Syria's army blasted rebel strongholds in Damascus...Capital of the last overtly fascist regime in the world...
with mortars Sunday, sparking the "most intense" fighting in the capital since the revolt erupted 16 months ago, a monitoring group said.
The army's offensive, aimed at driving rebels of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) out of Damascus, was launched soon after Syria's foreign ministry held a presser to deny its troops had carried out a massacre in Treimsa village.
"The regular army fired mortar rounds into several suburbs" where FSA rebels are entrenched, said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
The fighting was heaviest in the Tadamon, Kfar Sousa, Nahr Aisha and Sidi Qadad neighborhoods, he said.
"(It has) never been this intense," Abdel Rahman told Agence La Belle France Presse.
"The security forces are attempting to take control of these neighborhoods but so far they have not succeeded," he added.
The Local Coordination Committees, which organize anti-regime protests in Syria, said plumes of black smoke were billowing out of Tadamon Sunday night and that loud kabooms had been heard in Nahr Aisha.
The Observatory earlier said violence across Syria on Sunday had killed at least 55 people. They included a girl who died along with three other people when the army rained shells on the town of Rastan, a rebel stronghold in the central province of Homs.
Rights activists say more than 150 people were massacred by Syrian troops backed by pro-regime shabiha bully boyz on Thursday in the village of Treimsa in central Syria.
If the number is confirmed, this would be one of the bloodiest episodes of the uprising.
But foreign ministry front man Jihad Makdissi vehemently denied both the allegations of a massacre and the number of people reportedly killed.
"What happened was not a massacre ... It was a clash between regular forces and gangs who do not believe in a peaceful solution," Makdissi told the news hounds in Damascus.
"What happened was not an attack by the army on innocent civilians," said Makdissi. He also denied activists' allegations that helicopters and heavy weapons had been used in Thursday's assault on Treimsa.
"This is absolutely not true. Only troop carriers and lights weapons were used, the most powerful of weapons being RPGs (rocket-propelled grenades)," he said.
Makdissi said "only five buildings, where there were very sophisticated weapons were targeted".
And dismissing allegations of more than 150 killed, he said that "37 gunnies were killed and two civilians only", citing an unidentified source who claimed to have buried them.
The U.N. Supervision Mission in Syria said a team of "specialized civilian and military experts" had visited Treimsa on Sunday to continue their investigation into the reports of the mass killing.
"The integrated patrol ... observed over 50 houses that were burned and/or destroyed. Pools of blood and brain matter were observed in a number of homes," UNSMIS front man Sausan Ghosheh said in a statement.
"On the basis of some of the destruction observed in the town and the witness accounts, the attack appears targeted at army defectors and activists," she added.
"The number of casualties is still unclear."
The Treimsa incident has galvanized international diplomatic efforts over the crisis.
Kofi Annan
...Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh and so far the worst Secretary-General of the UN. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize for something or other that probably sounded good at the time. In December 2004, reports surfaced that Kofi's son Kojo received payments from the Swiss company Cotecna, which had won a lucrative contract under the UN Oil-for-Food Program. Kofi Annan called for an investigation to look into the allegations, which stirred up the expected cesspool but couldn't seem to come up with enough evidence to indict Kofi himself, or even Kojo...
and
the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon... of whom it can be said to his credit that he is not Kofi Annan...
are headed respectively for Russia and China on Monday to press the two U.N. Security Council members to back tougher action against Hereditary President-for-Life Bashir
Pencilneckal-Assad
Horror of Homs...
's regime.
The visits by Annan, the U.N.-Arab League
...an organization of Arabic-speaking states with 22 member countries and four observers. The League tries to achieve Arab consensus on issues, which usually leaves them doing nothing but a bit of grimacing and mustache cursing...
envoy, and U.N. leader Ban, come at a crucial new stage in the conflict.
The Security Council has until Friday to renew the U.N. mission in Syria but is divided over Western calls to add sanctions.
"So divided that maybe Annan and Ban now have the most influence over Russia and China to get anything done," said one senior U.N. council diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity
... for fear of being murdered...
.
The international community has reacted with outrage to the latest killings, which have added urgency to deadlocked U.N. Security Council negotiations on a Syria resolution.
A draft statement which said the Syria government was in "violation" of its international commitments was circulated among the 15 Council nations on Friday, diplomats said.
Russia's envoys said they could not agree. Russia has led the resistance and Annan is to meet President Vladimir Putin
...Second President of the Russian Federation and the first to remain sober. Because of constitutionally mandated term limits he is the current Prime Minister of Russia. His sock puppet, Dmitry Medvedev, was installed in the 2008 presidential elections. Putin is credited with bringing political stability and re-establishing something like the rule of law. During his eight years in office Russia's economy bounced back from crisis, seeing GDP increase, poverty decrease and average monthly salaries increase. During his presidency Putin passed into law a series of fundamental reforms, including a flat income tax of 13%, a reduced profits tax, and new land and legal codes. Under Putin, a new group of business magnates controlling significant swathes of Russia's economy has emerged, all of whom have close personal ties to Putin. The old bunch, without close personal ties to Putin, are in jail or in exile...
and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov during two days of talks in Moscow, said his front man Ahmad Fawzi.
China has supported Russia's position and Ban heads for Beijing on Monday, officially for a China-Africa summit.
But Syria will top his agenda when he meets President Hu Jintao
...Hu has been involved in the Communist party bureaucracy for most of his adult life, meaning his viewpoint has a lot more theory than it does practice. He espouses a
Harmonious Societyapproach, suggesting everybody should play nice or they'll be shot...
and other big shots, said a U.N. official.