandon their homes but remain in the country.

Government troops have in the past attacked the camp, home to nearly 150,000 Palestinians and their descendants driven from their homes by the war surrounding Israel's 1948 creation. Palestinian refugees in Syria have tried to stay out of the 17-month old uprising, but with Yarmouk nestled among neighborhoods sympathetic to the rebels, its residents were eventually drawn into the fighting.

The situation of the Palestinian refugees is particularly sensitive because Syria has long cast itself as the principal champion in the Arab world of the Palestinian struggle against Israel. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, whose government has a strict policy of neutrality regarding the Syrian conflict, condemned the Yarmouk attack.

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Syria's civil war, which had spread across much of the country, only came to the capital and northeastern city of Aleppo, Syria's main commercial hub, in July.

Turkey: Brigadier-general among defectors
Meanwhile, about 1,000 Syrians, including a defecting brigadier-general, have fled to Turkey in the past 24 hours to escape intensifying violence, a Turkish official told Reuters on Friday. 

Elsewhere, the Russian Defense Ministry denied  that it plans to send naval vessels to the Syrian port of Tartus, the state-owned RIA news agency said.

It dismissed reports, attributed by Russian news agencies to a source in the general staff, that Moscow was sending three large landing ships with marines aboard.

Security Council deadlock
Washington, U.N. diplomats say, has been convinced that the Security Council cannot play a meaningful role in the crisis since Russia and China first vetoed a Western- and Arab-backed resolution in October. Both countries have cast a double-veto three times to kill resolutions that could have opened the door to sanctions, or even military intervention.

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Moscow and Beijing have frequently complained about Western and Arab backing for the insurgents, saying pressure should be put on both sides to stop the violence.

That is partly why the General Assembly has taken up the resolution, but the resignation of joint U.N.-Arab League representative Annan after his peace proposals failed threatened to overshadow the developments in New York.

Annan's peace plan was supposed to resolve Syria's conflict with an immediate halt to the violence, withdrawal of heavy weapons and military forces from built-up areas, access for humanitarian aid and journalists, and a political transition.

But Annan's mission looked irrelevant as fighting intensified in Damascus, Aleppo and elsewhere. 

Annan blamed "finger-pointing and name-calling" at the Security Council for his decision to quit but suggested his successor may have better luck.

Russia, the United States, Britain and France began blaming one another over who was responsible for Annan's sudden announcement he would depart. One senior council diplomat said it was now time to acknowledge the "utter irrelevance of an impotent Security Council" on Syria, Reuters reported.

Russia said it would not back Friday's resolution because it was unbalanced and would encourage rebels to keep fighting.

The anti-Syria resolution was expected to easily pass Friday in the 193-member General Assembly after its Arab sponsors de-fanged two key provisions in the original draft — a demand that Assad resign, and a call for other nations to place sanctions on Syria over its civil war.

NBC News staff, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Updated at 6:30 p.m. ET: Kofi Annan blamed "finger pointing and name calling" within the U.N. Security Council among the reasons for his decision on Thursday to quit as the U.N.-Arab League Joint Special Envoy for Syria.

"The world is full of crazy people like me. So don't be surprised if Secretary General Ban Ki-moon can find someone who can do a better job than me," Annan said when asked if he thought someone else would be named to succeed him.

"There may be other plans, other approaches that may work quite effectively," he said, adding that at this stage the focus should still be on a political transition which means "President (Bashar) al-Assad will have to leave sooner or later."

Annan's resignation is effective Aug. 31.

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U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said in a statement Thursday that Annan deserves "profound admiration for the selfless way in which he has put his formidable skills and prestige to this most difficult and potentially thankless of assignments." He added that the search for a successor is under way.

Judo diplomacy: Putin, Cameron differ on Syria

"The hand extended to turn away from violence in favor of dialogue and diplomacy - as spelled out in the Six-Point Plan - has not been taken, even though it still remains the best hope for the people of Syria," the Secretary-General's statement read.

