Thomas Rassloff/EPA

Locals gather at the banks of a small canal containg the bodies of dozens of people on Jan. 29 in Aleppo, Syria.

BEIRUT — At least 65 people, apparently shot in the head, were found dead with their hands bound in a district of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo on Tuesday, a pro-opposition monitoring group said.

The U.K.-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the death toll could rise as high as 80 in what it called a "new massacre."

It was not clear who carried out the killings.

Photos posted online by activists showed the muddied bodies of about a dozen men lying by a small river in what they said was the Bustan al-Qasr neighborhood of Aleppo.

Close-up shots of some of the corpses showed they had what appeared to be gunshot wounds to the head.

Government forces and rebels in Syria have both been accused by human rights groups of carrying out summary executions in the 22-month-old conflict, which has claimed more than 60,000 lives.

Rebels pushed into Aleppo, Syria's most populous city, over the summer, but have been stuck in a stalemate with government forces. The city is divided roughly in half between the two sides.

Related:

PhotoBlog: Syrian rebels take fight into Damascus

Syrian refugees: 'We escaped death'

New evidence implicates Libyan militia in the apparent execution of dozens of detainees in the immediate wake of Moammar Gadhafi’s capture and death last year, according to Human Rights Watch.

In a 50-page report issued Wednesday, the New York-based organization said at least 66 members of Gadhafi’s convoy were captured and ‘summarily executed’ by militia based in Misrata.

By comparing mobile phone video taken by the opposition militia members with hospital morgue photographs, HRW have identified numerous detainees who were captured in Sirte and later executed at the town’s Mahari Hotel.

Slideshow: Conflict in Libya

Goran Tomasevic / REUTERS

An uprising in Libya ousts dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

Launch slideshow

“When we arrived, there were 53 bodies lying in the garden of the hotel. The first indication we had this was an execution site was that many victims had their hands tied behind their backs,“ said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at HRW. Volunteer workers at the scene said that relatives of additional victims had recovered their bodies prior to the Human Rights Watch visit.

"In case after case we investigated, the individuals had been videotaped alive by the opposition fighters who held them, and then found dead hours later," Bouckaert said.

HRW said these killings constitute the largest documented execution of detainees by anti-Gadhafi forces during the eight-month conflict in Libya.

One case cited by HRW is that of Ahmed Ali Yusuf al-Ghariyani, 29, a Navy recruit originally from Tawergha, a Gadhafi stronghold. In a phone video that is believed to show him in captivity, militia forces are seen to abuse and taunt him.

Al-Ghariyani’s body was later found at the Mahari Hotel and was photographed by hospital staff and buried as unidentified body number 86. He was later identified by family members from the hospital photographs.

The report also casts doubt on what HRW said is the Libyan authorities’ account of the fate of Gadhafi and his son Motassim, both of whom are officially reported to have died in cross-fire.

In video released with the report, Moammar is seen alive and bloodied in the hands of the rebels, in images similar to those widely circulated in the days after his death. 

According to the report, Motassim Gaddafi was also captured alive at the scene of the Sirte battle. He was wounded and then filmed being transported by members of a Misrata-based opposition militia to their home city. He was again filmed in a room, smoking cigarettes and drinking water. By the evening, his dead body, with a new wound on his throat that was not visible in the prior video footage, was being publicly displayed in Misrata.

Peter Brouckaert said the Libyan authorities’ refusal to accept or investigate atrocities by former rebels shows ‘a government in denial.’

“They are not in a position to confront the militia,” he said, ”It shows who’s in power in Libya.”

Calls for militias to be brought under the control of the defense or interior ministries have met resistance from some fighters.

Meanwhile, some groups have been implicated in revenge attacks and communal strife, while members of one Islamist militia have been accused of taking part in the attack on the U.S. Consulate in the eastern city Benghazi on Sept. 11 that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens.

In the aftermath of Stevens' death, popular resentment surged and thousands took to the streets of Benghazi demanding the dismantlement of the militias. The government has taken over some militia headquarters and appointed military officers to run the groups, and designated some "outlawed" and others "tolerated."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

More world stories from NBC News:

• 'Spy of the West': Al-Qaida, Taliban struggle to justify attack on Pakistani teen
• UK computer hacker wins 10 year fight against extradition to US
• Hurricane Paul to hit Baja California coast Tuesday afternoon
• Mystery kidney disease decimates Central America sugarcane workers
• Clinton: 'We did everything we could to keep our people safe'
• Demand for palm oil, used in packaged food products, leaves orangutans at risk
• Assad forces using cluster bombs, rights group says

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

AP

Two German officers, left, and a group of Allied officers who were prisoners of war look over a partly emptied mass grave in the Katyn Forest in May 1943.

WARSAW, Poland -- President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill hushed up evidence that the Soviet secret police had killed thousands of Polish men in the Katyn forest in 1940 for fear of alienating World War II ally Josef Stalin, newly declassified documents show.

An estimated 22,000 Polish military officers and intellectuals were killed in the massacre at Katyn, in western Russia, many of them trucked in from prison camps, shot in the head from behind and shoved into mass graves.

The aim of the Soviets was to eliminate a military and intellectual elite that would have put up stiff resistance to Soviet control. The men were among Poland's most accomplished -- officers and reserve officers who in their civilian lives worked as doctors, lawyers, teachers, or as other professionals. Their loss has proven an enduring wound to the Polish nation.

