Lebanon has long been a political battleground for bigger regional powers. Damascus had a major military presence in its smaller coastal neighbour for 29 years. Assad withdrew his troops in 2005, but Damascus is still the main external player in the delicately balanced sectarian politics of a country torn apart by a 1975-90 civil war... There is concern that a proxy conflict is being fought out, with Saudi Arabia and Qatar pouring funds into Tripoli through Salafi Islamist groups - increasingly powerful in Lebanon - against Lebanon's influential Shi'ite Hezbollah and Amal factions, which back the Alawite-led government in Damascus.

A Syrian Kurdish group quit the meeting, sparking mayhem and cries of "scandal, scandal" from some delegates. Women wept as men traded blows, and staff of the hotel used for the meeting hurriedly removed tables and chairs as the scuffles spread.

They forced me to undress. Then they started squeezing my fingers with pliers. They put staples in my fingers, chest and ears. I was only allowed to take them out if I spoke. The staples in the ears were the most painful. They used two wires hooked up to a car battery to give me electric shocks. They used electric stun-guns on my genitals twice. I thought I would never see my family again. They tortured me like this three times over three days.

The medical workers were part of a team of doctors, nurses and first-aiders who had been providing life-saving medical treatment in makeshift "field hospitals" set up to treat demonstrators shot by security forces who could not go to state-run hospitals for fear of being arrested, tortured or even killed. Three men were students at Aleppo University – Basel Aslan and Mus'ab Barad were fourth-year medical students and Hazem Batikh was a second-year English literature student and a first-aid medic. A fourth charred corpse found with the men has yet to be identified.

Her daughter, 8, often hides in a closet, terrified of flying bullets. Her son, 6, still asks for his father months after he turned up in a morgue. And the family has little income because her brother-in-law was killed too. Umm Moussa's extended family is smaller now. They live day to day in a house of simply furnished concrete rooms around an empty courtyard in this dusty city in northern Syria. "I'm always worried that after all I've lost, I'll lose something else," said the thin, shy 27-year-old, leafing through photos of her dead husband.

A statement following a two-hour security meeting led by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the warplane that went missing near Syria earlier Friday was downed by Syrian forces and that the two Turkish pilots remain missing. It said Turkey "will determinedly take necessary steps" in response, without saying what they would be.

The move, which has been discussed between Riyadh and senior officials in the US and Arab world, is believed to be gaining momentum as a recent flush of weapons sent to rebel forces by Saudi Arabia and Qatar starts to make an impact on battlefields in Syria.

The Shiite pilgrims were abducted May 22 after crossing into Syria from Turkey on their way to Lebanon. A previously unheard of group calling itself "Syrian Rebels in Aleppo" claimed responsibility, saying five of the hostages were members of the militant Lebanese Hezbollah group. The group and their families deny that. The group demanded that the Hezbollah leader, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, apologize for recent comments in support of Syrian President Bashar Assad. Nasrallah, an ally of Syria's regime, has said the kidnapping would not change his group's stance.

The new EU sanctions are designed partly to target the family of the Syrian president, in particular his wife Asma al-Assad, who is said to have continued shopping for luxury products during the conflict.

Wherever I went, in every town, in every village, there was a very similar pattern - soldiers who went in, in very large numbers, for very short but very brutal incursions where they extra-judicially executed young men, burned down their homes. Those who they arrested were then tortured in detention.

"Recently a lot of weapons have entered Syria. We are getting ready and we will create a balance of horror. The days when hundreds of us are killed will be soon over. In my city we have received at least 10,000 rockets and 100 sniper rifles." "What is left for (Assad)? Using planes? We will get weapons for that too. Nothing will stop us now. The world has decided to finally get rid of him and we are ready."

The situation in Haffa has raised alarm over the past eight days, and there are concerns civilians are stuck in the area while the regime and rebel fighters battle for control. Washington said Monday that regime forces may be preparing a massacre in rebel-held Haffa – a village about 20 miles (30 kilometers) from Assad's hometown of Kardaha.

John Ging of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs says the Syrian government agreed in writing to allow in aid workers and convoys with supplies to Daraa, Deir el-Zour, Homs and Idlib. Ging said that "whether this is a breakthrough or not will be measured in the coming weeks" by whether Syria makes good on its promise.

