UN reaches Syria massacre site, West seeks sanctions

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

International envoy Kofi Annan, meanwhile, called for "additional pressure" in the wake of the latest massacre as he held talks with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

"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 circled by Alawite villages in the central province of Hama, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

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.

The UN visit went ahead despite the almost daily targeting of the UN Supervision Mission in Syria (UNSMIS), including with the use of heavy weapons, armour-piercing bullets and surveillance drones, according to Ban.

The observers, targeted by two roadside bombs since starting their mission in mid-April, had tried to stop tank assaults against populated areas, but were "ignored," said the UN chief.

Such tactics had been used to try to force the unarmed monitors to withdraw from areas where government forces have been accused of staging attacks, he was quoted as saying.

Ban praised the "brave" monitors, but said the Security Council would have to consider whether the mission was "sustainable."

"Syria can quickly go from a tipping point to a breaking point. The danger of a full-scale civil war is imminent and real, with catastrophic consequences for Syria and the region," he told reporters.

On Friday, troops battled to take back the rebel bastion of Khaldiyeh in the central city of Homs, bombarding it with shells "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.

And a deadly blast rocked the Damascus suburb of Qudssaya, killing two security forces members.

In all, at least 18 people were killed so far on Friday, following at least 58 people a day earlier.

Anti-regime activists called for protests after the weekly Friday prayers under the rallying cry of "Revolutionaries and traders, hand in hand until victory."

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

In Kfar Zita, in Hama province, 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.

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

Annan said that "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 told reporters.

Diplomats in New York said that Britain, France and the United States would quickly draw up a Security Council resolution proposing sanctions against Syria over the bloodshed.

"We will move fast to press for a resolution," a UN diplomat told AFP.

Russia, with support from China, has refused US calls to put greater pressure on Assad, whose family's four-decade regime has been a key ally of Moscow since the Cold War era.

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.

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.

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."

But the US ambassador to the UN, Susan Rice, said Iran was a "spoiler" and "part of the problem in Syria."

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

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