International community struggles to confront Syrian bloodbath

The UN and major world powers are struggling with how to stop the Syrian bloodbath minus direct intervention.

Syrian security forces have plowed ahead on a deadly crackdown of the protest movement as the UN Security Council held more talks Tuesday.

UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon vented his anger at the regime as the Security Council held a second day of talks on Syria. "I believe that he lost all sense of humanity," Mr Ban told reporters, the AFP reported..

Mr Assad's tanks continued to shell the embattled city of Hama following a bloody Sunday in which about 140 people were killed, the AFP reported.

Syrian tanks shelled the city of Hama after nightly Ramadan prayers on Tuesday, residents said, on the third day of an armoured assault to crush some of the largest street protests against President Bashar al-Assad in a five-month uprising, Reuters reported.

Britain, France, Germany and Portugal hoped to revive a formal resolution condemning Mr Assad's crackdown but Russia and China – two of the five permanent Security Council members with veto power – threatened to block attempts to pass a resolution on Syria.

The international community does not include any plans for a Libya-style military intervention to halt the bloodshed in Syria, France said on Tuesday, the AFP reported.

"The situations in Libya and Syria are not similar" and "no option of a military nature is planned," French foreign ministry spokeswoman Christine Fages said in Paris.

U.S. senators on Tuesday called on the Obama administration to impose tough sanctions on Syria as Washington sought to put some force behind its demand that President Bashar al-Assad halt his deadly crackdown on unarmed protesters, Reuters Africa reported. Secretary Clinton met with a Syrian opposition group for the first time in Washington.

"The United States should impose crippling sanctions in response to the murder of civilians by troops under the orders of President Assad," Senator Mark Kirk, a Republican, said in introducing legislation to target firms that invest in Syria's energy sector.

The Russian envoy appeared to have softened their opposition to a Syrian resolution, the New York Times reported. Besides Russia, other nations that had opposed action against Syria, including Brazil, India and South Africa, decided that the council now had to act.

There was broad consensus on Tuesday that the council should both condemn the violence against civilians and demand that it stop, and should call for concrete steps toward an inclusive political process, diplomats said. But an official UN resolution still seemed difficult.