"Kofi Annan is a very respectable person, a brilliant diplomat and a very decent man, so it's really a shame," Russian President Vladimir Putin said in London, according to Interfax. "But I hope that the international community's efforts aimed at ending the violence will continue."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Anan worked tirelessly to end Syrian bloodshed and build an "inclusive, post-Assad Syria."

"Unfortunately, the Security Council was blocked from giving him key tools to advance his efforts," she said. 

 

Recent days have seen Syria's uprising transformed from an insurgency in remote provinces into a battle for control of the two main cities, Aleppo, and the slightly smaller capital, Damascus, where fighting exploded about two weeks ago. 

Assad's forces have launched massive counter assaults in both cities.

Palestinian camp hit
At least 20 people were killed on Thursday when Syrian security forces fired three mortar rounds at a Palestinian camp in Damascus, medical sources said.

Witnesses in the camp told Reuters by telephone that the mortars hit a busy street as people were preparing for the Ramadan meal to break their fasting.

"I saw it all, I was going to my house when the first round hit the street, people ran to check the damage when the second one hit the same area," a resident said.

"Many people were killed immediately," she said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Fighting between opposition and government forces in the Syrian capital Damascus erupted for a second day Monday, activists said, one day after the International Committee for the Red Cross declared the conflict to be a civil war.

The decision by the Geneva-based group to label the situation in Syria as a civil war is significant because it means that international humanitarian law now applies throughout the country and attacks by either side on civilians and detainees could constitute war crimes.

"We are now talking about a non-international armed conflict in the country," ICRC spokesman Hicham Hassan said.

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Fierce fighting in capital
Monday’s fighting was reportedly some of the fiercest to hit Damascus since the 17-month-old revolt against President Bashar al-Assad began.

The clashes briefly closed the highway linking the capital with Damascus International Airport to the city's south — an unprecedented development, Mustafa Osso, an activist based in Syria, told The Associated Press. 

"It seems there is a new strategy to bring the fighting into the center of the capital," Osso said, referring to the rebels who fight under the banner of the Free Syrian Army. "The capital used to be safe. This will trouble the regime."

Red Cross: Syria conflict is now a civil war

Amateur video posted online has shown clouds of black smoke billowing above residential buildings where opposition rebels and government forces battled. The authenticity of the video could not be independently confirmed.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Osso said the fighting was concentrated in the districts of Kfar Souseh, Midan and Tadamon.

There have been sporadic clashes in Damascus in recent months, although Assad's forces remain firmly in control of the capital. Many of the Damascus suburbs, however, have risen up against the regime, prompting a ferocious response from the military in an attempt to clear out rebel fighters from the towns that ring the capital.

The spread of fighting in the capital came as U.N. peace envoy Kofi Annan starts a two-day visit to Moscow. He will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has resisted Western calls to increase pressure on Assad.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov signaled no change in its position on the conflict before talks with Annan.

UN investigates Syria massacre site

Lavrov said Western efforts to pass a Security Council resolution to extend the U.N. monitoring mission in Syria, which includes a threat of sanctions, contained "elements of blackmail." He called for support of Moscow's resolution instead, which does not call for sanctions.

The monitoring mission was suspended due to rising violence in Syria, where activists say more than 17,000 people have died.

At least five people were killed and dozens more wounded in Sunday's fighting, according to activists who said they expected more casualties from the violence on Monday.

Accounts in Syria are difficult to verify because the government has restricted access to international media.

Ambassador expelled
Pressure on Assad has been growing both from outside the government and within.

Morocco asked Syria's ambassador to the country to leave and declared him persona non grata. The move comes days after the Syrian ambassador to Iraq defected to the opposition, and a week after top general and Assad insider Manaf Tlas fled Syria.

The Guardian newspaper cited reports Monday that Maj. Gen.  Adnan Sillu, the former head of Syria's chemical weapons program, had defected to the opposition.

