Damascus: Syrian government forces pressed on with deadly assaults Friday, killing at least 54 civilians, monitors said, on the eve of a peace mission by international envoy Kofi Annan.
And in a new blow to the regime after this week's resignation of a deputy cabinet minister, a dozen army officers, including four generals, defected to a camp for army deserters in Turkey, reports said.
On the diplomatic front Russia, one of Syria's last remaining allies with China, criticised as "unbalanced" a new US-led initiative to push through a damning UN Security Council resolution.
Moscow's latest stance comes on the eve of talks in Cairo between foreign ministers of the Arab League and their Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, on the Syria crisis.
Regime troops stormed a village in Idlib reflecting growing fears that the northwestern province will meet the same fate as the battered rebel stronghold of Baba Amr in the city of Homs.
"Troops attacked the village of Ain Larose and opened fire killing 13 civilians," said Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights.
He told AFP in Beirut that women were among several people arrested.
The deaths came as tens of thousands of people demonstrated against the regime across the country.
Annan, who has warned against further militarisation of the crisis, is due to arrive in Damascus Saturday on the heels of a two-day visit by UN humanitarian chief Valerie Amos.
Faced with a groundswell of pressure to end the bloodshed, Syria said it was ready to allow the United Nations to conduct a humanitarian mission.
"We have agreed on a joint preliminary humanitarian assessment mission to areas where people urgently need assistance," Amos said in Ankara on Friday.
The mission would only be a "first step", she said, insisting on the need for a more robust long-term arrangement to enable humanitarian organisations to have access to civilians caught in the bloody conflict that has left more than 8,500 people dead, according to the Observatory.
Regime forces have been massing troops around Idlib for days to root out rebel fighters of the Free Syrian Army (FSA), activists say.
Armoured units have surrounded the hilly district of Jabal al-Zawiya, where rebel fighters have been active, and there were reports that civilians were fleeing en masse.
The Observatory said the army had launched an assault Friday on four villages in the province and was hunting down rebels in the area.
"The largest number of deserters are in Jabal Al Zawiya," the Abdul Rahman told AFP in Beirut.
Activists fear that Idlib could suffer the same fate as the Baba Amr, which was stormed by government troops on March 1 after a month of shelling.
UN humanitarian chief Amos briefly toured Baba Amr on Wednesday with a Syrian Red Crescent team.
"She says that the parts they saw were completely devastated," her spokeswoman Amanda Pitt told AFP. "She said Homs feels like a city that has been completely closed down."
Meanwhile tens of thousands protested across the country on Friday, namely in the northern province of Aleppo, where demonstrators called for the execution of President Bashar Al Assad, activists said.
The Observatory said demonstrations also took place in the southern province of Daraa, cradle of the uprising, in the coastal city of Latakia, in Homs, central Hama and Deir Ezzor in the east.
Annan, on a joint UN-Arab League mission, has urged "the Syrian opposition to come together to work with us to find a solution that will respect the aspirations of the Syrian people."
He also warned against further militarisation of the crisis in remarks echoed by EU foreign ministers on Friday, as well as by Washington.
"I believe further militarisation will make the situation worse," Annan said in Cairo this week. "I hope that no one is very seriously thinking of using force in this situation."
German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said any talk of military intervention was "counterproductive," as several of his counterparts said the international community must stick to sanctions to pressure Damascus while simultaneously seeking humanitarian relief for civilians.
Also Friday, the opposition and the Turkish news agency Anatolia reported that several top-ranking Syrian army officers, including a woman and at least four generals, had defected and fled to Turkey where they were to join rebels based there.