The killings continue to cast a shadow over relations between Russia and Poland, but the new documents shift the focus elsewhere: to how Washington and London put fears of upsetting the Kremlin before exposing the truth.

Instead, for years they backed the Soviet Union's version of events that Nazi Germany was behind the massacre at Katyn despite dozens of intelligence reports and witness accounts pointing to Soviet involvement.

A telegram from U.S. military intelligence dated May 28, 1943, responding to an offer of information about Katyn, put the allied position bluntly: "If you mean Katyn affair am interested only if report shows German complicity."

That telegram was among 1,000 pages of newly declassified documents and photographs that were released late Monday by the U.S. National Archives in College Park, Md.

The documents -- many of them marked secret or confidential -- included a series of exchanges between Roosevelt, Churchill and Soviet leader Stalin about reports emerging in April 1943 about the massacre.

'Common sense'
Their concerns focused on a demand from the Polish government, in exile in London, for a Red Cross investigation into Soviet involvement in the killings, and a threat from Stalin to break off ties with the Polish government as a result.

Washington and London feared a dispute would harm the effort to defeat Nazi Germany and a letter from Roosevelt to Stalin said that Polish leader Gen. Wladyslaw Sikorski "has erred" in pressing for an investigation.

J. Scott Applewhite / AP

Col. Andrzej Kopacki, right, an assistant military attache with the Polish Embassy in Washington, attends an event on Capitol Hill to announce the release of information about the 1940 Katyn Forest massacre. At left is W.J. Milan-Kamski of Easton, Md., who is a native of Poland and World War II veteran with the Polish Army, 2nd Armored Division.

"I am inclined to think that Prime Minister Churchill will find a way of prevailing upon the Polish government in London in the future to act with more common sense," Roosevelt wrote.

Churchill made a similar point to Stalin, saying in a note he would "oppose vigorously" any Red Cross investigation.

The documents showed that London and Washington had strong evidence of Soviet involvement as early as mid-1943, soon after German forces over-ran the Katyn area and found the mass graves.

This evidence included detailed accounts from officials in the Polish exiled government and reports from U.S. diplomats stating the Polish accounts were reliable.

Divers find sunken German U-boat off Massachusetts coast

Testimony also came from an American prisoner of war, Lt. Col. John H. Van Vliet, who was taken to the massacre site by his German captors and sent coded messages back home about what he saw.

One document showed that people at the heart of the British government knew the Western allies were involved in a cover-up.

Congress honors black World War II Marines

"We have been obliged to ... restrain the Poles from putting their case clearly before the public, to discourage any attempts by the public and the press to probe the ugly story to the bottom," wrote Owen O'Malley, Britain's ambassador to the Polish government in exile, in a May 1943 letter.

"We have in fact perforce used the good name of England like the murderers used the conifers to cover up a massacre."

Poland hopes to identify remains of Auschwitz hero

Churchill passed the diplomat's candid comments on to Roosevelt in a letter, and recommended that he read them.

But in keeping with the desire at the time to keep the Katyn affair quiet, the British leader asked that Roosevelt return the document afterwards for safekeeping, saying "we are not circulating it officially in any way."

'The truth was inconvenient'
Izabella Sariusz-Skapska, president of the Katyn Families Federation, said the new documents contained new details about how much was known at the time.

"The Western allies new the exact truth about Katyn, but under war-time conditions, the truth was inconvenient."

Watch the most-viewed videos on NBCNews.com

She said she hoped the decision to declassify the U.S. documents would put pressure on the Russian government to open up its own archives about Katyn. "If there is something that we are waiting for, it is there," she said.

White House maintained silence
In the early years after the war, outrage by some American officials over the concealment inspired the creation of a special U.S. Congressional committee to investigate Katyn.

In a final report released in 1952, the committee declared there was no doubt of Soviet guilt, and called the massacre "one of the most barbarous international crimes in world history." It found that Roosevelt's administration suppressed public knowledge of the crime, but said it was out of military necessity. It also recommended the government bring charges against the Soviets at an international tribunal -- something never acted upon.

More Europe coverage on NBCNews.com

Despite the committee's strong conclusions, the White House maintained its silence on Katyn for decades, showing an unwillingness to focus on an issue that would have added to political tensions with the Soviets during the Cold War.

The declassified documents also show the United States maintaining that it could not conclusively determine guilt until a Russian admission in 1990 -- a statement that looks improbable given the huge body of evidence of Soviet guilt that had already emerged decades earlier. Historians say the new material helps to flesh out the story of what the United States knew and when.

Complete World coverage on NBCNews.com

It was not until the waning days of Soviet hegemony over Eastern Europe that reformist leader Mikhail Gorbachev publicly admitted to Soviet guilt at Katyn, a key step in Polish-Russian reconciliation.

The silence by the U.S. government has been a source of deep frustration for many Polish-Americans. One is Franciszek Herzog, 81, a Connecticut man whose father and uncle died in the massacre. After Gorbachev's 1990 admission, he was hoping for more openness from the U.S. as well and made three attempts to obtain an apology from President George H.W. Bush.

