Arab League to take Syria to UN

Activists said almost 50 people were killed in unrest on Thursday, including 10 children. UN human rights chief Navi Pillay said the United Nations could not keep track of the death toll in Syrias crackdown on dissent that has already cost more than 5,400 lives.At the Cairo-based Arab League, the organisations chief Nabil al-Arabi said he and Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim Al-Thani were to head to New York on Saturday to seek support for an Arab plan on Syria.They are to hold a meeting with the UN Security Council on Monday to seek ratification of the Arab League decision on Syria, for embattled President Bashar al-Assad to hand power to his deputy, Arabi said.Arab League ministers on Sunday urged Assad to delegate powers to his vice president and clear the way for a national unity government within two months, a plan which Damascus has ruled out as interference in its internal affairs. On Thursday, there was no let-up in violence on the ground.The toll for the day has risen to 34 civilians killed by the security forces in several regions of Syria, mostly in Homs, said the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.Separately, seven deserters and eight regular soldiers died in clashes, according to the rights group, among them a colonel killed in Homs, a protest hub in central Syria.The Observatory said the army launched an offensive on Thursday evening in the Karm al-Zeitoun district of Homs, killing 26 civilians, including nine children, and wounding dozens. And in the rebel city of Hama, also in central Syria, where the army launched a major assault on Tuesday, four civilians were killed, including a 58-year-old woman shot dead by snipers, it said.Elsewhere, one civilian reportedly died in the restive northwestern province of Idlib, and two others were killed in the suburbs of Damascus.In the southern province of Daraa, cradle of the uprising, a teenager was killed when security forces fired indiscriminately on a student demonstration in the town of Nawa, the Observatory said.Just north of Damascus, security forces attacked the town of Douma, another hotbed of anti-regime protests that activists say was in the hands of rebel troops last week before a withdrawal.