O grande drama sírio

The Western-Arab drive to adopt a UN resolution on Syria is a "path to civil war", Russian deputy foreign minister Gennady Gatilov has warned.

He told Interfax news agency it would "not lead to a search for compromise".

The resolution is set to be discussed at a UN Security Council meeting on the deepening Syrian crisis.

Arab League Secretary General Nabil al-Arabi will be asking the council to back the league's new plan calling on President Bashar al-Assad to resign.

But Russia had already threatened to veto any such resolution.

The diplomacy follows a day of particularly heavy bloodshed, with more than 100 people killed across Syria.

Activists say more than 40 civilians were among the dead in Monday's violence, but their claims cannot be independently verified as the the BBC and other international media are severely restricted inside Syria.

The UN has conceded it cannot keep track of the overall death toll, but estimates more than 5,400 people have been killed since the unrest began last March.

Running battlefield

Syria said on Monday the army had regained control of some Damascus suburbs recently held by rebel forces.

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The interior ministry described the battles of the past three days around the eastern edge of the capital as a "qualitative operation" by security forces, the BBC's Jim Muir reports from Beirut.

Troops had "finished off" a large number of "terrorists" and had arrested others, capturing large quantities of weapons, the ministry added.
BBC