"It will not resurrect the men," he wrote to Bush. "But will give moral satisfaction to the widows and orphans of the victims."

Read more about the records relating to the Katyn massacre at the U.S. National Archives

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

More world stories from NBC News:

• Generation Y battles to shape Pakistan's future
• Agitator or hero? S. Africa's poor put faith in Malema
• 'Emergency red list' targets Syria's looted treasures
• Report: Coral in Caribbean, Fla. in sharp decline
• Militants: Terrorist designation adds to captured GI's 'woes'
• The Arab Spring is dead -- and Syria is writing its obituary
• Photographer returns to work after Afghanistan blast
• Smoking ban leaves Lebanese fuming
• Car crash politics: Laws don't touch rich in Thailand

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

AMMAN -- The bodies of at least 200 people were found in a town close to Damascus on Saturday, according to activists who said most appeared to have been killed by Syrian troops "execution style."

The deaths would bring the toll from an offensive by President Bashar al-Assad's forces on Daraya, a working class Sunni Muslim town on the southwestern edge of Damascus, to 270, according to a tally by opposition activists in the capital.

Abu Kinan, an activist in Daraya, said most of the victims were found in houses and basements of buildings and had been shot by troops conducting house-to-house raids.

Due to restrictions on non-state media, it was impossible to independently verify the accounts.

"In the last hour, 122 bodies were discovered and it appears that two dozen died from sniper fire and the rest were summarily executed by gunshots from close range," Kinan said.

"Assad's army has committed a massacre in Daraya."

The Daraya Coordination Committee activists' group said in a statement that among those found with shots to the head were eight members of the al-Qassaa family: three children, their father and mother and three other relatives.

Stay informed with the latest headlines; sign up for our newsletter

Their bodies were found in a residential building near Mussab bin Umeir mosque in Daraya, the group said.

Video released by activists showed numerous bodies of young men side-by-side at the Abu Suleiman al-Darani mosque in Daraya, many with what looked like gunshot wounds to the head and chest.

"A massacre," said the voice of the man who appeared to be taking the footage.

"You are seeing the revenge of Assad's forces from the people of Daraya: more than 150 bodies on the floor of this mosque."

Mohammad Hur, another activist in Daraya, said 36 bodies of young men were found in the morning in one building, along with several badly wounded people who could not be transferred to hospitals in the area because the army had occupied them.

Watch World News videos on NBCNews.com

"We are in the process of identifying the bodies and documenting how they died. Initial evidence shows that they were mostly shot at close range in the face, neck and head, execution style," Hur said by telephone.

"Female members from at least two families say that soldiers shot their brothers in front of them," he added.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which is based in Britain and headed by dissident Rami Abdelrahman, said it had received reports of dozens of bodies found in Daraya, but it had not yet ascertained how they were killed.

The army overran Daraya, one of a series of large, mostly run-down Sunni Muslim towns that surround Damascus, on Saturday after three days of heavy bombardment that killed 70 people, according to opposition sources and residents who said most of the dead were civilians.

The attack on Daraya was part of an army campaign to regain control of the outskirts of the capital, a mixture of built up areas and farmland where rebels had regrouped and relaunched guerrilla attacks on Assad's forces.

Assad belongs to Syria's minority Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam that has dominated power in Syria for the last five decades. Members of the country's Sunni majority are at the forefront of the uprising.

More world stories from NBC News:

• Dozens killed, hurt in Venezuela oil refinery explosion
• Isaac heads for Cuba after drenching Haiti
• Tiger at German zoo kills staffer, is shot dead
• Canadian woman in water-soaked wedding dress drowns
• 'Crushing political dissent'? Gambia to execute every prisoner on death row

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

Odd Andersen / AFP - Getty Images

Self-confessed mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik speaks with a lawyer at a court in Oslo on Friday.

Updated at 11:35 a.m. ET: OSLO -- A Norwegian court ruled Friday that confessed mass killer Anders Behring Breivik was sane, deciding he was criminally responsible for the massacre of 77 people last summer.

Reading the ruling, Judge Wenche Elisabeth Arntzen said that "in a unanimous decision ... the court sentences the defendant to 21 years of preventive detention." 

However, such sentences can be extended under Norwegian law as long as an inmate is considered dangerous. Experts have said Breivik is likely to spend the rest of his life behind bars. Norway doesn't have the death penalty.

Prosecutors had demanded a verdict of insanity, a fate Breivik called "worse than death," while many of his victims had said only a sane person could have carried out such a complex attack. 

Breivik, 33, detonated a fertilizer bomb outside a government building that included the prime ministerial offices last July, killing eight, then gunned down 69 people, mostly teenagers, at the ruling Labor Party's youth camp on Utoya island.

After the ruling, Breivik told the court he would not appeal the decision.

"He is getting what he deserves," Alexandra Peltre, 18, whom Breivik shot in the thigh on Utoya, told Reuters. "This is karma striking back at him. I do not care if he is insane or not, as long as he gets the punishment that he deserves." 

Another survivor of the massacre, Eivind Rindal, told the Norwegian newspaper VG that “it is important that the defendant gets his punishment but the most important thing is that he never gets out.”

“There are many who shared his extreme views in our society,” Rindal added, according to an English translation in the Telegraph newspaper.

