Eight-year-old killed in fresh Syrian violence as Arab states offer safe haven to President Assad to speed up his exit

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Eight more dead in Homs today
Washington in secret talks with Middle Eastern states

By Mail Foreign Service
Updated: 11:33 EST, 10 November 2011

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An eight-year-old girl is believed to be among 15 killed in Syria today amid fresh violence.

The deaths - and those of six soldiers - occurred in fighting in Homs, which has become the epicentre of the uprising, a human rights group claimed.

In some of the day's attacks, security forces opened fire as they conducted raids in search of dissidents.

Death on the streets: A home video clip from an amateur video given to the Ugarit News group today claims to show an anti-Assad supporter lying dead next to a car in Damascus yesterday

There also were reports of fighting between soldiers and army defectors.

The UN estimates some 3,500 people have been killed in the Syrian crackdown on dissent over the past eight months.

In Washington, some Arab leaders told the United States they were willing to provide safe haven to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to hasten his 'inevitable' departure from power after seven months of protests.

Assistant Secretary of State Jeffrey Feltman would not identify the countries that had come forward.

But he told a Senate panel: 'Almost all the Arab leaders, foreign ministers who I talk to say the same thing: Assad's rule is coming to an end. It is inevitable,'

Fury: A protester holds up a burning picture of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad in Vienna today

He hoped Assad and his inner circle would 'head for the exits voluntarily.'

Assad has shown no sign of leaving. Today's violence follows the deaths of at least eight protesters and injured 25 in Damascus yesterday.

More than 60 people have been killed by the army and security forces just since last week, when Assad's government signed a peace plan sponsored by the Arab League.

Western governments led by the United States have called on Assad to quit office.

Feltman said the U.S. would continue to support the Syrian opposition while diplomatically and financially pressuring the regime.

U.S. and European financial sanctions were 'tightening the financial noose around the regime,' he added.

Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman spells out the U.S. posiition to a Senate panel yesterday

'He must go': Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Jeffrey Feltman spells out the U.S. position to a Senate panel yesterday

But the United States did not seek militarisation of the conflict: 'Syria is not Libya.'

Washington favoured multilateral sanctions on Syria at the United Nations, Feltman said, adding that he would consider other steps if Russia and China continued to block a Security Council resolution condemning Syria.

He wanted to see European-led efforts to introduce a resolution in the UN General Assembly's human rights committee that would insist on access to Syria for internationally recognised human rights monitors.

He feared the transition to democracy in Syria could be long and difficult.

Feltman also added that U.S. company, Blue Coat Systems Inc, was being probed by the commerce department over suspicions its products had had made their way to Syria despite strict trade embargoes.

Blue Coat, of Sunnyvale, California, said in a statement on its website that some of its equipment apparently had been 'transferred illegally ' to Syria, but that it did not know who was using the devices or exactly how.

It said the company was co-operating with the U.S. government investigation.