The United States closed its embassy in Syria today, in response to continuing attacks by security forces in Homs that have escalated the death toll in the uprising. Nothing that the international community has done thus far has led to any pullback in efforts by Bashar al-Assad to use his security forces to crush the uprising.

Russia had one simple demand on the UN draft resolution on Syria: the resolution must not allow for military intervention. In fact, it must ban intervention specifically in the text.

Well, the UN negotiators haven’t gone that far, to my knowledge. But they did drop the demand that Bashar al-Assad step down and hand over control of the country to his deputy.

Observers from the Arab League have reached Homs, Syria, at the same time as Syrian security forces pulled tanks off the streets. Even then, security forces squeezed off their final shots at the protesters and tanks are still reported waiting just outside the cities.

If it’s possible, things are getting even more intense in Syria. The incursion into Hama, site of a large massacre of citizens at the hands of the regime in 1982, carries symbolic significance, as well as continuing the brutal repression which has killed or disappeared thousands since the start of the uprising.

For seven weeks, Fridays have been a time of protest and government repression in Syria, and despite estimates of 600 deaths during the uprising, that didn’t change today. Thousands took to the streets again in large numbers, suggesting that Bashar al-Assad’s efforts to put down the uprising are not having the intended effect.

The violence continues unabated in Syria. Dead bodies lie in the streets of Deraa, site of the initial protests. Snipers are stationed on the roof, where they’ve continued shooting, and mortar shells are falling around the city. Deraa feels like Misurata, Libya. Tanks have rolled into other cities, and in one border town near Lebanon, thousands of refugees crossed over after shooting there.

Despite all this, the UN Security Council could not agree on a resolution to even condemn violence in Syria that has taken as many as 500 lives.

There’s a determined protest movement that will only grow more defiant in the wake of this brutality, and a determined regime which will only use more and more force to put down the protests, following the examples of Bahrain and Iran. This was the deadliest day yet in Syria, and overall the death toll in the uprising is approaching 300.

I mentioned yesterday afternoon that Syrian protesters, after completing a funeral procession in the city of Homs – the third-largest in Syria – decided to sit down in the main square and not leave until change came to the country. They lasted barely 8 hours before security forces struck in the middle of the night while the protesters slept.

The Baathist Party of the Assad family has ruled this Mediterranean nation since 1963 with Hafez Assad ruling from 1970 until his son Bashar took over after his death in 2000. Al Jazeera is reporting that today that the Cabinet is likely to resign and there will be some kinds of reform implemented.

Faced with large protests across the country, Syrian security forces opened fire on protesters today in several cities.