Bashar al-Assad

Channel 4 News challenges the Syrian ambassador before the UN Human Rights Council's special session probing the Houla massacre after 13 more bodies are discovered.

Britain and several other countries are expelling Syrian diplomats following the killing of 108 people, half of them children, in Houla.

Forty people are killed in Syria as international mediator Kofi Annan arrives in Damascus following the deaths of more than 100, many of them children, in Houla.

More than 100 people including 13 children, die after Syrian forces attack the town of Houla in Homs province on Friday, according to Syrian anti-government activists.

Two explosions in Damascus kill more than 55 people and injure hundreds more. The blasts happened in an area housing a military intelligence complex.

Up to 70 people are feared to have been killed in a deadly shell attack on houses in the central Syrian city of Hama amid a visit by UN observers.

Fresh clashes are reported in Syria ahead of a visit by UN monitors to oversee a ceasefire. The security council voted unanimously to authorise the deployment of up to 30 unarmed observers.

The Kofi Annan-brokered ceasefire in Syria will fail because of irreconcilable ambitions within the country, regionally and internationally, Middle East and security experts tell Channel 4 News.

Claims by the Syrian regime to have pulled troops out of some cities are disputed by international critics as UN envoy Kofi Annan urges the Assad regime to comply with his peace plan.

Amid signs that Syrian attacks on the opposition have intensified in the last 24 hours, the United Nations struggles to implement a peace plan calling for an end to the violence.