Annan stuck by his six-point roadmap during a visit to Beirut on Friday, but said Syrian President Bashar Assad must send "a signal to his people and the international community that he is determined to implement the plan and that he is going to move ahead in search of peace."

In a statement, the U.N. Committee against Torture condemned the "widespread use of torture and cruel treatment of detainees, individuals suspected of having participated in demonstrations, journalists, web bloggers, defectors of security forces, persons wounded or injured, women and children.

At once we were pulled physically from house to house by people desperate to get their story to the outside world. Within minutes we meet 25-year-old Younis, lying in a room with two gunshot wounds in his torso. He’s telling us, weakly, how he was trying to help an 11-year-old boy on Friday when he was injured. The boy was shot dead. A 15-year-old girl lies on another bed not 10 yards away describing how she witnessed the Shabiya militia crouching behind a window as she tried to flee. She too was shot.

Both sides have obviously had a hand in the deaths of innocent people, including several dozen women and children. This area is controlled by the rebels, but it is also surrounded by government troops," Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said after talks in Moscow with visiting British Foreign Secretary William Hague.

Syrian Revolution General Commission calls for the UN to declare the end of Annan's plan. #Syria twitter.com/HamaEcho/statu…

#Syria crisis: Houla child massacre confirmed by UN bbc.in/JCr3rK just sickening

On a bedroom floor dozens of little children lie dead, their arms and legs strewn over one another. Many of their eyes are still open, bearing a look of shock and fright. They are all covered with blood and obviously suffered terrible deaths.

UN monitors chief warns violence may lead #Syria to civil war english.alarabiya.net/articles/2012/…

Mass grave for those killed in the Houla massacre yesterday. youtube.com/watch?feature=… Mourners demanding the execution of Assad. #Homs #Syria

"It was hell on earth," Salameh Kaileh told The Associated Press on Sunday, nearly a week after Syrian forces released him and deported him to Jordan. Speaking at his friend's home in an Amman suburb, Kaileh had bluish-red bruises on his legs, which he said were the result of beatings with wooden batons that were studded with pins and nails. "I felt I was going to die under the brutal, savage and continuous beating of the interrogators, who tied me to ropes hung from the ceiling," said Kaileh, a soft-spoken man with a shock of white hair who appeared frail, barely able to stand on his feet.

Obama administration officials emphasized that the United States is neither supplying nor funding the lethal material, which includes antitank weaponry. Instead, they said, the administration has expanded contacts with opposition military forces to provide the gulf nations with assessments of rebel credibility and command-and-control infrastructure.

"Being caught with patients is like being caught with a weapon," the group quoted an orthopedic surgeon as saying in an Idlib village. "The atmosphere in most medical facilities is extremely tense; health care workers send wounded patients home and provide only first aid so that facilities can be evacuated quickly in the event of a military operation."

"We fulfilled our promise to respond with strikes and explosions," a distorted voice says, reading black text that rolls across a white screen while Islamic chanting plays in the background.

Syria's Ikhbariya television showed U.N. monitors inspecting a white mini-van in Aleppo on Friday which an army officer told them had contained enough explosive to kill 500 people. The bloodied body of the van driver lay crumpled in the front seat, behind a windscreen riddled with bullet holes.

SANA is a bit like Pravda in that it is the only official agency in the country. It is, in other words, a propaganda organ. But it’s also very reactive, and is generally on the scene as soon as something major happens. Their approach to photojournalism is also akin to the old Soviet model: first, let the photographers do their job and take pictures, lots of them. But what they do with them afterward is another matter. That’s when the censorship process kicks it, though occasionally they’ll let photos through without the usually vetting process.

"The United States condemns in the strongest terms the attacks that took place today in Damascus," the U.S. embassy said in statements posted on Twitter. "The indiscriminate targeting and killing of civilians is reprehensible and unacceptable in any context," it said.

"We are starting to get smarter about tactics and use bombs because people are just too poor and we don't have enough rifles," a rebel fighter from the north of Idlib province said last week as he took a break across the border in Turkey. "It is just no match for the army," said the man, who spoke on condition of anonymity, "So we are trying to focus on the ways we can fight."

