The U.S. said Friday that Syrian officials would be "held accountable" if they failed to safeguard the country's chemical weapons after a report suggested some were being moved out of storage.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that intelligence reports suggested some chemical weapons were on the move, but the reasons for the transfers were unclear.

Syrian troops with tanks and helicopters slaughtered more than 150 people in a central village, rights activists said Friday, casting a dark shadow over efforts to stop the bloodshed.

The head of Tunisia's ruling Islamist party Ennahda called on Thursday for national consensus at the launch of its first congress at home in 24 years, held at a time of political and religious tensions.

"We want to convey a message from this congress, this congress of a union of the Tunisian people. We are a united people," Rached Ghannouchi told around 10,000 supporters.

The Russian naval base at the Syrian port of Tartus, its only such facility outside the ex-USSR, is a symbol of Moscow's lingering influence in the Middle East even if its military significance is small.

Russia's unwillingness to abandon the facility has long been seen by analysts as one reason why it has defied Western calls to turn against the regime of President Bashar Assad despite the escalating conflict in Syria.

The head of the Palestine Liberation Army (PLA) in Syria condemned on Thursday the kidnapping and killing of 17 of his troops by "armed terrorist groups," state news agency SANA reported.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights reported on Wednesday that the bodies of 13 PLA soldiers had been found after they were kidnapped days earlier while en route to Aleppo in northern Syria.

Russia rejects as unacceptable the text of a Western-backed U.N. Security Council resolution on Syria and will use its veto if the draft is brought to a vote later Thursday, a deputy foreign minister said.

"If they decide this (a vote on Thursday) -- knowing that for us the text is unacceptable -- then we will not allow it to pass," Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told the Interfax news agency.

A top Syrian military official who defected last week, General Manaf Tlass, has been in contact with the country's opposition, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Thursday,

"I know that there is some closeness between the opposition and this general... contacts have been made," Fabius told journalists, without confirming that Tlass was in Paris as believed.

Khaled Meshaal, political chief of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas which rules the Gaza Strip, on Thursday called for turning the page on negotiations with Israel.

"We must build an Arab-Muslim strategy to liberate Palestine and turn the page on negotiations" with Israel, he said in a speech at the launch of a congress held by Tunisia's ruling Islamist party Ennahda in the Tunis suburb of Al Karm.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan leaves for Russia next Wednesday to discuss the developments in Syria with Russian President Vladimir Putin, his office announced Thursday.

"Significant regional and international developments led by Syria are on the table to be discussed thoroughly," during Erdogan's visit, the written statement said.

Syrian regime forces on Thursday violently shelled the village of Treimsa in the central province of Hama, monitors and activists said, while eight people were killed across the strife-torn country.

"Regime forces pounded the village of Treimsa in Hama, using tanks and helicopters," said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, noting that at least one person was killed there and several were injured, some critically.