BEIRUT  - Opposition fighters battled Syrian government forces in Damascus on Sunday in what residents described as the fiercest fighting yet inside the city limits of the capital.
Numerous residents contacted by Reuters said they could hear loud explosions, persistent gunfire and sirens wailing. Thick black smoke was visible above the Damascus skyline in live internet video links. An explosion hit a security forces bus in Damascus on Sunday and wounded several people, activists said. Residents said they heard a powerful blast, followed by the sirens of ambulances rushing toward Damascus’s southern ring road near the neighbourhood of Midan.
The opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which compiles reports by anti-Assad activists, said Sunday’s death toll across the country was at least 80. Rockets were being used in the fighting in Damascus, it said. The government restricts access to the country by independent media.
Western countries, Arab neighbours and Turkey have formed an alliance against Assad. But diplomacy has had little impact so far, with Assad’s allies Russia and China blocking action by the UN Security Council and the West showing no appetite for the kind of intervention it undertook last year when Nato helped topple Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi.
Opposition reports of a massacre last week in the village of Tremseh brought a wave of new denunciations of Assad in the West. UN observers returned on Sunday to the village to gather more evidence at the site after finding blood, damaged houses and signs that artillery was used, but inconclusive evidence of the scale of the killing.
The government says it killed several dozen enemy fighters in battle in Tremseh last week but denies accusations that it carried out a massacre or that its forces used heavy weapons.
Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon head for Russia and China on Monday to press the two UN Security Council doubters to back tougher action against President Bashar al-Assad to halt the slaughter in Syria. The visits by the UN-Arab League envoy and the UN leader come at a crucial new stage in the 16-month old conflict.
The Security Council has until Friday to renew the UN mission in Syria but is divided over Western calls to add sanctions.