According to a fellow fighter, who goes by the nom de guerre Abu Ali, Jawhar had been preparing an explosive device to be used against the Syrian army, which had been attempting to enter the rebel-dominated town not far from Homs. As Abu Ali narrated the tale over Skype, the sound of bombs and explosions could be heard in the background. Jawhar’s bomb went off prematurely, says Abu Ali.

Clinton's address made clear the U.S. has little faith in the success of special envoy Kofi Annan's peace plan. But although U.S. policy has amounted to an acknowledgment that Assad is unlikely to be dislodged, the U.N. resolution Clinton seeks could strengthen Syrian rebels fighting the Syrian strongman.

Two gold traders in the United Arab Emirates said the Syrian government had been offering gold at a discount, with one saying it was making offers at about 15 percent below the market price. The trader said Damascus was selling small volumes of around 20-30 kilos which were easier to offload, with offers being made through private accounts set up with free email providers. Another trader said deals as of yet had not gone through in Dubai because the Emirati authorities were blocking unauthorised trades and few potential buyers were willing to take the risk of these deals. "We have been getting offers for gold purchases from Syria and North African countries at 15 percent discount, but there are tough restrictions in Dubai that don't allow any unauthorised trades," said the trader.

One person was killed as marchers tried to converge on a central square in the city of Hama. Security forces shot one person dead as worshippers left a mosque in the town of Nawa in the southern Deraa province, where the uprising began. A third died from his wounds after he was shot by security forces in the town of Salqeen in the northwestern province of Idlib, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and the anti-Assad Local Coordination Committees said.

The draft, obtained by Reuters, would have the 15-nation council say it "demands the Syrian government implement visibly its commitments in their entirety ... to (a) cease troop movements towards population centers, (b) cease all use of heavy weapons in such centers, and (c) begin pullback of military concentrations in and around population centres. It also "demands further that the Syrian government withdraw its troops and heavy weapons from population centers to their barracks ... calls upon all parties in Syria immediately to cease all armed violence in all its forms and to cease all arbitrary detentions, abductions, and torture.

The Revolution Leadership Council of Damascus, a Syrian opposition network, said the "act of protest" took place in the capital on Thursday, hours after regime forces appeared to standby a UN-agreed ceasefire. But a spokesperson for the group told The Huffington Post UK the ceasefire plan was not serious about the ceasefire and they had "at least eight people down today". "It [the flag raising] happened today in Damascus at the outskirts, and it happened as an act of protest against the regime.

Activists said 26 people, mostly civilians, were killed in the city of Homs in Syrian army bombardment of the Bayada and Khalidiya districts of the city of Homs. "They are attacking Bayada with mortars from three different locations. People have taken refuge in some schools and now some of the schools were hit," said an activist calling himself Abu Yasser. "We have at least 20 martyrs and 70 wounded, most of them women and children," he told Reuters by telephone.

Refugees fleeing Syria's northern Idlib province gave the Monitor detailed eyewitness accounts of numerous human shield incidents – many involving women and young children – in recent weeks. They described seeing Syrian soldiers forcing children to march in front of their tanks as government forces advanced into rebel strongholds.

Noura left home last Wednesday, March 28, and has not been seen since. Her sister reports that six of her cameras and a laptop have disappeared and that since her disappearance seven other female and five male activists have also gone missing. I have received reports that she too has been making calls to other activists urging them to meet up -- making calls from captivity that is. Hardly encouraging news for those concerned for her well being.

• On Tuesday, March 27, the UN increased its estimate of the civilian death toll in Syria by nearly 1,000, bringing the total to more than 9,000 killed since last March.
• Kofi Annan presented a six-point peace plan, which was endorsed by the Arab League and accepted by the Syrian government. Syrian President Assad later demanded that opposition 'terrorist' groups stop the violence as a condition of implementing the plan.
• 2 Syrian army colonels were killed by gunmen in Aleppo, Syria's largest city.
• US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton traveled to Saudi Arabia to meet with officials and discuss a unified strategy for Syria. Saudi Arabia has favored an approach including arming the rebels.
• Foreign Secretary William Hague announced that the UK would send $795,000 worth of non-lethal aid to the Syrian opposition.
• According to activists, around 40 people were killed when the military overran the northern city of Saraqeb.
• Belgium, Turkey, and Norway all closed their embassies in Syria.