Rising violence in Syria, including several alleged massacres in the country, has increased outrage in Syria. What began as peaceful protests has morphed into an armed insurgency fighting back fiercely against Assad's heavy crackdown.

Annan is visiting Moscow just days after opposition reported a new massacre in the village of Tremseh which prompted a fresh wave of denunciations in the West, where diplomats still hope Russia might ease support for Assad.

US source: Syria is moving its chemical weapons

Moscow, along with China, has blocked tougher U.N. Security Council action and the West has shown no appetite for the kind of intervention it undertook last year when NATO helped topple Libya's Moammar Gadhafi.

Annan said Friday he was "shocked and appalled" at the government for breaking a promise not to use heavy weapons in populated areas, and that it was confirmed that helicopters and artillery had fired on the village of Tremseh on Thursday.

U.N. monitors who managed to enter Tremseh have said that the fighting there did not constitute a massacre, as alleged by opposition activists, but that it could more likely be described as a lopsided flight between the Syrian military on the one side and army defectors and residents who tried to defend the town on the other.

The Syrian government said it killed several dozen enemy fighters in Tremseh but denied carrying out a massacre or that its forces used heavy weapons.

Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi criticized Annan for jumping to conclusions by accepting opposition reports of the incident last week.

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"Government forces did not use planes, or helicopters, or tanks or artillery," he told a news conference in Damascus. "What happened was not a massacre. ... What happened was a military operation."

NBC News' Ayman Mohedin, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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Saudi Arabian officials will pay the salaries of the Free Syria Army in order to encourage mass military defections and increase pressure on the regime of President Bashar al-Assad's, the Guardian of London newspaper reported Friday.

The move has been discussed by Riyadh with senior U.S. and Arab world officials, the Guardian said.

The Guardian did not specify sources for its report. However, it said, Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., an active supporter of the Syrian opposition, recently endorsed the idea of ensuring pay for armed Syrian opposition, though not necessarily with U.S funds.

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The plan is gaining support as weapons sent recently to rebel forces by Saudi Arabia and Qatar make a difference on battlefields in Syria.

Saudi officials embraced the pay idea when it suggested by Arab officials in May, sources in three Arab states told the Guardian.

At that time, weapons started to flow across the southern Turkish border to Free Syria Army leaders, the Guardian said.

PhotoBlog: Glimpses of escalating conflict in Syria

Turkey also allowed the establishment of an Istanbul command center staffed by 22 people, mostly Syrian, to coordinate supply lines in consultation with rebel army leaders inside Syria, the newspaper reported.

News of the pay plan emerged as international mediator Kofi Annan said Friday that Iran, an ally and neighbor of Syria, must be part of any solution to end the crisis in Syria and pave the way for a political transition.

The United States and Russia are in a standoff over Syria and Iran's nuclear program.

Syria air force colonel flies to Jordan, gets political asylum

Annan wants the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and governments with influence on Syria's government or the opposition to agree on recommendations for next steps at a meeting that has been penciled in for June 30 in Geneva.

Iran's involvement is opposed by the United States, Britain and France, but Annan said it should be at the table.

"We are discussing the composition and other aspects of the meeting, but I have made it quite clear that I believe Iran should be part of the solution," Annan told a news conference in Geneva.

In response to Annan's remarks, the U.S. State Department repeated its opposition to Iran taking part, saying Tehran was playing a "destructive" role in Syria.

This article includes reporting by Reuters.

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The smell of burned flesh hung in the air and body parts lay scattered around the deserted Syrian hamlet of Mazraat al-Qubeir on Friday, U.N. monitors said after visiting the site where 78 people were reported massacred two days ago.

The alleged killing spree on Wednesday underlined how little outside powers, divided and pursuing their own interests in the Middle East, have been able to do to stop increasing carnage in the 15-month-old uprising against President Bashar Assad.

A day after Syrian armed forces and villagers had turned them back, the unarmed U.N. monitors reached the farming settlement of Mazraat al-Qubeir, finding it deserted but bearing signs of deadly violence.

