• More than 200 Syrians, mostly civilians, were massacred in Tremseh, near Hama, when it was bombarded by helicopter gunships and tanks and then stormed by militiamen who carried out execution-style killings, opposition activists said.
• The UN's monitoring mission in Syria confirmed the use of heavy weapons in Tremseh including tanks and helicopters, before the alleged massacre took place. General Robert Mood, the head of the mission, said military operations were continuing and his monitors had been prevented from entering Tremseh.
• International envoy Kofi Annan said the Syrian government's use of heavy weapons in Tremseh was a violation of its apparent commitment to his peace plan. He said he was "shocked and appalled" by reports from Tremseh. Annan is due to hold talks with Russia on Monday.
• The Syrian government blamed the killings on "terrorists". The state news agency accused elements of the media of spreading "lies and fabrications" as a way of prompting foreign intervention against Syria.
• The opposition Syrian National Council has repeated its call for the UN security council to pass a binding resolution against the Assad government in the wake of the killings. Britain's foreign secretary William Hague said diplomats in New York will continue to press for a Chapter VII resolution in the face of repeated objections from Russia.
• Firas Tlass, the businessman brother of defected general Manaf Tlass, still sees a role for Bashar al-Assad in Syria. In an interview with Asharq al-Awsat he said the most suitable solution for Syria would be for Assad to hand power to a joint council ... "which is what we might call a mixture of the Egyptian and Yemeni solutions".
• A Russian cargo ship carrying military helicopters and air-defence equipment for the Syria government, is on the move again after being forced to turn back last month when a British company revoked its insurance, the New York Times reports. The Alaed is heading south off Norway's northern coast.
5.05pm: Mousab al-Hamadee an opposition activist who lives 20km north of Tremseh has an account of the alleged massacre in the village based on the ordeal of his sister who fled Tremseh morning.
People from a neighbouring opposition village travelled to Tremseh to warn villages of a possible attack by shabiha militia from al-Safsafeyeh, a nearby Alawite village, he via Skype. They urged women and children to flee Tremseh, he said.
Today more than 70 people were buried, he claimed "The rest of the martyrs are still left in the fields, they couldn't reach them until now," he said.
Hamadee said:
A big number of the young men were killed in the field when they were trying to escape the army attack. Helicopters targeted them by heavy machine guns while they were driving their motorcycles - while they were fleeing the village.
Today the people of Tremseh opened a house that was burned by troops. They found two people who were burned alive. My sister told me that the only two doctors in the village were targeted by mortar shells. Both doctors were killed in their houses.
Hamadee claimed gunmen executed wounded people found in house. They then shot the man who was looking after the wounded in front of his family, he claimed. "After that they burnt his corpse in front of his wife," he said.
Hamadee claimed 150 armoured vehicles were used in the attack.
Shelling started at dawn and continued until the afternoon, but shelling "with clever mortars" of specific houses continued afterwards.
He said: "Between 3pm and 8pm troops and shabiha searched the houses of civilians, made arbitrary arrests, made field executions of some people inside the village."
The troops arrested Hamadee's brother-in-law, who is a lawyer. "They said 'you have a computer in your house, you must be an activist'.
Hamadee's sister said the shelling of the area was "very heavy".
Hamadee said:
She said many houses were levelled to the ground. She said one shell killed a father in a neighbouring house."
She said one soldier tried to assure her, he said 'we are not shabiha, we are soldiers from the Syrian army. But later came a new group which contained many members of the shabiha [including the group who arrested her husband].
Today helicopters passed over Tremseh, but they didn't shell it, Hamadee said.
He claimed Tremseh did not have a strong presence of rebel troops, but it did include troops who had defected.
Rural areas around Hama are largely liberated, he said, but the government forces control the checkpoints.
These checkpoints are very fortified. The regime can at any time bring reinforcements to these checkpoints and can move its vehicles in order to attack any village.
The Free Syrian Amry can't defend the villages because it only has light weapons. "That's why we see such horrible massacres," he said.
Asked about his sister, Hamadee said:
In the beginning she was very scared. We saw fear in her eyes. And we saw horror and fear in the eyes of her child. Right now she is OK.
