Syria killings spike as UN eyes resolution

DAMASCUS: Syrian forces intensified their crackdown on Friday, with activists reporting 120 people killed in two days, as European and Arab nations pressed the UN Security Council to call on President Bashar al-Assad to stand down.
The head of an Arab League monitoring mission said unrest had soared this week "in a significant way", especially in the flashpoint central cities of Homs and Hama and in the northern Idlib region.
The violence, which on Friday for the first time also cost lives in Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city, "does not help ... to get all sides to sit at the negotiating table," General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi said.
For a second day, Syrian forces kept up their attacks on Homs, as Morocco presented a draft UN resolution, drawn up by Britain, France and Germany with Arab states, seeking to end months of UN deadlock.
The text demands an immediate end to a government crackdown that the UN says has killed more than 5,400 since March.
But an opposition front immediately came forward and days of tough talks loom before any vote is held, with Russia saying the proposed resolution went too far.
Russia's UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin said the text crossed "our red lines, where we cannot go". Russia opposes any hint of sanctions, an arms embargo or "regime change", he said.
The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights said security forces killed at least 44 civilians on Friday, while 12 soldiers were killed in attacks on the military.
It said 19 people died in the southern province of Daraa, 15 in Homs, five in Aleppo, in the north, three in Douma, just north of Damascus, including a child and woman, a boy on the outskirts of the capital, and another in Hama.
Six soldiers died in a car bomb attack on a security checkpoint in the city of Idlib and another six were killed in Daraa province in clashes with army deserters, the Britain-based watchdog's head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.
In violence across the country on Thursday, the Observatory said 62 people were killed, including 33 in Homs, a major protest hub and a tinderbox of sectarian tensions.
On the outskirts of Damascus, an 11-year-old boy was killed at a checkpoint in Hamuriyeh, it said in statements received in Nicosia.
At least 384 children have been among the dead in the uprising against Assad's regime, and almost the same number detained, the UN Children's Fund said on Friday.
The latest wave in the government crackdown, now in its 11th month, comes as the West tries to ride diplomatic momentum sparked by last weekend's surprise call by the Arab League for Assad to step down.
The Security Council has been deadlocked for months on Syria. Russia and China vetoed a previous European resolution in October, accusing the West of seeking regime change.
"I think we have the chance today to open a new chapter on Syria," said Germany's UN ambassador Peter Wittig.
If the draft is agreed, the council would say it "fully supports" the Arab League plan of January 22 that calls on Assad to hand over his powers to his deputy so that a national unity government can be formed and elections held.
The text "encourages" all states to follow sanctions imposed by the Arab League against Syria in November, but contains no mandatory action. Official talks on the resolution are only expected to start on Monday.
In Cairo, where the Arab League is based, scores of Syrian regime opponents stormed their country's embassy, an reporter said.
At least 200 Syrian protesters forced their way into the building in Garden City neighbourhood, breaking doors and windows, before security officials arrived at the mission and expelled them.
The mission was empty for the Muslim weekend.
Syrian ambassador Yusef Ahmed visited the mission after the incident and said he would formally complain to Egyptian authorities. "The protection today was very weak," he told AFP.