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One house was damaged by rocket fire and bullets, U.N. spokeswoman Sausan Ghosheh said. Another was burned, with bodies still inside. "You could smell dead bodies and you could also see body parts in and around the village," Ghosheh told reporters after returning to Damascus.

Syrian troops shell rebel city as full-scale assault feared, activists say

BBC reporter Paul Danahar, who accompanied the U.N. monitors, said it was clear "terrible crime" had taken place.

In one house he saw "pieces of brains lying on the floor.

"There was a tablecloth covered in blood and flesh and someone had tried to mop the blood up by pushing it into the corner, but seems they had given up because there was so much of it around."

Blood was in pools around a room, Danahar tweeted. "Pieces of flesh lay among the scattered possession." Livestock carcasses were rotting in the sun.

Danahar's Twitter report added: "What we didn't find were any bodies of people. What we did find were tracks on the tarmac (that) the U.N. said looked like armored personnel carriers or tanks."

"Whoever did this may have acted with mindless violence but attempts to cover up the details of the atrocity are calculated & clear," Danahar concluded.

Ghosheh said Mazraat al-Qubeir, which has a population of around 150 people, was empty on Friday, but people from neighboring villages arrived to give their accounts.

Rebel fighter: Syria army firing on more villages after 'massacre'

"The information was a little bit conflicting. We need to go back, cross-reference what we have heard, and check the names they say were killed, check the names they say are missing."

Many Syrian civilians are fleeing their homes to escape widening fighting between security forces and rebels, the Red Cross said, while the outside world seems unable to craft an alternative to envoy Kofi Annan's failing peace plan.

"Some say that the plan may be dead," Annan said before meeting U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Washington.

"Is the problem the plan or the problem is implementation?" he asked. "If it's implementation, how do we get action on that? And if it is the plan, what other options do we have?"

Activists say at least 78 people were shot, stabbed or burned alive in Mazraat al-Qubeir, a Sunni Muslim hamlet, by forces loyal to Assad, whose minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam, has dominated Syria for decades.

Syrian authorities have condemned the killings in Mazraat al-Qubeir and another massacre of civilians in Houla two weeks ago, blaming them on "terrorists."

The conflict is becoming increasingly sectarian. Shabbiha militiamen from the Alawite community appear to be off the leash, targeting Sunni civilians almost regardless of their part in the uprising.

Opposition activists said those killed in Mazraat al-Qubeir had not previously been caught up in the conflict.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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BEIRUT - Syrian security forces and students armed with knives stormed a protest march at Aleppo University early on Thursday, activists said, killing four and rounding up 200 demonstrators demanding President Bashar Assad step down.

The pre-dawn raid was an unusually bloody incident for Aleppo, Syria's normally fairly peaceful commercial hub, and prompted condemnation from the White House. It accused Assad of making "no effort" to honor a three-week-old U.N. truce and warned that world powers might do more to bring change to Syria.

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"If the regime's intransigence continues, the international community is going to have to admit defeat and work to address the serious threat to peace and stability being perpetrated by the Assad regime," White House spokesman Jay Carney said.

"Political transition is urgently needed in Syria."

Western powers back the 14-month revolt but lack appetite for the kind of military intervention seen last year in Libya. Assad has counted on support from Russia and China to block U.N. sanctions. However, Moscow and Beijing backed the ceasefire plan brokered by envoy Kofi Annan and Western states might hope to prevail on them to agree to penalize Assad if it collapses.

On Thursday, however, the head of the monitoring mission dispatched to Syria under the plan said the team of U.N. observers in the country was having a calming effect.

Bold move as Syria leader makes time for chess

Yet a Reuters team in the opposition center of Homs during the day heard continuous gunfire and the occasional sound of shelling, despite a permanent presence of monitors there.