"Hussein didn't care if the man had been beaten into a confession, or that he was terrified of death and had begun to stammer prayers. It was his tough luck that the rebels had caught him."

They've gone for the children - for whatever purposes - in large numbers. Hundreds detained and tortured...it's just horrendous...children shot in the knees, held together with adults in really inhumane conditions, denied medical treatment for their injuries, either held as hostages or as sources of information.

As Syrian forces moved to secure Saraqeb on Monday, rebel fighters packed their blankets, water pipes, guns and odd laptops into trucks. Along with many families, including women and children, they sped off into the night. Red tracers flew overhead. Once safely outside, they slept in farms and small villages, plotting their return.

"Baba Amr will be much better than before," Assad told dozens of residents as he surveyed the destruction wrought on the neighbourhood in a month-long assault by regime forces. The brief visit, which was aired on state television, marked a rare public appearance by the embattled head of state who is in the throes of an unprecedented revolt against his regime.

The refugees’ firsthand accounts painted a picture of a section of western Syria that is more thoroughly under siege — and perhaps more widely in revolt — than has previously been depicted. “The army wants to displace people to get them away from the protests,” said Abu Munzer, 59, a Syrian Army veteran from the village of Mazaria, huddling by a wood stove in a cinder-block farmhouse with about 20 other refugees; like most people interviewed, he was afraid to give his full name. “If they die or they leave, there will be no one there to protest.”

Until now, Britain has supplied assistance to exiles in the West and opponents of President Bashar Assad's regime in Syria's neighboring countries, amid concern over the practicalities of delivering items into Syria and fears that equipment could end up in the hands of extremists. Precise details of what type of support and equipment will be offered are still being determined, though the package is likely to include secure telephones.

They've gone for the children - for whatever purposes - in large numbers. Hundreds detained and tortured...it's just horrendous...children shot in the knees, held together with adults in really inhumane conditions, denied medical treatment for their injuries, either held as hostages or as sources of information.

Arab ministers meeting in Baghdad for an Arab League summit on Thursday endorsed the six-point proposal of U.N.-Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan, which seeks a ceasefire and political dialogue that Iraq called a "last chance" for Syria to resolve the crisis without greater bloodshed. Syria accepted Annan's proposal, the latest effort to broker an end to more than a year of fighting, but on Wednesday Damascus rejected any initiatives taken by the summit and said it would deal only with individual Arab states, as the League had suspended Syria because of its internal violence. "We cannot be impartial on this matter of daily violence, killing and bloodletting," Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari told reporters at end of the summit's second day. "The international resolution, which Syria has approved, we believe it's a positive and constructive step... But it needs implementation," he said.

Witnesses from the towns of al-Janoudyah, Kafr Nabl, Kafr Rouma, and Ayn Larouz in the Idlib governorate in northern Syria told Human Rights Watch that they saw the army and pro-government armed men, referred to locally as shabeeha, force people to march in front of the advancing army during the March 2012 offensive to retake control of areas that had fallen into the hands of the opposition. From the circumstances of these incidents, it was clear to the witnesses that the purpose of this was to protect the army from attack. “By using civilians as human shields, the Syrian army is showing blatant disregard for their safety,” said Ole Solvang, emergencies researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The Syrian army should immediately stop this abhorrent practice.”

[The emails] appear to show the president's wife spending thousands of dollars over the internet for designer goods while he swaps entertaining internet links on his iPad and downloads music from iTunes.

Armed opposition fighters dashed through the streets, taking cover behind the corners of buildings in clashes with the troops. Wounded fighters were pulled into trucks to be sped to clinics for treatment. A group of men used shovels to destroy speed bumps along one street to allow ambulances and other rescue vehicles to drive faster.

Dr. Bérès described weeks of tension and sleepless nights; he struggled with the noise of bombardments, cold weather, mud in the streets, a lack of food and a shortage of child-size masks for anesthesia. He said there was not enough equipment to allow for anything but the most basic treatments. “Some people walked out of the hospital with bandages that had barely stopped the flow of blood, only three hours after they had been operated upon,” he said.

