The UN Security Council has agreed on a statement to boost special envoy Kofi Annan's peace bid in Syria, diplomats said, as activists said army forces pounded a rebel-held area of Homs city.
Syrian forces pounded the Khaldiyeh district of Homs for a second straight day, activists said, as UN chief Ban Ki-moon, on a visit to Jakarta, warned the crisis in Syria had "massive" regional repercussions.
"Khaldiyeh is being bombed with shells and rockets for a second day," Hadi Abdullah of the Syrian Revolution General Commission told AFP, reached by telephone from Beirut.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based monitoring group, said 14 civilians were killed in Khaldiyeh on Tuesday and also reported renewed clashes in the Damascus area.
Abdullah said he feared a repeat of the month-long battering that killed hundreds in the Baba Amr district of Homs before the army moved in on March 1 after a withdrawal by Free Syrian Army rebels.
"That would be a catastrophe," he said.
Abdullah said thousands of residents who fled Baba Amr and other parts of the city in central Syria had taken refuge in Khaldiyeh, "the last front left" in Homs.
Elsewhere, Syrian troops surrounded Taftanaz and opened fire on rebels in the town in Idlib province in the northwest, rebel sources said, adding outnumbered Free Syrian Army fighters withdrew.
Rebel fighters, lightly armed, have been on the retreat from cities since the start of March in the face of the far superior firepower of government forces.
Closing ranks after months of division on the year-long crisis, the Security Council, meanwhile, was due to adopt its statement, a diplomat told AFP in New York.
UN chief Ban said in a speech to a defence conference in the Indonesian capital that Annan, who held talks in Damascus on March 10-11 and briefed the Security Council last week, was "working tirelessly."
The prepared text of Ban's speech released to media in Jakarta said Annan was expected to return soon to Damascus. The line was removed from the speech as delivered, and Ban did not give any timeframe for a return.
Martin Nesirky, a spokesman for Ban, told AFP: "The joint special envoy's technical team is still in Damascus, and he is still waiting to hear more details from them before he decides on his travel plans."
Ban, urging unity, told his Jakarta audience that the United Nations had three major priorities in Syria.
These were "an immediate end to the violence - all violence", an "inclusive political dialogue" to shape the country's future, "and thirdly we have to provide, immediately and urgently, humanitarian access".
"We all have a responsibility to work for a resolution of this profound and extremely dangerous situation and crisis," Ban said. The situation was "a crisis that has potentially massive repercussions" for the region.
Russia said on Tuesday it was ready to back either a Security Council statement or a resolution on Annan's proposals on ending the crisis as long as it contained no ultimatums.
At the United Nations, diplomats held four hours of talks on Tuesday on the Western-drafted presidential statement, reportedly watering it down and removing any reference to any ultimatum.
Russia also led resistance to part of the statement that said the council would "consider further measures" if President Bashar al-Assad does not cooperate with Annan's peace plan, diplomats said.
Moscow and Beijing have since last October vetoed two resolutions on Syria. A statement carries less weight than a full resolution.
Amid growing signs of a weakening of Moscow's support for its Syrian ally, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov chided Assad for having made "a lot of mistakes" since the crisis broke out as peaceful protests in mid-March 2011.
On the ground, fierce clashes erupted in the Damascus suburb of Harasta overnight between rebels and security forces near an air force intelligence post, the Observatory said.
It reported heavy machinegun fire, without giving any casualty toll.
Japan announced on Wednesday it was joining the diplomatic exodus from Syria and closing its Damascus embassy, citing deteriorating security conditions amid the regime's lethal crackdown.
A security clampdown has been ordered in the capital followed what activists said was a hit-and-run attack on Monday that killed at least three rebels and a member of the security forces.
It came on the heels of deadly twin suicide car bombings targeting security buildings in Damascus on Saturday.
An Islamist group, the Al-Nusra Front to Protect the Levant, claimed responsibility for the car bombings in Damascus to avenge the Syrian regime's "massacre of Sunnis," in a statement posted online.
AFP could not verify the authenticity of the statement or of reports from monitors as Syrian authorities restrict the movements of foreign media.
Syria's state news agency SANA said an unspecified number of security officials and civilians were killed in a suicide car bombing on Tuesday in Daraa province, south of Damascus, cradle of the uprising.
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