Syria Opposition Urges U.N. for a Binding Resolution after Massacre

Syria's main opposition alliance Friday urged the U.N. Security Council to pass a binding resolution against Damascus following reports by activists that regime forces massacred at least 150 villagers.

"To stop this bloody madness which threatens the entity of Syria, as well as peace and the security in the region and in the world, requires an urgent and sharp resolution of the Security Council under Chapter VII (of the U.N. Charter) which protects the Syrian people," the Syrian National Council said.

Chapter VII allows for punitive measures against regimes considered a threat to the peace, including economic sanctions and military intervention.

Rights activists and monitors said Syrian troops with tanks and helicopters on Thursday slaughtered more than 150 people in Treimsa village, in the central province of Hama.

"We expect members of the Security Council to assume total responsibility to protect defenseless Syrians against these shameful crimes," said the SNC, which added that the latest killings ranked "among the more infamous genocides of the Syrian regime."

Separately, Syria's Muslim Brotherhood, a member of the SNC, said peace envoy Kofi Annan and Syrian allies Iran and Russia must through their inaction shoulder the blame for the killings.

"We don't consider the monster Bashar as being solely responsible for this heinous crime... but (also) Kofi Annan, the Russians and the Iranians and all countries which pretend to be guardians of peace and stability in the world but who remain silent," the Brotherhood said in a statement.

The slaughter, the Brotherhood added, ranked among the "great massacres of the century" including those at Sabra and Shatila in Lebanon in 1982 and Srebrenica in 1982.

Most of the people killed in the Treimsa massacre in central Syria were rebel fighters, an activist said, adding the bloodbath followed a Free Syrian Army attack on an army convoy.

"At this stage, though we do not yet have the final count, the number of civilians killed by shelling is not more than seven," Jaafar, an activist at the anti-regime Sham News Network, told AFP. "The rest were members of the (rebel) Free Syrian Army."

"An army convoy was on its way to the region of Hama when it was attacked by the FSA," he said. "The army staged a counter-attack with the support of (pro-regime) reinforcements from (nearby) Alawite villages. The FSA resisted for an hour before it was defeated."

Separately, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported that "dozens of rebel fighters" were among those killed.

"Several dozen rebel fighters were among those killed," said the Observatory, adding that only around 40 of the more than 150 dead had been identified.

Thirty corpses were burned and 18 were "summarily executed," said the Britain-based group

U.N.-Arab League envoy Annan has been sharply criticized by Syria's opposition in exile and activists on the ground, who accuse him of treating the victim and aggressor in the country's brutal conflict on the same terms.

They also accuse him of seeking to placate Iran.

More than four months on from his appointment, Annan has proved powerless to end the violence that monitors say has cost 17,000 lives, mostly civilians, since the anti-Assad uprising broke out in March 2011, at first with peaceful protests.

The former U.N. chief brokered a six-point peace plan in March calling for an inclusive political process, a ceasefire, humanitarian assistance, release of arbitrarily detained persons, freedom of movement for journalists, and to allow peaceful demonstrations.