Video posted on the Internet showed students in Aleppo chanting against four decades of Assad family rule but being drowned out by gunfire. Activists posted images of a dead student, drenched in blood, and what they said was a burning dormitory. Small solidarity protests broke out in other universities across Syria, videos uploaded by activists showed.

A British-based opposition group, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said 28 other students were wounded overnight, three critically.

Knife-wielding youths attacked fellow students marching from their dormitories, the group said, followed by a security force raid on the latest march of a growing student protest movement.

"Freedom forever in spite of you, Assad!" chanted the young demonstrators in a video shot in the morning twilight.

There was no comment from officials and it was not possible to verify the account from the northern city, whose relatively prosperous, business-oriented population has been reluctant to join the 14-month-old revolt against Assad.

Many members of Syria's middle classes and religious minorities are wary of the uprising dominated by majority Sunni Muslims against Assad and the elite around him, drawn largely from his Alawite minority. They fear it could descend into the kind of sectarian and ethnic bloodbath they have watched destroy neighboring Iraq over recent years.

Assad says he is fighting foreign-backed "terrorists" and his international friends, including in Moscow, point out that rebels too have mounted attacks in breach of the ceasefire.

Another truce breach
From Aleppo, anti-Assad activists uploaded video of a burning residence block, its windows shattered. Dormitory hallways appeared to have been smashed up and men were dragging furniture outside as students screamed.

Other videos showed crowds of students leaving the campus with suitcases and bundles of clothes. Activists say busloads of security forces had taken over the dormitories, which were where students usually began the protests. Student activists said they had been ordered to move out by Thursday afternoon.

The truce brokered by former U.N. Secretary General Annan has led to a small reduction in the daily carnage, mostly in cities were monitors are deployed permanently.

The head of the monitoring mission, Major General Robert Mood from Norway, told reporters during a trip to Hama on Thursday that observers were having a "calming effect" and that state forces appeared willing to cooperate with the truce.

"There have been steps taken by the government forces on the ground that indicate a better willingness to live up to the commitments made in the agreement," he said, giving no details.

Still, the Reuters team could hear mortars exploding in the Khalidiya neighborhood of Homs at a rate of one a minute. They also reported the sound of heavy gunfire but did not know where it was coming from.

Explosions rocked the rebellious Jabal al-Zawiya area in Idlib and at least one woman was killed by security force fire, the Observatory said. Security forces followed up by raiding the area and arresting several men.

Clashes between rebels and the army also flared in Palmyra, home to historic Roman ruins in central Syria.

Mood, speaking in Homs later on Thursday, said that observer mission was growing as a steady pace, with a total of 50 monitors in the country which would be doubled within weeks.

"We have reinforced our permanent teams in Hama and Deraa with an extra two monitors in each city," he said from the al-Safir hotel in Homs, where six monitors are based permanently.

Around 300 monitors will be deployed by the end of May.

In Washington, the White House spokesman expressed doubts at whether the truce would hold, however:

"It is certainly our hope that the Annan plan succeeds," Carney said. "We remain, based on the evidence, highly skeptical of Assad's willingness to meet the conditions of that plan, because he has so clearly failed to meet them thus far."

'They have to shoot us all'
While the city of Aleppo itself has rarely seen clashes, it has not been free of assassinations, apparently by rebels. The Observatory reported the killing overnight of Ismail Haidar, son of the head of a pro-Assad political party.

Syria's news agency said another state figure, national basketball team player Bassel al-Raya, succumbed to his wounds on Thursday after being attacked by unidentified gunmen a week earlier.

At Aleppo University, activists said small protests continued to break out sporadically on the campus. "Our anger will breed more hope. If we have to go to the streets, we will," said a student activist called Mustafa. "They can't stop the students, even if they have to shoot us all."

While most opposition areas in Syria have been overtaken by an armed revolt, peaceful anti-Assad protests had continued almost daily at the university in Aleppo.

It is hard to assess if those protests reflect widespread sentiment among the younger generation native to the city or whether students living there who come from rebellious hotspots such as Idlib and Deraa might be taking a lead in Aleppo.

