UN monitors reach Syria massacre site

UN monitors have finally reached the site of a new massacre in Syria on their second attempt, activists said, as Western powers pressed for sanctions against Damascus.

UN monitors have finally reached the site of a new massacre in Syria on their second attempt, activists said, as Western powers pressed at the United Nations for sanctions against Damascus.

The sanctions push came as international envoy Kofi Annan called for "additional pressure" in the wake of the latest massacre.

"The observers first headed to the village of Maarzaf where the victims were buried and then to Al-Kubeir to survey the damage from army shelling," activist Abdel Karim al-Hamwi said.

At least 55 people were killed on Wednesday in an assault on Al-Kubeir, a Sunni farming enclave of some 150 people circled by Alawite villages in the central province of Hama, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

Paul Danahar, a BBC correspondent travelling with the UN convoy, reported seeing gutted buildings in Al-Kubeir and no sign of life.

"The stench of burnt flesh is still strong," he wrote in a message on Twitter. He quoted activists as saying government forces had removed the bodies of the victims on Thursday while the observers were being hindered from reaching the village.

The UN observers were fired on Thursday when they first tried to investigate the slaughter.

According to preliminary evidence, troops had surrounded Al-Kubeir and militia entered the village and killed civilians with "barbarity," UN chief Ban Ki-moon was quoted as telling the UN Security Council.

Damascus denied responsibility and, as it has done repeatedly in the past, blamed foreign-backed "terrorists," using its term for rebels fighters.

In fresh violence on Friday, troops battled to take back the rebel bastion of Khaldiyeh in the central city of Homs, bombarding it "at a rate of five shells a minute," said the Observatory.

Elsewhere, an explosion in front of a police station in the northwestern city of Idlib killed five people, including another two security forces members, said the watchdog.

In all, more than 20 people were killed on Friday, including two members of the security forces who died in a blast in the Damascus suburb of Qudssaya, according to the Observatory.

Anti-regime activists called for protests after the weekly Friday prayers under the rallying cry of "Revolutionaries and traders, hand in hand until victory," reaching out to the middle classes in Syria's two main cities of Damascus and Aleppo.

Demonstrations were held in the capital despite a heavy security deployment, an activist in the capital who uses the pseudonym Deeb Dimashqi told AFP via Skype.

In Kfar Zita, a town in the province of Hama, people emerged from mosques to demonstrate chanting: "We don't want peaceful (revolt). We have bullets and Kalashnikovs!"

More than 13,500 people have been killed in the crackdown on dissent that followed the eruption in mid-March 2011 of anti-government protests and the increasingly violent insurgency against Assad's regime, the Observatory says.

ADDITIONAL PRESSURE

UN-Arab League envoy Annan said in Washington as he entered talks with US Secretary of State Clinton that he would discuss "how we can put additional pressure on the government and the parties to get the plan implemented."

Annan said "everyone is looking for a solution" but acknowledged doubts about a peace deal he brokered, which calls for a ceasefire and dialogue to end more than a year of violence aimed at toppling President Bashar al-Assad.

"Some say the plan may be dead. Is the problem the plan or the problem is implementation? If it's implementation, how do we get back on track? And if it is the plan, what other options do we have," he asked.

Diplomats in New York said Britain, France and the United States would quickly draw up a Security Council resolution proposing sanctions against Syria. "We will move fast to press for a resolution," a UN diplomat told AFP.

"There will be action in the coming days to get a vote on a resolution which includes measures under Chapter VII of the UN Charter -- which would mean sanctions," the diplomat added in comments confirmed by other Security Council envoys.

Chapter VII allows for sanctions and, in extreme cases, military action. Russia and China, infuriated by the NATO campaign in Libya last year, have vowed to oppose any military intervention.

The three Western permanent members of the council want a new campaign for sanctions after Annan said on Thursday that the international community must warn Assad of "clear consequences" if he does not carry out his commitment to the peace plan.

In Moscow, Clinton's point man on Syria, Fred Hof, met Russian diplomats in a bid to persuade Russia to back Assad's removal.

But Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov said after the meeting that Russia had no information about a leadership change being planned in Damascus and pointedly failed to make any public call for one.

"I do not know anything about such plans by the Syrian president," Bogdanov told state news agency RIA Novosti.

Annan has said he was in discussions to set up an international contact group on the Syria crisis and that he hoped Iran, a close ally of Damascus, would be part of the "solution."

France also backs the bid for a new contract group, a foreign ministry spokesman in Paris said, but diplomats added that Paris like Washington was opposed to inviting the Islamic republic.

In other developments, the Red Cross said the situation was "extremely tense' in many parts of Syria and that it was attempting to deliver humanitarian aid to 1.5 million people directly or indirectly affected by the bloodshed.