U.N. monitors shot at in Syria

BEIRUT – U.N. observers came under fire Thursday as they tried to reach the site of the latest reported mass killing in Syria – about 80 people, including women and children who were shot or stabbed. The deaths added urgency to diplomatic efforts to end the escalating bloodshed.

As reports emerged of what would be the fourth such mass slaying of civilians in Syria in the last two weeks, the United States condemned President Bashar Assad, saying he has “doubled down on his brutality and duplicity.”

U.N. patrols in Syria have on several instances been deliberately targeted with heavy weapons, armor-piercing ammunition and a surveillance drone, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon told the Security Council, according to a senior U.N. official. The official said Ban also reported repeated incidents of firing close to U.N. patrols, apparently to get them to withdraw.

International envoy Kofi Annan, whose peace plan brokered in April has not been implemented, warned against allowing “mass killings to become part of everyday reality in Syria.”

“If things do not change, the future is likely to be one of brutal repression, massacres, sectarian violence, and even all-out civil war,” Annan told the U.N. General Assembly in New York. “All Syrians will lose.”

U.N. diplomats said Annan was proposing that world powers and key regional players, including Iran, come up with a new strategy to end the 15-month conflict at a closed meeting of the Security Council that took place Thursday.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Annan highlighted the urgency of taking action to defuse the situation.

Standing alongside Annan and League of Arab States Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby, Ban echoed the sense of urgency.

“The three of us agree: Syria can quickly go from a tipping point to a breaking point. The danger of full-scale civil war is imminent and real, with catastrophic consequences for Syria and the region,” Ban warned.

Any proposal to resolve the situation, however, must be acceptable to Russia and China, which have protected Syria from past U.N. sanctions, as well as the U.S. and its European allies, the U.N. diplomats said.

The latest violence centered on Mazraat al-Qubair, a small farming community of 160 people, mostly Bedouins, in central Hama province. Activists said the Sunni village is surrounded by Alawite villages. Alawites are an offshoot of Shiite Islam and Assad is a member of the sect, while the opposition is dominated by Sunnis.

A resident said troops shelled the area for five hours Wednesday before government-aligned militiamen known as “shabiha” entered the area that is known to shelter army defectors, “killing and hacking everyone they could find.”

Syria’s main opposition group in exile, the Syrian National Council, also said 78 people were killed in Mazraat al-Qubair when government-aligned militiamen converged on the village from neighboring pro-regime villages. Some of the dead were shot in the head, others were slain with knives, the SNC said.

“Women and children were burned inside their homes in al-Qubair,” said Mousab Alhamadee, an activist based in Hama.

Syria denied the opposition claims as “absolutely baseless.” The exact death toll and circumstances of the killings reported overnight in Mazraat al-Qubair were impossible to confirm.