Syria's uprising began in March 2011 with peaceful demonstrations inspired by a wave of Arab revolts against long-ruling autocratic leaders, but it has become increasingly militarized in response to Assad's violent crackdown.

The U.N. says more than 9,000 people have died in the crackdown, while the Syrian government says it has lost at least 2,600 of its forces to "foreign-backed terrorists".

Despite the turmoil, Syria plans to hold a parliamentary election on Monday under a new constitution which has allowed the creation of new political parties and formally ended decades of monopoly by Assad's ruling Baath Party.

Authorities say the election is part of a reform process, but the opposition dismisses it as a sham.

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Syria blamed "terrorist" bomb-makers on Thursday for an explosion that ripped through a building and killed 16 people in the restive city of Hama, where hostility to President Bashar Assad runs deep.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a British-based anti-Assad organization tracking the 13-month-old conflict in which the United Nations says at least 9,000 people have died, gave the same death toll but said the cause of Wednesday afternoon's blast was not clear.

The Local Coordination Committees, a grassroots opposition group, had said earlier that a military rocket had inflicted the carnage and put the death toll at more than 50.

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Whatever its origins, the blast dealt another blow to a two-week-old U.N.-backed truce that has failed to halt violence on both sides of the conflict, one of a string of uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa against autocratic rule.

An activist said seven civilians and two rebel militiamen were killed in fighting in the eastern city of Deir al-Zor, while a resident of Zamalka on the outskirts of Damascus reported intense gun-battles.

"There have been heavy clashes today, really heavy over the past couple hours," the man said. "I couldn't get close enough to see. There are checkpoints everywhere."

Meanwhile the state news agency, SANA, said a school headmaster was blown up in a booby-trapped car in the northern city of Aleppo, and an "armed terrorist group" had shot dead four members of the same family in Erbin near Damascus.

It also said two members of the security forces were killed in Deir al-Zor.

Russian monitors
United Nations monitors charged with checking the ceasefire engineered by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan are trickling in to and two are now based permanently in Hama, where many thousands of people were killed when Assad's late father, Hafez Assad, crushed an armed Islamist uprising 30 years ago.

Activists have been dismayed at the pace of the observer deployment, and a senior U.N. official said this week it would take a month to put the first 100 monitors on the ground.

Only 15 are in place so far out of an envisaged full-strength team of 300 to be led by Norwegian General Robert Mood.

Sana said four monitors from Russia, Syria's most powerful ally, were on their way.

The killing of a Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteer on Tuesday underscores the dangers the monitors may face.

The International Committee of the Red Cross said three other aid workers were wounded when the clearly marked ambulance in which they were traveling came under fire near Damascus.

Syria says it has completed withdrawing tanks and troops from populated areas in line with Annan's peace plan, but the former U.N. chief said on Tuesday Damascus had failed to meet all its commitments and the situation remained "unacceptable".

France, leading Western calls for tougher action against Assad, says it planned to push next month for a "Chapter 7" Security Council resolution if Assad's forces did not pull back.

Chapter 7 of the U.N. charter allows the Council to authorize actions which can include military force. But Western powers have disavowed any intention to intervene militarily in Syria, as they did last year in Libya.

The U.N. is drawing up a major humanitarian effort for more than a million people affected by the conflict. A report seen by Reuters on Thursday said sewage networks had been damaged and water contaminated, setting the stage for outbreaks of water-borne diseases such as cholera. 

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The United States on Monday dismissed demands by the Syrian regime that rebels provide written guarantees that they would lay down arms as a stalling tactic.

Syria was supposed to start pulling troops from towns and cities by Tuesday, paving the way for a cease-fire. President Bashar Assad over the weekend demanded written guarantees from his foes that they would stop fighting and lay down arms.

"This is just another way to stall for time," Victoria Nuland, U.S. State Department spokesperson, told reporters.

