Syria killings spike as UN eyes resolution

DAMASCUS: Syrian forces intensified their crackdown on Friday, with activists reporting 120 people killed in two days, as European and Arab nations pressed the UN Security Council to call on President Bashar al-Assad to stand down.

The head of an Arab League monitoring mission said unrest had soared this week "in a significant way", especially in the flashpoint central cities of Homs and Hama and in the northern Idlib region.

The violence, which on Friday for the first time also cost lives in Aleppo, Syria's second-largest city, "does not help ... to get all sides to sit at the negotiating table," General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi said.

For a second day, Syrian forces kept up their attacks on Homs, as Morocco presented a draft UN resolution, drawn up by Britain, France and Germany with Arab states, seeking to end months of UN deadlock.

The text demands an immediate end to a government crackdown that the UN says has killed more than 5,400 since March. (AFP)