5.00pm: The Syrian government news agency has a little more detail about the car bomb in Damascus earlier today (see 1.59pm). It says the vehicle, a Mercedes, was parked at the roadside and the bomb was detonated remotely.
3.44pm: France will soon start supplying communications equipment to the Syrian opposition, Reuters reports citing a foreign ministry spokesman.
Paris has previously said it would consider the measure so that activists could organise better, avoid attacks and keep a record of events for the outside world.
"Regarding communications material we are going to start rolling it out," Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero told reporters. "We are working on that."
Western powers are reluctant to provide arms to rebels whose ranks include anti-western Islamists, but the United States has said it is already providing communications equipment.
3.39pm: Four news flashes from Reuters in quick succession relating to Tremseh:
• Tremseh attack "assessed as an extension of a Syrian Arab Air Force operation – UN mission report
• UN observers prevented from entering Tremseh, attempts to contact local military commander unsuccessful
• Syrian Arab Air Forces "continue to target populated urban areas north of Hama city [on] a large scale"
• UN Syria mission observed "ongoing military operation" around Tremseh, over 100 explosions heard – mission
3.08pm: Sami al-Hamwi (@HamaEcho) tweets that he has posted a list naming 103 people killed in Tremseh. He has also posted several other tweets about the casualties:
2.38pm: A leading member of the Syrian opposition claims the timing of the Tremseh massacre was aimed at boosting morale of Assad's armed supporters and scuppering attempts to find a political solution.
Khalid Saleh, executive member of the Syrian National Council, insisted the reported atrocities were well documented.
Asked why alleged massacres often coincide with UN security council meetings, he said:
From the Assad regime's perspective it is very clear that any political or international solution at this point will mean the end of the Assad regime. I think the Assad regime, in committing all these massacres, is really talking to [its] shabiha, to his forces on the ground. I think these massacres unfortunately increase the morale of the Assad gangs. It is the same thing when they shot down the Turkish airplane.
Assad doesn't really care about the international community. What he is focused on is winning the battle on the ground, so he is doing all he can to raise the morale of his troops. Unfortunately it is a sad reality that committing massacres like these will increase the morale of the gangs ...
The Syrian regime has made it very clear that they are killing any chance for a peaceful transition.
The Tremseh massacre is well documented and not being exaggerated by activists, Saleh insisted. He pointed out that the initial deathtoll came down from 250 to 200 because of a desire to record the casualties accurately.
We would love for the international media to come and see the horrible massacres that are taking place. At this point in time the Syrian revolution is the most well document revolution - about 1.5 million videos - that have tracked every victim, his name, his family, where he lived. So it is difficult to say these are exaggerated.
Saleh was part of a SNC delegation that met Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, and his team in Moscow this Wednesday.
He said Russia's support for Assad was inconsistent and showing signs of wavering.
The Russians are still talking about a dialogue with the Assad regime, this is not something that the forces on the ground, or Syrian National Council, are willing to accept.
Although the Russians say they are not holding firmly to Assad, in one sentence, in the next sentence, they are asking us still to have a dialogue with him. They are giving us two different positions within 60 seconds.
Asked if the SNC left Moscow empty handed, he said:
We made some progress ... it was semi-promising that the Russians are saying they are not holding firm to Assad and they are not insisting on him remaining in power.
Some parts of the Russian delegation were more understanding than other parts. They understand that there is a very heavy price for their delay. They understand that their delaying tactics are really supporting the Assad [regime] and the killing of civilians.
The Tremseh massacre will put more pressure on Russia and China at the security council, but it is unlikely to shift their positions, Saleh said.
If the security council "fails to meet its legal and moral obligations" there will be more bloodshed in Syria, he said. But the revolution will go on with or without outside help, he claimed. He added: "At this point we don't believe that the Annan mission has any chance of succeeding."
1.59pm: There are reports that a car bomb has exploded in the Mezze district of Damascus, near the Iranian embassy.
No deaths have been reported, though Maya Naser of the Syria Politics blog tweets that three people were injured, one of them seriously.
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