Trine Aamodt, whose 19-year-old son was shot at Utoya, told VG she was “happy with the verdict of sanity and am also very glad that there was consensus from all the judges.”

Guilt never a question
Guilt had never been a question in the trial as Breivik described in chilling detail how he hunted down his victims, some as young as 14, with a shot to the body and then one or more bullets to the head.

The killings shook this nation of five million people which had prided itself as a haven from much of the world's troubles, raising questions about the prevalence of far-right views as immigration rises.

Few believe anyone would ever sign Breivik's release papers. One of the reasons Breivik's attacks were presented in such gruesome detail during the trial was so that the horror of Oslo and Utoya would be well-documented for the day Breivik asks to be released.

Czech police accuse man of plotting Norway-like copycat terrorist attack

The court’s ruling actually imposed a minimum sentence of 10 years and a maximum of 21.

But Jo Stigen, a law professor at the University of Oslo, told NBCNews.com that Breivik was unlikely to be released for decades.

“This means as long as he is dangerous he will not be free. It’s a potential life sentence … I can hardly see it will be considered he’s not dangerous in 30 or 40 years,” he said, speaking by phone from outside the court.

Odd Andersen / AFP - Getty Images

Labor Party secretary Raymond Johansen, center, hugs a relative of an Utoya massacre victim before Breivik's arrival in court on Friday.

After serving the 10-year minimum sentence, Breivik will be evaluated periodically. Stigen said it was “theoretically possible” he could be released in 10 years, but added this was highly unlikely.

After 21 years, the prosecution can seek to have Breivik kept in prison -- Stigen said that “most certainly they will” – and a court will then decide whether to keep the mass killer in prison.

Norway prison seeks 'friends' to play hockey, chess with mass killer Breivik

'Tough year'
The trial and a commission of investigation into the country's worst violence since World War Two have kept Breivik on the front pages for the past 13 months and survivors said the verdict would finally bring some closure.

"It has been a tough year... but I don't want to be Utoya-Nicoline for the rest of my life," said Nicoline Bjerge Schie, a survivor of the shooting, ahead of the verdict.

As a result of the ruling that he is sane, Breivik will be locked up in solitary confinement inside the maximum security Ila prison on the outskirts of Oslo. He will return to his relatively spacious cells, enjoying the comforts of a computer, newspapers and a separate exercise room.

Anders Breivik to Norway court: I killed 77 people but am not guilty

One team of court appointed psychiatrists concluded Breivik was psychotic while another came to the opposite conclusion. To make the ruling more difficult, several other experts who testified described a series of mental conditions Breivik suffered from.

Polls showed that around 70 percent of Norwegians thought such a well-planned attack could not have been the work of a madman and Breivik must take responsibility rather than be dismissed as merely deranged.

Slideshow: Norway mourns after massacre

The nation looks to rally after a bombing and shooting spree leaves 77 people dead.

Launch slideshow

Breivik himself argued for a verdict of sanity as he wanted the attack to be seen as a political statement rather than an act of lunacy.

He rejected criminal charges out of principle, saying he doesn't recognize the court's authority because it represents a political system that supports multiculturalism -- the reason why he targeted the Labor Party.

NBC News' Ian Johnston, Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

More world stories from NBC News:

• Tropical Storm Isaac threatens Haiti, Dominican Republic
• Still hobbled by quake, Haiti awaits Isaac
• German state raids buildings in crackdown on neo-Nazi groups
• US, Pakistan should 'divorce,' ex-ambassador to Washington says
• Video: Terror triggers Mali exodus
• Lebanon militia stands by Syria's Assad despite bloody crackdown
• Step aside hippos! Wildebeests are on the move

Follow World News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and Facebook

Updated at 2:01 p.m. ET: The International Committee of the Red Cross said on Sunday it now considers the conflict in Syria a civil war, meaning international humanitarian law applies throughout the country. The declaration came as opposition fighters battled Syrian government forces in Damascus.

The Geneva-based group's assessment is an important reference that helps parties in a conflict determine how much and what type of force they can or cannot use.

ICRC spokesman Hicham Hassan said Sunday that the humanitarian law now applies wherever hostilities are taking place in Syria, where fighting has spread beyond the hotspots of Idlib, Homs and Hama.

International humanitarian law grants parties to a conflict the right to use appropriate force to achieve their aims. But attacks on civilians and abuse or killing of detainees can constitute war crimes.

Syria denied U.N. claims that government forces used heavy weapons during a military operation that has brought widespread international condemnation against President Bashar Assad's regime.

Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said the violence Thursday was not a massacre, but a military operation targeting armed fighters who had taken control of the village of Tremseh.

"What happened wasn't an attack on civilians," Makdissi told reporters in Damascus. "What has been said about the use of heavy weapons is baseless."

But the United Nations has already implicated Assad's forces in the assault. The head of the U.N. observer mission said Friday that monitors stationed near Tremseh saw the army using heavy weaponry and attack helicopters.

On Saturday, U.N. observers investigating the killings found pools of blood in homes and spent bullets, mortars and artillery shells, adding details to the emerging picture of what anti-regime activists have called one of the deadliest events of Syria's uprising. The observers were expected to return to Tremseh on Sunday.

Dozens of people have already been buried in a mass grave, and activists are still struggling to determine the total number of people killed in what they say was a bombardment by government tanks and helicopters on Thursday.

