UN says Syria blocked access after report of mass killing

Addressing a session of the 193-member General Assembly at the UN devoted to the Syria crisis, Ban Ki-moon, the secretary general, said that President Bashar al-Assad of Syria had lost all legitimacy in the 16-month-old uprising against him and that "the situation in Syria continues to deteriorate," adding fuel to the effort to isolate Assad and remove him from power.

Kofi Annan, the special Syria envoy for both the UN and Arab League, also decried the escalating violence, which has made a mockery of his peace plan, and warned of the dangers of intransigence by both President Assad and his increasingly militant opponents. Annan, who also addressed the General Assembly, painted a bleak picture of the Syrian conflict, which started as an Arab Spring political protest in March 2011 and has expanded into a Middle East crisis.