Annan tells Syria of horror after massacre, meets Assad

People watch the mass burial of more than 100 victims killed in the central Syrian city of Houla Thirty-two people were killed across Syria on Tuesday, including one woman, five children and five members of the Free Syrian Army, according to the Local Coordination Committees activist movement.

Eleven were reported killed in Homs, six in Damascus suburbs (Erbeen, Qatana, Kafar Batna and Ain Terma), five in Aleppo (Atareb), three in Hama, three in Daraa (Yadouda and Om Walad), two in Idlib, one in Damascus, and one in Deir al-Zor.
UN-Arab League mediator Kofi Annan also met president Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday, in a bid by the peace envoy to salvage his battered Syrian peace plan..
During the meeting, Assad claimed \"armed terrorist groups\" had escalated their attacks across the country, committing \"murder and abduction against Syrian citizens in addition to robberies and targeting public and private properties with arson and vandalism\", said state news agency SANA.
It added that Assad said \"the countries that are funding, arming and harbouring terrorist groups\" should cease doing so. It also said that Annan praised \"the positive spirit of coordination between the Syrian government and observers\"
The UN human rights body on Tuesday said most of the victims of the massacre in the Syrian town of Houla were summarily executed, amid global outrage over the killings.
\"It\'s believed that under 20 of the 108 killings can be attributed to artillery and tank fire,\" said Rupert Colville, spokesman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
\"Most of the rest of the victims in Taldo, one of the areas of Houla, were summarily executed in two separate incidents,\" he said.
Local residents have blamed the executions on a paramilitary group that \"essentially supports the government forces,\" Colville said.
He said it appeared that entire families were shot in their homes.
\"What is very clear is that this was an absolutely abominable event that happened in Houla and at least a substantial part of it was summary executions of civilians including women and children,\" he said.
The Syrian National Council (SNC), meanwhile, urged the United Nations and the Security Council to apply Article 7 regarding the protection of civilians in Syria and to force the Syrian regime to implement the international decisions, the Al Arabiya news network reported on Tuesday.
The SNC criticised the Security Council’s statement on the Houla massacre, noting that it is so weak compared to the grave massacres committed by the regime. The SNC called for providing the Syrians liable tools for self-defence, after the international community failed to protect them.
The SNC also criticised the Syrian stand in the UN and called on Moscow to frankly support the Syrian people and endorse their right to choose their political regime while demanding Annan announce the failure of his plan.
As he began a visit to Syria on Monday Annan called the \"tragic\" massacre in the central town of Houla \"an appalling moment with profound consequences.\"
The former UN chief said those responsible must be held to account, and urged \"everyone with a gun\" to abide by his six-point blueprint to help end 15 months of bloodshed.
Syrian foreign minister Walid Muallem met Annan and the head of the UN observer mission in Syria, Major General Robert Mood.
Muallem explained: \"The truth of what is happening in Syria and the attacks against law and order which are aimed at sowing chaos, despite the reforms that Syria has adopted in all areas.\"
World leaders have voiced outrage over the deaths of at least 108 people in the central town of Houla on Friday and Saturday, among them 49 children and 34 women, many blown to bits or shot dead at point blank range.
France said on Monday it would host a Friends of Syria meeting in Paris.
French president Francois Hollande\'s office said Monday that Syria\'s leaders would have to answer for their \"murderous folly.\"
Pope Benedict XVI was \"pained\" by the massacre and called on religious communities in Syria to cooperate to bring peace to the violence-wracked country.
The comments came after the UN Security Council - where Syrian allies Russia and China wield veto powers - on Sunday condemned the Damascus government\'s use of heavy artillery in the assault on Houla.
Annan told reporters in Damascus that he was \"personally shocked and horrified by the tragic incident in Houla,\" saying the Security Council was right to condemn it.
He urged Damascus to take \"bold steps\" to signal it is serious in its intention to resolve the crisis peacefully.
\"And this message of peace is not only for the government, but for everyone with a gun.
\"The six-point plan has to be implemented comprehensively. And this is not happening. I intend to have serious and frank discussions with president Bashar al-Assad,\" he said.
Human Rights Watch demanded that Annan push Assad\'s government to allow the UN-appointed Commission of Inquiry on Syria to investigate the massacre.
Annan\'s peace plan was supposed to begin with a ceasefire from April 12, but this has been broken daily.
A Syria watchdog group said another 64 people were killed throughout the country on Monday, a day after 87 died despite the putative truce.
The British-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights says more than 13,000 people have been killed in violence since the outbreak of the revolt of the Assad regime in March last year.
Saudi Arabia, which has advocated arming the rebels and called for al-Assad to quit, urged the international community \"to stop the bloodshed and the use of force against unarmed civilians,\" the official SPA news agency reported.
But Syria\'s UN envoy Bashar Jaafari said accusations of government responsibility were part of a \"tsunami of lies.\"
Russia defended its key Middle East ally at the Security Council, and on Monday said both sides bore responsibility.
\"Here we have a situation where both sides clearly had a hand in the fact that peaceful citizens were killed,\" said foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
The Free Syrian Army has warned that unless the international community takes concrete action it will no longer be bound by Annan\'s plan.
A growing concern for the international community is the more than 280 UN observers deployed in Syria as part of the peace plan.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the Houla massacre had added to pressure on the monitors - the first UN force to be thrown unarmed into a conflict with a non-existent ceasefire - and that there was no \"Plan B\" if Annan\'s peace plan failed.