Some of the emerging details suggested that, rather than the outright shelling of civilians that the opposition has depicted, the violence in Tremseh may have been a lopsided fight between the army pursuing the opposition and activists and locals trying to defend the village. Nearly all of the dead are men, including dozens of armed rebels. The U.N. observers said the assault appeared to target specific homes of army defectors or opposition figures.

Running tolls ranged from around 100 to 152, including dozens of bodies buried in neighboring villages or burned beyond recognition. The activists expected the number to rise since hundreds of residents remain unaccounted for, and locals believe bodies remained in nearby fields or were dumped into the Orontes River.

Independent verification of the events is nearly impossible in Syria, one of the Middle East's strictest police states, which bars most media from working in the country. The observers are in the country as part of an all but mordant peace plan by U.N. special envoy Kofi Annan, who has been trying for months to negotiate a solution to Syria's crisis.

In Damascus on Sunday, numerous residents contacted by Reuters said they could hear loud explosions, persistent gunfire and sirens wailing. Thick black smoke was visible above the Damascus skyline in live internet video links.

"I can't believe it, it sounds incredibly close. I hear shooting and other stuff, like blasts. I can hear the sounds of ambulances rushing past. I am so afraid. People may die tonight," said a resident in a district close to the fighting, contacted by telephone.

Activist Samir al-Shami, who spoke to Reuters by Skype from Damascus, said the fighting was under way in the al-Tadamon district in the capital's south, after a night of sustained battles in the nearby Hajar al-Aswad district.

"There is the sound of heavy gunfire. And there is smoke rising from the area. There are already some wounded and residents are trying to flee the area," he said, using Skype to show live video images of smoke visible over the skyline.

"There are also armored vehicles heading towards the southern part of the neighborhood," he said.

Like others contacted by Reuters, he described it as the most intense fighting he had heard in the capital.

"This area has had a lot of fighting ... The area is kind of a slum. The people who live there are poor. There's a lot of people and a lot of grassy areas around it so it's easy for rebels to sneak in and out," he said.

An explosion hit a security forces bus in Damascus on Sunday and wounded several people, activists said. Residents said they heard a powerful blast, followed by the sirens of ambulances rushing toward Damascus's southern ring road near the neighborhood of Midan.

Meanwhile, the Iranian foreign minister was quoted as saying that Iran is ready to host talks between the Syrian government and opposition groups, but members of the opposition quickly rejected the offer.

The statement by Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi appeared to suggest a possible shift in the Iranian leadership's approach. Iran has consistently supported Assad's efforts to suppress the 17-month-long uprising.

Tehran has repeatedly accused Western and regional powers of meddling in Syria's internal affairs through backing extremist militant groups.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran is ready to sit down with the Syrian opposition and invite them to Iran," Salehi was quoted as saying by the Iranian Students' News Agency. "We are ready to facilitate and provide the conditions for talks between the opposition and the government."

Samir Nashir, an executive board member of the exile Syrian National Council, turned down the offer.

"We will not participate in any meetings or talks with the regime as long as Assad is in power. Assad does not need talks, he needs to go to the International Criminal Court for the massacres he's committed," he said.

"We will not speak to any mediators whether they are Iranian, Syrian or Russian."

The Associated Press, Reuters and msnbc.com's Alastair Jamieson contributed to this report.

More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• Clinton holds first meeting with Egypt's Morsi amid political standoff
• UN team investigates massacre in Syria village
• Surfer presumed dead in Australia shark attack
• Suicide bomber kills at least 22 at Afghan wedding
• The ghosts that haunt China's economic landscape

Follow World News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook

Reuters

More than 200 Syrians were massacred in a village in the Hama region, opposition activists said Friday, in what could prove to be the worst single incident of violence in 16 months of conflict.

The central Syrian farming village of Tremseh was bombarded by helicopter gunships and tanks and then stormed by militiamen who carried out execution-style killings, activists said.

Activists said the incident took place on Thursday – the eve of the latest U.N. Security Council negotiations on a new resolution on Syria. The United States and its allies said it showed the need for tough action, but Russia ruled out accepting the latest draft.

Purported footage of Thursday's incident shows a government tank shelling opposition fighters in Tremseh, according to a report by NBC News' British partner ITV News.

Meanwhile, a Wall Street Journal report on Friday quoted U.S. officials saying Syria has started to move part of its chemical weapons arsenal out of storage facilities.

The country's undeclared stockpiles of sarin nerve agent, mustard gas and cyanide have long worried U.S. officials and their allies in the region, the report said.

Video footage, which activists said showed the bodies of 15 of the Tremseh victims, was posted online Friday by the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. (Warning: Readers may find the video disturbing.)

Slideshow: Behind Syrian rebel lines

Machine guns operated by motorcycle brakes? Get a glimpse at the rebels fighting against Assad's forces in Syria's mountainous Jabal al-Zawiya area.

Launch slideshow

Much remains unclear about the massacre. The Observatory said it had reports of more than 150 killed in Tremseh, though it had collected only 30 names of the victims.  Another group, the Local Coordination Committees, said the dead numbered more than 200.

