Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is facing dissent within government ranks with more than 200 members of his Baath Party resigning after the violent repression of pro-democracy protests.
Two hundred party members from Deraa province and surrounding regions resigned yesterday after the government sent in tanks to crush resistance in the city of Deraa. At least 35 civilians were killed in the attack, rights groups said.
Signs of discontent emerged as a European push for the UN Security Council to condemn Syria's violent crackdown was blocked by Russia, China and Lebanon.
"There will be no statement," a Security Council diplomat said. Instead, western countries called a public debate on Syria, but the meeting highlighted differences in the 15-nation council, with Russia charging that it was outside interference in Arab countries that could be a threat to peace.
Hundreds of Syrian women and children today crossed into northern Lebanon, fleeing gunfire on the Syrian side of the border, witnesses said today.
Mahmood Khazaal, former mayor of the Lebanese border town of al-Buqaya, said 1,500 people had come on foot. Many crossed a river dividing the two countries because Syrian authorities had stopped them leaving through official border crossings.
"They are leaving their houses and their men. The women have come with their children," Mr Khazaal told Reuters. "We heard shooting . . . and that's when they started fleeing." It was not clear how many people were hurt in the clashes.
Mr Khazaal said Lebanese security forces were helping the Syrian families cross over. A Lebanese security source said the army had stepped up patrols in the area.
Mr Assad sent the fourth mechanised division, commanded by his brother Maher, into Deraa on Monday. Reports from opposition figures and Deraa residents, which could not be confirmed, said that several soldiers from another unit had refused to fire on civilians.
Protests erupted in Deraa after security police arrested two prominent women in the city, a doctor and an engineer, for expressing political views, and detained 15 children who wrote slogans on the walls demanding freedom, modelled on the cries of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions.
Once a recruiting ground for the Baath and secret police, Deraa has become the cradle of Syria's uprising.
Syria has been dominated by the Assad family since Bashar's father, the late President Hafez al-Assad, took power in a 1970 coup. The younger Assad kept intact the autocratic political system he inherited in 2000 while the family expanded its control over the country's struggling economy.
Earlier this week Britain, France, Germany and Portugal circulated to the other 11 UN council members a draft statement condemning the crackdown, in which hundreds have been reported killed, and urging restraint by the Damascus government. They were supported by the US.
At yesterday's debate on Syria, US ambassador Susan Rice and other western delegates denounced what they called repression of peaceful demonstrators.
They also backed a call by UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon for an independent inquiry into the violence in Syria and voiced scepticism about Syrian reforms, such as the lifting of decades-old emergency rule.
Agencies