DAMASCUS, January 28, 2012 (AFP) – Security forces intensified a crackdown on Friday, with activists reporting about 120 people killed in a two-day spike in violence, as a draft resolution on Syria circulated at the UN Security Council.

The head of an Arab League monitoring mission said unrest had soared this week “in a significant way,” especially in the flashpoint central cities of Homs and Hama and in the northern Idlib region.

The violence, which on Friday for the first time cost lives in Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city, “does not help … to get all sides to sit at the negotiating table,” General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi said.

For a second day, Syrian forces kept up their attacks on Homs, as Western and Arab states rushed to unveil the draft UN resolution to condemn a crackdown that has killed more than 5,400 since March.

The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights said in its latest count that security forces killed at least 44 civilians on Friday, while 12 soldiers were killed in attacks on the military.

It said 19 people died in the southern province of Daraa, 15 in Homs, five in Aleppo, north Syria, three in Douma, just north of Damascus, including a child and woman, a boy on the outskirts of the capital, and another in Hama.

Six soldiers died in a car bomb attack on a security checkpoint in the city of Idlib and another six were killed in Daraa province in clashes with army deserters, the Britain-based watchdog’s head Rami Abdel Rahman told AFP.

In violence across the country on Thursday, the Observatory said 62 people were killed, including 33 in Homs, a major protest hub and a tinderbox of sectarian tensions.

On the outskirts of Damascus, an 11-year-old boy was killed at a checkpoint in Hamuriyeh, it said in statements received in Nicosia.

At least 384 children have been among the dead in the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, and almost the same number detained, the United Nations Children’s Fund said on Friday.

The latest wave in the government crackdown, now in its 11th month, comes as the West tries to ride diplomatic momentum sparked by last weekend’s surprise call by the Arab League for Assad to step down.

In New York, the draft resolution was circulated at the Security Council calling for support of the Arab League plan.

The Security Council has been deadlocked for months on Syria. Russia and China vetoed a previous European resolution in October, accusing the West of seeking regime change.

“I think we have the chance today to open a new chapter on Syria,” said Germany’s UN ambassador Peter Wittig.

But a senior Russian diplomat earlier warned that the draft still falls short because it refers to sanctions and warns of further measures, raising the spectre of military action.

That has been a red line for Moscow ever since a UN resolution helped to justify a military intervention in Libya last year.

If the draft is agreed, the council would say it “fully supports” the Arab League plan of January 22 that calls on Assad to hand over his powers to his deputy so that a national unity government can be formed and elections held.

But Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov Gatilov said “we cannot support any UN resolution calling for the support of Assad’s resignation,” adding that a quick vote on the Western-Arab draft was “destined for failure.”

The text “encourages” all states to follow sanctions imposed by the Arab League against Syria in November, but contains no mandatory action. Official talks on the resolution are only expected to start on Monday.

In Cairo, where the Arab League is based, scores of Syrian regime opponents stormed their country’s embassy, an AFP reporter said.

At least 200 Syrian protesters forced their way into the building in Garden City neighbourhood, breaking doors and windows, before security officials arrived at the mission and expelled them.

The mission was empty for the Muslim weekend.

Syrian ambassador Yusef Ahmed visited the mission after the incident and said he would formally complain to Egyptian authorities. “The protection today was very weak,” he told AFP.