SYRIEN - En sammanställning av konflikten

Britain and US plan a Syrian revolution from an innocuous office block in Istanbul
An underground network of Syrian opposition activists is receiving training and supplies of vital equipment from a combined American and British effort to forge an effective alternative to the Damascus regime.

France’s president urged the Syrian opposition movement on Monday to create a provisional government and vowed to extend official recognition once it was formed.

The statement by the French president, François Hollande, represented the furthest any Western leader had gone in pressuring the embattled government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. While the United States, Britain and other Western countries have called on Mr. Assad to resign and have supported the opposition with nonlethal aid, they have not explicitly stated they would recognize a provisional government formed by Mr. Assad’s array of political enemies.

Syrian opposition activists accused President Bashar Al Assad’s army of massacring hundreds of people in a town close to the capital that government forces recaptured from rebels.

About 320 bodies, including women and children, were found in houses and basements in the town of Daraya, southwest of Damascus, according to activists who said on Sunday most had been killed ‘execution-style’ by troops.

Activists uploaded several videos to the Internet showing rows of bloodied bodies wrapped in sheets. Most of the dead appeared to be young men of fighting age, but at least one video showed several children who appeared to have been shot in the head. The body of one toddler was soaked in blood.

Due to restrictions on non-state media in Syria, it was impossible to verify the accounts independently.

Clashes are raging across Syria as the 17-month-old rebellion grows increasingly bloody, particularly in the northern city of Aleppo, where the army and rebels appear stuck in a war of attrition.

Fighting in Aleppo on Sunday was the heaviest in the past week, according to Reuters journalists on the ground.

Fighter jets dropped bombs and fired missiles on rebel-held districts in the south of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city, as residents fled in panic. Reuters journalists there heard heavy explosions as clouds of black smoke rose a mile into the air.