The State Department also said that instead of abating, the conflict in Syria had worsened. It said the Syrian government appeared to have little commitment to the plan negotiated by former U.N. chief Kofi Annan.

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Earlier Monday, Syrian forces wounded at least five people in a camp in Turkey. The U.N. estimates some 9,000 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising began in March 2011.

Cross-border gunfire: Syrian bullets kill one in Turkey

The Obama administration expressed its outrage, saying the cross-border attack coupled with incidents elsewhere bodes ill for a U.N.-brokered plan to end the violence.

"We strongly condemn any attack by the Syrian regime on refugees in bordering countries and were absolutely outraged by today's report," Nuland said Monday. "We join the Turkish government in calling for the Syrian regime to immediately cease fire."

"We certainly have seen no signs yet of the Assad regime abiding by its commitments," White House press secretary Jay Carney said.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he "deplores" the attacks.

There have been similar cross-border attacks into Lebanon, although Monday's shooting was believed to be the first inside Turkey.

Syrian soldiers shot dead a cameraman working for Lebanon's Al-Jadeed television channel on Monday near the border between the two countries, the television channel said.

It said cameraman Ali Shaaban was on the Lebanese side of the frontier, in the northern Lebanese region of Wadi Khaled, when soldiers opened fire on a car carrying the Al-Jadeed crew.

Nuland said there was no sign the Syrian government was removing heavy weaponry from populated areas as called for in the Annan plan.

"We see no indication that it is preparing to do so. It's done some moving around of its tanks and artillery, but only so that it can use them in other places."

"We're going to wait till tomorrow; the deadline is tomorrow," she said. "But based on what we're seeing today, we are not hopeful."

On Monday, opposition activists told Reuters that the Syrian army's bombardment has killed at least 115 people in the northern province of Idlib in the last two days, and troops also rounded up and shot 35 men during military operations in the region.

The activists reports, like others from inside Syria, could not be independently verified because Syria restricts access for foreign reporters.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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Syria’s year-long conflict must end at 6:00 a.m. local time on April 12, U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan said Thursday, amid reports violence in the country had worsened despite a promise by the regime to withdraw its troops from cities.

Annan told the U.N. General Assembly: "We must silence the tanks, helicopters, mortars, guns and stop all other forms of violence too - sexual abuse, torture, executions, abductions, destruction of homes, forced displacement and other abuses, including on children.”

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Earlier this week, Syria publicly accepted an official deadline of April 10 to begin withdrawing government troops from urban centers and flashpoints such as the battered city of Homs.

That peace proposal also includes a second deadline, applying to all sides in the conflict, requiring them to “cease armed violence in all its forms” at 6:00 a.m. Syrian time on April 12 (11:00 p.m. ET on April 11).

PhotoBlog: Evidence of bloody battle in Damascus as Annan calls for peace

Syria has told the U.N. it has begun withdrawals, but there were still reports of violence in the country – including attempts by the army to prevent civilians from escaping gunfire. In Damascus, fresh blood was visible on the streets.

A man calling himself Abu Mustafa, speaking from Zabadani near the Lebanon border, told Reuters: "They are complete liars, there is no army withdrawal, they are still in the middle of the city. They fired on the city this morning, like they do every day,"

However, he did acknowledge a pullback. "The army withdrew 15 tanks yesterday, but the rest are all around the checkpoints as usual," he said.

The London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told msnbc.com in an email on Thursday afternoon that at least 33 people, including 14 soldiers, were killed in the past 24 hours.

Anita McNaught, reporter for Arab news channel Al Jazeera, reported from the Turkey-Syria border that families were still fleeing the country for their safety.

"The Syrian army is bombing all around the governates of Idlib and Aleppo," she said. "The way the Syrian army has positioned itself now is to cut off escape routes.”

In a report from Beirut, the BBC's Jim Muir said activists “are giving the clear impression that the Syrian regime is having a final crack at rebels before the ceasefire deadline”.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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