Protesters attacked eight Syrian embassies around the world following reports of the bloodiest episode yet in Damascus' nearly yearlong crackdown on dissent. Mobs trashed diplomats' offices from London to Australia and set the embassy in Cairo on fire.

Activists say Syrian forces killed more than 200 people in the city of Homs before dawn Saturday, pounding restive neighborhoods with mortars and artillery. The government denies the reports.

Tunisian Prime Minister Hamadi Jebali called Sunday on all countries to cut off diplomatic relations with Syria over the violence there.

"We have to expel Syrian ambassadors from Arab and other countries," Jebali said during a panel discussion on the Middle East at a security conference in the southern German city of Munich.

The opposition Syrian National Council on Sunday slammed the Russian and Chinese veto of a U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria as giving the regime of President Bashar Assad a "license to kill."

The SNC said in a statement "Syrians and others around the world" had looked to the Security Council to issue a strongly worded resolution, "one that would clearly condemn the Syrian regime's crimes; the atrocity and impunity with which it kills civilians, including women and children; and the genocide it commits in exterminating entire families.

Saboteurs on Sunday blew up a pipeline that supplies gas to Israel, the 12th such attack in a year, security officials said.

Masked gunmen planted explosives under the pipeline in the Al-Massaeed area, close to the town of El-Arish in the north of the Sinai Peninsula, they said.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy Saturday condemned China and Russia's veto of a U.N. Security Council resolution on the Syria crisis, saying it encouraged the Syrian regime crackdown.

"The Syrian tragedy must stop," said Sarkozy in a statement issued through his office.

Russia and China's veto Saturday of a U.N. resolution on the bloodshed in Syria is a "shockingly callous betrayal" of the Syrian people, Amnesty International said.

Moscow and Beijing have acted in a "completely irresponsible" way, the London-based human rights group added.

A member of the opposition Syrian National Council said the group took control of Syria's embassy in the Libyan capital on Saturday without meeting any resistance.

"The Syrian National Council has taken physical control of the embassy today," said council member Anas al-Khalid.

Information Minister Adnan Mahmoud on Saturday accused Syrian rebels of shelling the protest hub of Homs to swing a U.N. Security Council vote in their favor.

"The reports on some satellite channels that the Syrian army shelled neighborhoods in Homs are fabricated and unfounded," Mahmoud said in a statement to Agence France Presse.

The government is trying to negotiate the withdrawal of al-Qaida linked militants from Zinjibar, capital of Abyan province in southern Yemen, tribal and government officials said on Saturday.

The negotiations, taking place through tribal mediators, are "ongoing," a government official told Agence France Presse on condition of anonymity, without giving further details.

Russia and China on Saturday vetoed a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the Syrian government's murderous crackdown on protests for the second time.

Western governments reacted with fury to the new block on U.N. action over President Bashar Assad's 10 month-old assault on demonstrators which followed weeks of acrimonious negotiations over the text.