• US senator John McCain calls for air strikes against Assad
• Syrian medics involved in torture according to new video
• Valerie Amos and Kofi Annan due to visit Syria
The Guardian's data team has updated a graph on the deaths in Syria, based on the latest updates from activists.
The figures used were drawn from syrianshuhada.com which is also used by the UN's crisis mapping team Unosat.
The Guardian's data blog has more details.
If you think Guardian readers are a peace loving bunch, think again. In an online poll more than 83% [13,200 votes] have so far backed John McCain's call to launch air strikes against Syria.
The International Crisis Group's latest report on Syria presents a persuasive counter argument to such hawkish proposals.
Frustrated and lacking a viable political option, Western officials and analysts have toyed with a series of often half-baked ideas, from initiating direct military attacks to establishing safe havens, humanitarian corridors or so called no-kill zones. All these would require some form of outside military intervention by regime foes that would more than likely intensify involvement by its allies. Even if they were to provoke the regime's collapse, that in itself would do nothing to resolve the manifold problems bequeathed by the conflict: security services and their civilian proxies increasingly gone rogue; deepening communal tensions; and a highly fragmented opposition.
Diplomats at the UN are still discussing the detail of a new draft resolution on Syria, according to the specialist UN blog Inner City Press..
Matthew Russell Lee says the latest gossip from New York is that the US is trying to add "political dimensions" to its original draft which China and Russia are objecting to.
Writing in characteristically chatty insider style he says:
One permanent five member's permanent representative told Inner City Press there would be "consultations Tuesday on the American draft" resolution.Another P5 Perm Rep disputed that, and at day's end when Inner City Press asked the UK's Mark Lyall Grant, president of the council for March, if there would be "P5 plus One" consultation, he answered this question with a question: who's the one?
Morocco, of course, representing the Arab League. Lyall Grant smiled and said, "Consultations continue."
The scuttlebutt such as is it is that at first the US Mission to the UN had a draft that was all ceasefire and humanitarian access, and previous vetoers said they might agree to it, as they agreed last week to a Council Press Statement calling for UN humanitarian envoy Valerie Amos to be admitted, and for "all parties" to cooperate. [Click here for that story.]
Then, the story goes, the US added a "political dimension" -- surely not as far as Sen. McCain would like, but further than the vetoers are ready to go at present.
The Red Cross is still barred from the Baba Amr area of Homs but a state TV crew has been allowed in as part of the Syrian government's attempts to blame the violence there on terrorists.
Reuters reports:
Syrian state television aired footage of residents returning to the battered Homs district of Baba Amr on Tuesday while the Red Cross said it was still unable to deliver aid to the neighbourhood.
Footage showed dozens of men, women and children walking through grubby streets, passing pock-marked and semi-destroyed buildings ...
State television showed pictures of rocket-propelled grenades and guns laid out on the street - weapons the presenter said belonged to "armed terrorists". Small remote-controlled planes and helicopters were also shown.
"This is the tunnel used by the terrorists to get weapons in and out," the presenter said, standing in a school building next to a 2-metre (10-foot) hole in the ground.
The state news agency Sana said families had begun returning to homes they fled "because of the crimes of the armed terrorist groups after authorities restored stability and security to the neighbourhood".
More than 9,000 people have been killed in Syria since the uprising began, according to a tally by the United Nations agency Unosat.
The count is based on information gathered up to Sunday 4 March, but Unosat warns that the statistics have not been verified on the ground.
Unosat's map [pdf] of the crisis shows the spatial distribution of the ethnic/religious communities in Syria along side the locations of protests and the reports of casualties.
(all times GMT) Welcome to Middle East Live. Horrific accounts of the violence in Syria continue to emerge by those fleeing Homs and other besieged neighbourhoods.
Here's a roundup of the main developments:
Syria
Hassana Abu Firas, who fled weekend shelling in al-Qusair, south-west of Homs said: "What are we supposed to do? People are sitting in their homes and they are hitting us with tanks. Those who can flee, do. Those who can't will die sitting down."
Warning the following video contains disturbing images:
An employee of the hospital said: "I have seen detainees being tortured by electrocution, whipping, beating with batons, and by breaking their legs. They twist the feet until the leg breaks."
• Former Republican presidential candidate John McCain has become the fist US Senator to call for air strikes against the Assad regime. In a Senate speech he said: "Time is running out. Assad's forces are on the march. Providing military assistance to the Free Syrian Army and other opposition groups is necessary, but at this late hour, that alone will not be sufficient to stop the slaughter and save innocent lives. The only realistic way to do so is with foreign air power."
• Kofi Annan, the UN-Arab League envoy to Syria, is due to visit Damascus on Saturday after a visit by UN relief chief Valerie Amos. Annan's office said: "The purpose of his first visit is to seek an urgent end to all violence and human rights violations, and to initiate the effort to promote a peaceful solution to the Syrian crisis."
Ahmed Ibrahim told me that 36 men and boys were taken away. Among them were four members of his own family including his 12-year-old son, Hozaifa. All were dead now, he said.
He said he had seen everything, lying flat behind some trees.
He told me: "There is a major checkpoint near our house. Reinforcements arrived there. They brought Shabiha (the "ghosts" or paramilitaries). They began arresting all the men in the area so I crouched down in the orchards just beside my house.
"They started beating them up. Then they moved them into a street next to a school. They killed them all. I saw it. I was 50 to 100 metres away. Their hands were tied behind their backs. A soldier held each one still on the ground with his boot; another soldier came to cut their throats. I could hear their screams."
• Although the Syrian government has retaken Homs, it is losing the second city of Aleppo and the broader North, according to Syrian watcher Joshua Landis. He also reports that opposition militias are being formed with growing frequency.
A contact from Aleppo told him:
The fact that neighbourhoods, such as Azaz, Hreitan and Anadan have fallen out of government control is significant because cars can no longer travel, even in daylight, to Turkey from Aleppo. The entire boarder area is becoming unsafe. This is much worse than Baba Amr or Khaldiye falling out of government control from the point of view of security because Turkey is the base for the Free Syrian Army, arms exports into Syria, and most opposition groups ...Even the middle and upper classes that live in the city centrs are beginning to panic and look for a way out of the country. Plane flights to Lebanon from Aleppo are booked for the next month. The exodus has begun.
This is the first real breakdown of Aleppo control.
Iran
• Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, warned that "none of us can afford to wait much longer" to act against Iran's nuclear programme. In an address to the powerful pro-Israel lobby in Washington, Netanyahu derided the effectiveness of sanctions hours after a meeting with Barack Obama at which the US president appealed for time for diplomacy to pressure Iran to open up its nuclear programme to inspection.