Russia rejected on Monday Western calls for wider sanctions on Syria over its violent crackdown on protests against President Bashar al-Assad, in which the United Nations said 2,600 people have been killed. A day after France described the lack of a firm UN stance against Damascus as a scandal, President Dmitry Medvedev said recent US and European sanctions on Syria meant "additional pressure now is absolutely not needed in this direction."
--- UN says 2,600 have died, Syria says death toll lower
Russia and China, veto-wielding members of the United Nations Security Council, have resisted efforts by Washington and its European allies to step up the international response to Syria's repression of nearly six months of protests. Assad has reacted to the uprising, inspired by revolts, which have toppled three North African leaders this year, with military assaults on protest centres and mass arrests.
Syrian opposition group Sawasiah said on Sunday 113 civilians had been killed in the last week, during which activists and diplomats say Syrian forces stepped up raids to detain protest co-ordinators. The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said three people were killed on Monday. It said a father and son died during an operation by security forces in the town of Rastan, north of Hama, and a 12-year-old boy died when forces fired at a funeral in the Damascus suburb of Duma.
Residents and activists reported that several thousand soldiers and hundreds of armoured vehicles had massed in the last 24 hours in areas north of the city of Hama which had seen large protests calling for Assad's removal. Damascus blames armed groups for the violence. Assad's media adviser Bouthaina Shaaban, speaking on a trip to Moscow on Monday, gave a lower death toll than the United Nations and said half of the fatalities were among security forces. "According to our information, 700 people were killed on the side of the army and police and 700 on the side of the insurgents," Shaaban told reporters through a translator.
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