The Arab League yesterday pressed on with its peace mission to Syria despite charges it was only serving to cover up the regime’s crimes, as neighbouring Turkey warned of a looming civil war.

Turkey has already called on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down for failing to halt the bloodshed and yesterday the country’s Prime Minister said Syria’s 10-month crisis could soon take another catastrophic turn.

“The situation that has emerged there is right now heading towards a religious,sectarian and racial civil war. This must be stopped,” the Turkish premier, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told a televised news conference.

The opposition Muslim Brotherhood denounced the Arab League after the 22-member organisation decided on Sunday to extend its observer mission.

“It is clear that the observer mission in Syria seeks to cover up the crimes of the Syrian regime by giving it the time and opportunity to kill our people and break their will,” Brotherhood spokesman Zuhair Salem said.

After a meeting with the opposition Syrian National Council on Sunday in Istanbul, a foreign ministry spokesman in Turkey urged the opposition to carry on with their resistance.

“The Syrian opposition demands democracy and we told them during a meeting yesterday (Sunday) that this should be done through peaceful means,” he said, referring to Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s talks with the SNC.

At a meeting in Cairo the same day, an Arab ministerial committee gave its widely criticised observer mission to Syria the green light to carry on and pledged to boost the number of monitors but said the committee may request “technical assistance” from the UN.

The committee urged Damascus “to fully and immediately implement its commitments” under the Arab plan, calling on all parties “to immediately stop all forms of violence.”

The Syrian Revolution General Commission, grouping activists on the ground, said the meeting fell “short of expectations.” The League should use the “necessary means” to halt the violence or admit failure, it said.

A report by the observers discussed at the meeting showed that “killing has been reduced. But even one killing (is too much)”.

Sheikh Hamad said the League hoped to raise the number of observers to 300 “within the next few days” from around 163 now deployed.

The team of Arab League monitors has been in Syria since December 26 to oversee a deal to protect civilians, but the death toll, which the UN says has now exceeded 5,000, has kept climbing despite their presence.

Security force fire killed at least four more civilians yesteday, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said in Nicosia.