The UN General Assembly voted 137 to 12 late yesterday to approve a resolution calling for an immediate halt to Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's violent crackdown on dissent.
China, Russia and Iran were among the nations that opposed the text put forward by Egypt and other Arab states that condemned 'widespread and systematic violations of human rights' in Syria.
Meanwhile at least 22 people died yesterday as Syrian armour moved on protest hubs, while prominent blogger Razan Ghazzawi and other top activists were arrested, monitors said before the UN vote.
President Bashar al-Assad’s troops pummelled the central city of Homs for a 13th straight day, with 18 people killed in central Hama province and four others dying in the southern city of Daraa, the monitors reported.
“It’s very methodical,” said Mohammed, a Daraa resident reached by telephone from Beirut. He said regime forces were attacking the province “village by village”.
“The (rebel) Free Syrian Army is trying to push them back but it is not equipped and is forced to retreat. Regime troops are taking revenge on residents.”
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group also said it fears security forces carried out a massacre in Daraa province, where dozens of civilians disappeared on Wednesday after being cornered in a valley. “There are fears regime forces carried out a massacre in Sahm al-Julan,” the Britain-based group said in a statement.
“Witnesses said security forces shot at the civilians and then piled them onto pick-up trucks. Their fate is unknown,” said the Observatory, which provided the names of 14 of those feared killed.
The authorities arrested Ghazzawi, symbol of the 11-month uprising against Assad’s regime, and prominent human rights activist Mazen Darwish, his wife and 11 others, a human rights lawyer said.
Anwar Bunni said Ms Ghazzawi was arrested in a raid on the Syrian Centre for Media and Freedom of Expression, which is in Damascus and headed by Darwish.
The latest crackdown came while the UN General Assembly was set to vote on a measure condemning repression in Syria.
Earlier, the opposition rejected a newly-drafted Constitution that could end nearly five decades of single-party rule and urged voters to boycott a February 26 referendum on the charter.
The Local Coordination Committees, a main opposition activist group, called for a vote boycott and stepped-up efforts to oust Mr Assad.