BEIRUT — Syria’s opposition on Friday reported the deadliest 24-hour period so far in the uprising against President Bashar Assad and said rebel fighters had seized two Syrian generals, one of them the highest-ranking officer to fall into insurgent hands.
Accounts of the intensified mayhem came as Kofi Annan, the special envoy for the United Nations and the Arab League, prepared to convene a high-level meeting in Geneva that includes the five permanent members of the Security Council to rescue his sidelined Syrian peace plan from total irrelevance.
Annan told Reuters television that he was optimistic that the meeting, to be held Saturday, would be a success. But Russia, the Syrian government’s most important backer, suggested that Annan’s hope for creating a political transition in Syria had serious problems, raising questions about what the Geneva meeting could accomplish.
In a statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry called for new cease-fire mechanisms and the synchronized withdrawal of all armed combatants from Syria’s populated battle zones. Only then, the statement said, could talks begin “which would allow the Syrians to independently define the agenda and timeframes of the transition period.”
Russia has opposed any proposal that would impose a political solution on the Syrians from the outside.
Tallies by Syrian opposition groups that track casualties reported Friday that the previous day’s death toll had reached 190 from violence scattered in towns and cities throughout the country. The tallies were detailed but could not be confirmed independently.
The largest number was concentrated in the Damascus suburb of Douma, an insurgent enclave about eight miles northwest of the city, according to reports from both the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a group based in Britain, and the Local Coordination Committees, a Syrian-based group.
A spokesman for the Syrian Observatory said the death toll Thursday was the worst of any single day this year, with 125 confirmed civilian fatalities as well as the deaths of 65 fighters reported but under investigation. The observatory considers a death confirmed when videotape or other documentary evidence identifying the victim is received.
Syria’s Al Dunya TV confirmed the concentration of deadly violence on Douma.
“The eradication operations in Douma are based on a ‘surgical approach’ and will continue to exterminate all terrorists,” the station said.
The two Syrian generals who were reported seized appeared in a rebel video with three masked fighters who ordered them to identify themselves. They said they were arrested by rebels June 22 and last Saturday in Damascus.
Related news
Clinton, Russian diplomat discuss Syria • ST. PETERSBURG, russia — The top U.S. and Russian diplomats failed Friday to bridge their differences over Syria on the eve of a multinational conference that had been designed to sign off on a plan to ease Syrian President Bashar Assad out of power.
“We may get there tomorrow, we may not,” said a senior State Department official as U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton left Russia for Geneva, where the conference will be held Saturday.
Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov met for one hour in St. Petersburg, then shared dinner before Clinton left Russia. Areas of difficulty and difference remain, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.
Lavrov issued a hopeful statement. “I have felt a change in my colleague Hillary Clinton’s position in a way that I heard no ultimatums, nothing was said about that paper (the Kofi Annan plan) being absolutely unchangeable,” he was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying.
Lavrov predicted the meeting had a “good chance” of finding a way forward. The Associated Press