The Revolution Leadership Council of Hama told Reuters that the village was subjected to a barrage of heavy weapons fire before pro-government Alawite militiamen swept in and killed victims one by one. Some civilians were killed while trying to flee.

"More than 220 people fell today in Tremseh. They died from bombardment by tanks and helicopters, artillery shelling and summary executions," the regional opposition group said in a statement to Reuters on Thursday evening.

Syrian state television said three security personnel had been killed in fighting in Tremseh and accused "armed terrorist groups" of committing a massacre there.

Fadi Sameh, an opposition activist from Tremseh, said he had left the town before the reported killing spree but was in touch with residents. "It appears that Alawite militiamen from surrounding villages descended on Tremseh after its rebel defenders pulled out, and started killing the people. Whole houses have been destroyed and burned from the shelling.

Bodies in rivers
Sameh added: "Every family in the town seems to have members killed. We have names of men, women and children from countless families." He said many of the bodies were taken to a local mosque.

Sunni 'cannon fodder' abandon Syria's Alawite-led military

Ahmed, another local activist, told Reuters: "So far, we have 20 victims recorded with names and 60 bodies at a mosque. There are more bodies in the fields, bodies in the rivers and in houses. ... People were trying to flee from the time the shelling started and whole families were killed trying to escape."

A tweet from U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice said: "Reports of Traymseh massacre are nightmarish - dramatically illustrate the need for binding UNSC measures on Syria."

Seventy-eight people were shot or stabbed or burned alive in the village of Mazraat al-Qubeir, a Sunni hamlet, by fighters of Assad's Alawite sect on June 6, and 108 men, women and children were massacred in the town of Houla on May 25.

Most of Assad's political and military establishment are minority Alawites, who form a branch of Shiite Islam. The revolt and the fighters behind it, and the street protesters who launched the revolt in March 2011, are mostly Sunni Muslims.

While the insurgents have been unable to match the Syrian army's firepower, they have established footholds in towns, cities and villages across Syria, often prompting Assad's forces to respond fiercely with helicopter gunships and artillery.

PhotoBlog: Who are the rebels? Meet the men of the 'Free Syrian Army'

Earlier Thursday, the first ambassador to abandon Assad called on the army to "turn your guns on the criminals" of the government as troops backed by tanks swarmed into a suburb of Damascus on Thursday to flush out rebels.

Nawaf al-Fares, a Sunni Muslim who has close ties to the security services, was Syria's ambassador to its neighbor Iraq, one of its few friends in the region.

Ex-pats rush to aid Syrian students abroad

Defection
Coming just days after the desertion of Manaf Tlas, a Sunni brigadier general in the elite Republican Guard who grew up with the president, al-Fares' defection gave the anti-Assad uprising one of its biggest political lifts.

But Assad's strongest strategic ally, Russia, stuck by him Thursday with a clear warning to his Western and Arab enemies that it would not even consider calls for a tough new resolution by the U.N. Security Council in New York.

Britain circulated a draft on Wednesday, backed by the United States, France and Germany, that would make compliance with a transition plan drafted by international envoy Kofi Annan enforceable under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter.

That would allow the council to authorize actions ranging from diplomatic and economic sanctions to military intervention.

Assad's opponents say 13,000 armed and unarmed opponents of Assad, and 4,300 members of security forces loyal to Damascus, have been killed since the uprising began.

Russia and China, both veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, have for months blocked attempts to isolate and push out Assad, endorsing his argument that he is defending Syria against armed groups bent on ousting him with the backing of the West and allied Sunni Gulf Arab monarchies. 

More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• Briton charged with fraud over bomb detectors
• China offers bounty for piranhas, dead or alive
• Ex-pats rush to aid Syrian students abroad
• Avalanche kills at least 9 in French Alps
• North Korea mystery woman: A possible new first lady?

Follow World News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook

A journalist for Britain's Channel 4 News said Friday he was set up by Syrian rebels to come under fire from government forces as violence continues unabated in the country.

The report comes on the heels of two massacres of civilians in the last two weeks, which have added urgency to talks between foreign powers. A U.N.-backed ceasefire, supposed to have taken effect on April 12, has failed to stop the bloodshed.

Anchor and chief correspondent for Channel 4 News Alex Thomson wrote on Friday that he traveled earlier in the week to the western town of al Qusayr with U.N. officers, who were meeting with civilian and military leaders there. When their meeting dragged on and his reporting deadline approached, Thomson and his team broke off to return to Homs, aware of the risk they ran without a U.N. escort.

Read the full Channel 4 News story: Set up to be shot in Syria's no man's land?

NBC Nightly News

Channel 4's Alex Thomson.

"Suddenly four men in a black car beckon us to follow," Thomson wrote. "We are led another route. Led in fact, straight into a free-fire zone. Told by the Free Syrian Army to follow a road that was blocked off in the middle of no-man's land."

At that point they came under fire, he said.

Smell of death at the scene of massacre in Syrian village, UN monitors say

Although Thomson told msnbc.com that he could only speculate what the Free Syrian Army's reasons were for leading him into an ambush, he said that he could "see perfectly clear reasons for getting me killed," echoing what he wrote in his report.

"I'm quite clear the rebels deliberately set us up to be shot by the Syrian Army. Dead journos are bad for Damascus," he wrote.

Thomson and his team were able to escape unharmed.