Above all, Daniels remains most troubled that the ghastly suffering they witnessed might be getting lost amid the story of six western journalists. He says he feels deeply uncomfortable that their ordeal has gripped world attention while hundreds of Homs residents had been killed in the four-week siege. The people they'd left behind could well have been slaughtered by the advancing Syrian Army. Each person Daniels met in Bab Amr had lost loved ones — their unremembered names joining the close to 8,000 people who have died so far in the conflict in Syria. And while the people of Bab Amr treated the journalists with extraordinary care, Daniels and Espinosa had seen 150 locals huddling in a single basement, with minimal food and water, struggling to survive the siege. "The real story is not us, it's the Syrian people," Daniels says.

Last week, a group of senior Obama administration officials met to finalize a package of options for aiding both the internal and external Syrian opposition, to include providing direct humanitarian and communications assistance to the Syrian opposition, two administration officials confirmed to The Cable. This meeting of what's known as the Deputies Committee of the National Security Council set forth a new and assertive strategy for expanding U.S. engagement with Syrian activists and providing them with the means to organized themselves, but stops short of providing any direct military assistance to the armed opposition. For now, riskier options, such as creating a no-fly zone in Syria, using U.S. military force there, or engaging directly with the Free Syrian Army, are all still off the table. But the administration has decided not to oppose, either in public or in private, the arming of the rebels by other countries, the officials said.

Human Rights Watch acquired and analyzed this commercial satellite image of the Baba Amr neighborhood of Homs on February 25. A wide view of the image clearly shows the extensive damage caused by the use of surface-delivered explosive weapons in a populated area. The image reflects the damage that has occurred since previous images were taken between four and six weeks ago. At least 950 craters are visible on open lands, such as roads and farmland, from the impact of indirect fire weapons. The number of craters indicates the frequency of the attacks and how many artillery and mortar shells have fallen. There are 640 buildings in the neighborhood with visible damage. However, the damage to buildings is likely to be significantly underestimated from viewing the satellite image because views from satellite images do not show hits to the sides of buildings made by explosive weapons. Since this satellite image was taken on February 25, the Syrian army has intensified its assault on Baba Amr. Media outlets reported that the Syrian army began a ground assault on the neighborhood on February 29 and regained control of the neighborhood by March 1.

"The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Society (SARC) were not allowed to enter the Baba Amro district of Homs today," ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger said in a statement issued in Geneva. "It is unacceptable that people who have been in need of emergency assistance for weeks have still not received any help. We are staying in Homs tonight in the hope of entering Baba Amro in the very near future. In addition, many families have fled Baba Amro, and we will help them as soon as we possibly can." Carla Haddad, ICRC chief spokeswoman, told Reuters: "The Syrian authorities did not allow us to enter the neighbourhood of Baba Amro." She declined to give details on the sensitive negotiations. Syrian authorities had given the independent agency a "green light" on Thursday to enter Baba Amro on Friday. The ICRC convoy of 7 trucks carrying food and other aid supplies left Damascus early on Friday for Homs, where it met local volunteers and ambulances of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent prepared to treat and evacuate the sick and wounded. ICRC spokeswoman Haddad told Reuters: "We have positive signals, this is an ongoing process."

The resolution urged Syria to immediately stop all attacks on civilians and grant unhindered access to aid groups. It also supported gathering evidence on possible crimes against humanity and other serious abuses in the fighting in Syria, so that those who committed them can be held to account at a later date. Syria's seat in the room remained empty during the vote, after the country's U.N. envoy stormed out of the council Tuesday having accused the body of supporting terrorism and prolonging the crisis in his country.

A statement by the Baba Amr rebels brigade says the decision was made to spare some 4,000 civilian residents who insisted on staying in their homes. In the statement issued Thursday, the rebels warn government troops against carrying out "revenge" attacks targeting civilians. It said any such action will "cost the regime dearly." Burhan Ghalioun, head of the opposition Syrian National Council, told a news conference in Paris that rebels have relocated from some areas but said the resistance in Baba Amr "is still strong."