President Barack Obama continues
to monitor the deteriorating situation in Syria with concern and will make any
decision on further steps based on U.S. national interests, White House
spokesman Jay Carney said on Thursday.
"The president and every member of his
national security team are greatly concerned by the terrible situation in Syria
and the worsening situation in Syria," Carney told reporters at his daily
briefing.
"The president is reviewing and
considering what other options are available to him and to the United States as
well as our allies and partners for further and additional steps in Syria, and
that process continues," Carney added.
"As terrible as the situation is in
Syria, he has to make decisions when it comes to policy toward Syria, that are
in the best interests of the United States," he said.
For her part, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said on Thursday she
was worried that the bloodshed in the battle for the Syrian town of
Qusayr will be repeated in the city of Aleppo and undermine attempts to
negotiate a peace.
"I am concerned that what happened in Qusayr
will happen in Aleppo. All the reports I'm receiving are of augmentation
of resources and forces on the part of the government," Pillay told
Reuters television.
"It's hardly a scenario and a proper stage
for negotiations at this stage. Would you begin negotiations with people
who are intent on emerging as victors out of violent struggle," Pillay
added.
This as Britain and Germany aim to use next week's summit of major economic powers to press Russia's leader to use his leverage with the government of President Bashar Assad to calm the fighting in Syria.
Leaders at the G-8 meeting starting Monday will push President Vladimir Putin, "who has a special responsibility and a particular influence to contribute to a de-escalation as (Syria's) weapons supplier," a senior German official said Thursday.
The issue has become more urgent because of the "increasingly sectarian character" of the civil war, pitching Shia and Sunni Muslims against each other, including the increased role of Lebanon's Hezbollah militia fighting alongside Syrian government forces, the official said.
The worsening situation also increasingly threatens to destabilize neighboring Iraq and Lebanon, said the official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity in line with government rules.
Russia has shielded Assad from U.N. sanctions and has continued to provide his regime with weapons. Moscow has said it's only providing arms such as air defense missile systems to protect Syria from a foreign invasion.
British Prime Minister David Cameron will be meeting Putin in London on Sunday for talks on Syria, ahead of the two-day G-8 summit in Northern Ireland, and has pledged to have frank and open discussions with the Russian leader.
The German official added the leaders wanted to add new momentum for a peace conference proposed by the U.S. and Russia. That conference in Geneva was first envisioned for May but has since been postponed until July at the earliest.
The leaders of the United States, Japan, Germany, Britain, France, Russia, Canada and Italy will have a private working dinner Monday with no aides present focusing on foreign policy issues like Syria, he added.
On the field:
Syria's state-run news agency says two mortar shells have landed in the vicinity of Damascus International Airport.
The agency did not provide more details for the incident on Thursday.
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights says rebel fighters targeted the airport with home-made rockets. It said there were no reports of casualties.
This as Syrian rebels battled regime forces for control of a key military base in central Hama province after chasing soldiers out and setting fire to installations there, activists said.
Amateur video posted on YouTube purported to show flames rising from the burning compound and the bodies of some of the killed fighters.
In the video, fighters celebrated the capturing of the base, on the northern edge of the town of Morek, calling it one of the "most critical" regime outposts in the region.
The base straddles the country's strategic north-south highway leading to Aleppo.
The videos appeared genuine and conformed with other Associated Press reporting on the events depicted.
The fighting came as the United Nations released figures that highlighted the carnage that has engulfed Syria for more than two years, saying that almost 93-thousand people have been confirmed killed in the conflict.
In a new analysis of the Syrian death toll issued in Geneva, the UN's human rights office acknowledged the real number is likely to be far higher.
It documented 92,901 killings between March 2011 and the end of April 2013.
But the UN's top human rights official, Navi Pillay, said it was impossible to provide an exact current figure.
The last such analysis, released in January, documented nearly 60-thousand killings through the end of November.
Since then, UN officials had estimated higher numbers.
The figures were released as President Bashar Assad's forces wage an offensive to drive rebels out of the central provinces of Homs and Hama, as well as the northern province of Aleppo, following a major success in regaining control of the strategic town of Qusair near the border with Lebanon.
Boosted by their battleground victory, regime forces appear set on securing control of the central region, a linchpin area linking Damascus with regime strongholds on the Mediterranean coast, and Aleppo to the north.
Following dawn battles, rebels fighting to topple Assad took control of the base near Morek.
By midday, regime forces shelled the base and sent reinforcements in an apparent attempt to regain control of the key base, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights
.
The Observatory, which has a vast network of Syrian activists on the ground, said the rebels killed six government fighters and seized ammunition and weapons.
Two rebel fighters were killed.
Child Soldiers:
Syrian troops and rebels are recruiting children to fight in the country's
civil war and some have been tortured by government forces for having links to
the opposition, U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon said in a report on Wednesday.
The report issued after Ban's special envoy for
children and armed conflict, Leila Zerrougui, visited Syria in December said
thousands of children have been killed in the violence, "while thousands
more have seen family members killed or injured."
The report also said children are recruited,
killed, maimed or raped by government forces and armed groups in Afghanistan,
Chad, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Sudan, South Sudan and Yemen,
as well as by armed groups in Mali, Colombia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Iraq
and the Central African Republic.
The United Nations considers anyone aged under
18 to be a child.
Ban said that in Syria, torture and
ill-treatment of children accused of associating with opposition forces was a
worrying trend.
Armed opposition groups, including the Free
Syrian Army, were also accused of using children, generally aged 15 to 17 years
old, both in combat and in support roles, such as ferrying food and water and
loading cartridges, the report said.
Ban said that the Syrian government and the
National Coalition of Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces had assured
Zerrougui that they were committed to working with the United Nations to stop
the abuse of children's rights.
REUTERS/AP
To watch the full report, please click on the video above