"Eventually we got out ... and on the right route, back to Damascus," he wrote.

According to Thomson's account, the incident does not appear to be isolated. He received a message on Twitter on Saturday from Nawaf al Thani, an Arab League observer and human rights lawyer, who wrote: 

"@alextomo I read your piece "set up to be shot in no mans land", I can relate as I had that same experience in Al Zabadani during our tour."

Shelling in cradle of uprising
Meanwhile, 17 people, including 10 women, were killed overnight by shelling in the Syrian town of Daraa, where the uprising against President Bashar Assad erupted 15 months ago, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Saturday. 

Fighting was also reported in Homs and Damascus, killing a total of 44 civilians and 25 on Friday, the group said, showing neither side was respecting the ceasefire, the failure of which has left outside powers divided.

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

"We didn't sleep all night, the situation is a mess, all kinds of explosions and heavy weapons," a Daraa resident who called himself Adnan said via Skype.

"We could hear the blast from the rockets hitting in the neighborhood nearby. If we were afraid, you can imagine how afraid our children are." 

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was due to hold a news conference later on Saturday to talk about his proposal to a hold a meeting of nations and groups with influence on Assad's government and its opponents as a way to pressure both sides.

Reuters contributed to this report.

More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• UN: Smell of death at scene of massacre in Syrian village
• Women brave attack to protest Egypt harassment
• In court, Italian showgirl reveals code name for Berlusconi
• Soccer, cable TV at Gitmo? US lockup in Cuba quietly being upgraded
• Amid simmering unrest, China bans foreigners' travel to Tibet
• Did Canada's alleged cannibal killer Luka Magnotta strike in LA?
• TV show attack shows 'real face' of far-right in Greece?

Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world

Updated at 11:20 a.m. ET: BEIRUT -- United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Thursday that U.N. monitors were shot at trying to get to the scene of the latest Syrian massacre in which at least 78 villagers were allegedly slaughtered by forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

Opposition activists said up to 40 women and children were among the dead in Mazraat al-Qubeir, near Hama, on Wednesday, posting film on the Internet of bloodied or charred bodies.

Confirmation of Wednesday's massacre will pile pressure on world powers to act, but they have been paralyzed by rifts pitting Western and most Arab states against Assad's defenders in Russia, China and Iran.

The U.N. chief told the General Assembly that the unarmed observers were initially denied access to the scene in central Hama and "were shot at with small arms" while trying to get there. He did not mention any casualties.

Ban said each day in Syria was seeing more "grim atrocities" and that for many months it had been evident that Assad and his government "have lost all legitimacy."

Any regime that tolerates killings such as one in which 108 people were slain in the town of Houla on May 25 and Wednesday's attack near Hama "has lost its fundamental humanity," he said, condemning "this unspeakable barbarity." 

Earlier, Syria's pro-government Addounia TV said U.N. observers had arrived in Mazraat al-Qubeir, but the chief of the U.N. mission said that Syrian troops and civilians had barred them.

11-year-old boy says he survived Syria massacre

"They are being stopped at Syrian army checkpoints and in some cases turned back," General Robert Mood, the head of the U.N. observer mission, said in a statement earlier on Thursday. "Some of our patrols are being stopped by civilians in the area."

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described the latest reported massacre as unconscionable.

"We are disgusted by what we are seeing (in Syria)," she told a news conference during a visit to Istanbul.

'Completely false'
The Syrian state news agency quoted an official source in Hama describing reports from Mazraat al-Qabeer as "completely false," saying security forces had intervened at the request of residents after a "terrorist group committed ... a monstrous crime", killing nine women and children.

Syrian authorities have also denied responsibility for the Houla killings, blaming foreign-backed Islamist militants.

As with the May 25 killings -- which Western powers blame on Assad's troops and loyalist "shabbiha" militia -- the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said "shabbiha headed into the area after the shelling and killed dozens of citizens, among them women and children."

Shabbiha, drawn mostly from Assad's minority Alawite sect that is an offshoot of Shiite Islam, have been blamed for the killings of civilians from the Sunni Muslim majority. That has raised fears of an Iraq-style sectarian bloodbath and the prospect of a wider regional confrontation between Shiite Iran and the mainly Sunni-led Arab states of the Middle East.

NYT: US envoy fears Syria conflict will develop into regional sectarian war

Some 13,000 people have been killed in Syria over 15 months of repression and later armed rebellion.

The main Syrian National Council opposition group responded to reports of the new massacre by calling for stepped-up military assaults on Assad's forces.

The failure of a cease-fire brokered by U.N. envoy Kofi Annan in March to halt the bloodshed has raised questions about its continued worth.

The 300-member group of U.N. truce observers has been in Syria for weeks.

Events in Syria are difficult to verify as state authorities tightly restrict access for international media.

Rebel groups inside Syria, which helped escalate what began as popular demonstrations for democracy into what is approaching a civil war, say they are no longer bound by Annan's cease-fire and are calling for more foreign arms and other support.

Western leaders, wary of new military engagements in the Muslim world and especially of the explosively complex ethnic and religious mix that Syria represents, have offered sympathy but shown no appetite for taking on Assad's redoubtable armed forces, which can call on Iran and Russia for supplies.

