Fighting in Syria reportedly killed at least 32 people today as Saudi Arabia said the violence was shredding the credibility of the UN-Arab League peace plan for the country.
The plan calls for a truce and dialogue between Syrian president Bashar al-Assad and the opposition.
Away from the battlegrounds, efforts to find a viable political alternative to Dr Assad's rule faltered when an exiled umbrella opposition group said it would boycott Arab-brokered talks to unite its splintered ranks.
The latest bloodshed centred in Rastan, where opposition sources said rebels killed 23 members of Dr Assad's security forces in fighting while heavy government shelling of the town killed nine people - further unravelling a ceasefire deal overseen by international monitors that was brokered last month.
Rastan, 180km north of Damascus, has slipped in and out of government control during a 14-month-old uprising in which peaceful protest has given way to a sectarian-tinged insurgency that answers Dr Assad's violent bid to crush unrest.
"Shells and rockets have been hitting the town since three a.m. at a rate of one a minute. Rastan has been destroyed," a member of the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) said.
He said among those killed was Ahmad Ayoub, an FSA commander whose fighters were battling the army forces which he said were made up of elite units and members of Military Intelligence.
The British-based Observatory said fighting began at dawn today and that rebels destroyed three armoured personnel carriers and seized two others, capturing around 15 soldiers.
Syria's state news agency said "terrorists" assassinated a military officer in Damascus and an intelligence officer in Deraa, where the uprising against Dr Assad first took shape.
Saudi foreign minister Saud al-Faisal, who has previously called for arming the rebels, said today that special UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan's peace plan was losing meaning as bloodshed was raging on.
"Confidence in the efforts of the envoy of the United Nations and the Arab League has started to decrease quickly," he told a news conference in the Saudi capital Riyadh.
The Syrian official news agency Sana said Abdelaziz al-Hafl, a tribal elder in the oil-producing province of Deir al-Zor, was assassinated today along with his son. Opposition sources said he was the 17th pro-Assad figure slain in the eastern province in recent months.
Syria's uprising began as a peaceful protest movement but has become increasingly militarised as rebels fight back against Dr Assad's violent crackdown. Syria restricts media access, making it difficult to verify accounts of the unrest.
Syria's Sunni majority is at the forefront of the uprising against Dr Assad, whose minority Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shia Islam. The government says it is fighting a terrorist attempt to divide Syria.
Rastan has in the past been a major source of Sunni Muslim conscripts who provide most of manpower in the military, which is dominated by Alawite officers.
Sunni officers from Rastan began defecting after security forces shot dead dozens of demonstrators in the town and arrested many of its notables.
The area was scene of the first serious armed confrontations between army defectors and loyalist forces last year. Dr Assad's forces regained control of the city several times but it has kept falling back into rebel hands.
Reuters