Assad: Syria faces 'real war waged from the outside'

In Washington on Wednesday, the United States and Saudi Arabia, among dozens of mostly Western and Arab countries in the Friends of Syria working group, called for further economic sanctions against Syria including an arms embargo, travel bans and tougher financial penalties.

Separately, ministers and envoys from 15 countries and the European Union agreed at a meeting hosted by Turkey in Istanbul on Wednesday to convene a "coordination group" to provide support to the opposition but left unclear what this may entail.

The U.S. and its allies in Europe, Turkey and the Arab world also agreed to work on a political transition plan for Syria, hoping to persuade Russia to join a broadened diplomatic effort to ease Assad out of power, a senior U.S. official said. 

Syria agrees to wider aid efforts, UN says

But with neither Russia nor China present, and both remaining hostile to the idea of global sanctions against the Syrian government or any Libya-style military intervention, it was unclear what effect the show of unity might produce. 

Speaking in Beijing, Russia's foreign minister presented a counterproposal for international action, proposing a conference on Syria but with an emphasis on pressuring opposition groups to respect Annan's peace plan. 

Sergei Lavrov criticized the Friends of Syria meetings that the U.S. and its partners have been having for being "devoted exclusively to the support of the Syrian National Council and its radical demands." He said the Russian gathering would, by contrast, put pressure on the Syrian opposition to "end all violence and sit down for talks." 

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• Egypt’s Tahrir protesters take on Mubarak's man
• Deputy al-Qaida leader killed in Pakistan drone strike, White House confirms
• Fugitive Canadian porn actor wanted for murder found in Berlin
• Vatican scandal: More than just the 'butler did it'
•   After Nigeria plane crash, families mourn; government suspends airline
• In shift, US works toward bigger role for India in Afghanistan war

Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world

Syrian President Bashar Assad has said that his country is engaged in a "real war" with outside forces and denied any role in the Houla massacre, which he said was carried by “monsters.”

In his first public address since January, he warned he would not be lenient on those he blamed for violence in the country, and promised that a 15-month-old crisis would end soon if Syrians pulled together.

Dsk / AFP - Getty Images

An image grab taken from Syrian state TV shows Syrian President Bashar al-Assad addressing the parliament in Damascus on Sunday.

In a speech to parliament, he repeated many of his earlier pledges to maintain a crackdown on opponents he describes as terrorists implementing a foreign conspiracy, while offering dialogue with those opposition figures who have avoided armed conflict or outside backing.

He made his comments a day after international envoy Kofi Annan said the specter of all-out civil war was growing daily in Syria and the world needed to see actions, not words, from Assad.

Jim Muir, the BBC correspondent in Beirut, said: “Anybody hoping that President Assad's first public speech since January might open up some lines of advance towards a solution will have been disappointed.”

In his hour-long address, Assad offered no specific response to Annan's plea for bold steps to end the conflict.

Thousands of people have been killed in a crackdown on protests against Assad, which erupted in March last year and have become increasingly militarized, destabilizing neighboring Lebanon and raising fears of regional turmoil.

"This crisis is not an internal crisis. It is an outside war carried out by inside elements," Assad said, looking relaxed as he spoke to parliamentarians. "If we work together, I confirm that the end to this situation is near."

'True monstrosities'
Last month's massacre in Houla of 108 people, mostly women and children, triggered global outrage and warnings that Syria's relentless bloodshed - undimmed by Annan's April 12 ceasefire deal - could engulf the Middle East.

Sunni Muslim powers, particularly wealthy Gulf Arab states, have strongly supported the uprising against Assad, an Alawite closely allied with Shi'ite Iran and Hezbollah.

Western powers have accused Syrian armed forces and pro-Assad militia of responsibility for the May 25 Houla killing, a charge Damascus has denied.

"What happened in Houla...and what we described as ugly and abominable massacres, or true monstrosities - even monsters do not perpetrate what we have seen," Assad said.

He said his country was facing a war waged from outside and that terrorism was escalating despite political steps including last month's election for parliament, whose new members Assad was addressing.

"We are not facing a political problem because if we were this party would put forth a political programme. What we are facing is (an attempt) to sow sectarian strife and the tool of this is terrorism," Assad said.

"The issue is terrorism. We are facing a real war waged from the outside," Assad said.

Annan, the joint United Nations and Arab League envoy for Syria, told an Arab League meeting in Qatar on Saturday that Assad must make "bold and visible" steps immediately to change his military stance and honor his commitment to cease all violence.

Annan criticized Assad for failing to comply with a peace plan to end the conflict and said his forces were carrying out atrocities, arbitrary arrests and other abuses.

The United Nations says Syrian forces have killed more than 9,000 people in a crackdown on protests against Assad. Syria blames the violence on foreign-backed Islamist militants it says have killed more than 2,600 soldiers and security force members.

Anybody hoping that President Assad's first public speech since January might open up some lines of advance towards a solution will have been disappointed.

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

• As United States pulls out, China seeks role in Afghanistan 
• Anger as Egypt's ex-ruler Mubarak gets life in prison, not death
• In Cairo, cheers and fears over Mubarak sentencing
• NATO rescues doctors kidnapped by Taliban in 'extraordinarily brave' operation
• Mourning the loss of more lives in Syria

Follow us on Twitter: @msnbc_world