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The BBC's Jeremy Bowen meets Damascus residents forming a "human shield" to protect key military sites
Leaders from the G20 group of nations are meeting in Russia amid sharp differences over the crisis in Syria.
US President Barack Obama has begun informal talks with other
leaders as he pushes for military action over Syria's alleged use of
chemical weapons.But Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that military action without UN approval would be "an aggression".
Syria is not officially on the G20 agenda in St Petersburg, but it is expected to dominate informal meetings.
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Syria is not officially on the G20 agenda, so any discussion
will be informal. Nonetheless, how the different countries line up will
be illuminating and could have some bearing on how this crisis will play
out.
Joining Russia in opposing US action will no doubt be China, given it too has consistently vetoed attempts to impose pressure on the Assad government at the UN Security Council and repeatedly insisted that any solution must be political. India and Indonesia's views are less easy to identify.
Mr Obama knows he has the backing of French President Francois Hollande for military action, but - because of last week's vote in the UK parliament - only diplomatic not military support from British Prime Minister David Cameron. Turkey has long advocated intervention in Syria, and Saudi Arabia is part of the Gulf coalition active in backing Syrian rebels.
Other allies at the table include Canada, Australia, South Korea and Japan, as well as Germany and EU leaders. But their separate views on the difficult question of whether or not to strike back against the Syrian military without UN approval are likely to be nuanced. Italy, also at the G20 table, has already voiced its objections.
Analysis
Joining Russia in opposing US action will no doubt be China, given it too has consistently vetoed attempts to impose pressure on the Assad government at the UN Security Council and repeatedly insisted that any solution must be political. India and Indonesia's views are less easy to identify.
Mr Obama knows he has the backing of French President Francois Hollande for military action, but - because of last week's vote in the UK parliament - only diplomatic not military support from British Prime Minister David Cameron. Turkey has long advocated intervention in Syria, and Saudi Arabia is part of the Gulf coalition active in backing Syrian rebels.
Other allies at the table include Canada, Australia, South Korea and Japan, as well as Germany and EU leaders. But their separate views on the difficult question of whether or not to strike back against the Syrian military without UN approval are likely to be nuanced. Italy, also at the G20 table, has already voiced its objections.
The annual summit of the G20 group of the world's leading economies is supposed to concentrate on the global economy.
Danger for aid workers
Mr Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and Chinese
President Xi Jinping are among the leaders who have now arrived at the
G20.Mr Cameron, who lost a parliamentary vote on military intervention in Syria, told the BBC it was "the worst refugee crisis of this century".
He called for aid agencies to receive more funding and for pressure to be put "on both sides in the conflict to improve access so aid workers can get to those who most need help".
On Thursday the medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said one of its surgeons, a Syrian working in Aleppo province, had been killed.
It gave no details of the circumstances but called for humanitarian workers to be protected.
Separately, Syrian rebels have launched an assault on the religiously mixed village of Maaloula, in western Syria, held by government forces.
A Christian nun in Maaloula told the Associated Press news agency that the rebels had seized a mountain-top hotel and were shelling the community below.
On the eve of the summit, a US Senate panel approved the use of military force in Syria, in response to an alleged chemical weapons attack.
Two-and-a-half years of fighting have left their mark on Syria, as this photo from the besieged part of the city of Homs shows
he proposal, which now goes to a full
Senate vote next week, allows the use of force in Syria for 60 days with
the possibility to extend it for 30 days.The measure must also be approved by the US House of Representatives.The Damascus government is accused of using chemical weapons
against civilians on several occasions during the 30-month conflict -
most recently on a large scale in an attack on 21
- Izvestiya daily (pro-Kremlin): "The G20 summit is the last opportunity for Russia and America to agree to a plan for joint action [on Syria]. It will be very sad if, in St Petersburg, instead of that, Obama prefers to discuss the suffering of Russian gays and avert his eyes from his Russian counterpart, while smiling kindly at the Turks and the Saudis."
- Komsomolskaya Pravda (pro-Kremlin tabloid): "It looks as if, as a result of his policy on Syria, Barack Obama is starting to lose popularity among even his most desperate apologists - Russian rights activists. They have decided to ignore an invitation to a closed meeting with the US president during his visit to St Petersburg for the G20 summit."
- Kommersant (liberal): "At some point Putin understood that the Americans are going to strike at Syria whatever happens. And at that point, what happens next stopped mattering to him... The US president might as well not travel to St Petersburg from Stockholm: Putin isn't interested any more."
- Vedomosti (business daily): "Obama has nothing to discuss with Putin."
The study was carried out by an
expert in warhead design, Richard Lloyd, and Theodore Postol, a
physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The German intelligence service, the BND, told German MPs in a
confidential briefing on Wednesday that Syrian forces might have
misjudged the mix of gases in the attack, the German magazine Der
Spiegel reported.This might explain why the death toll was much higher than in previous suspected attacks, the head of the BND was quoted as saying.
The BBC's Bridget Kendall, in St Petersburg, says both leaders have allies but the battle will be for the middle ground - those countries who share concern about chemical weapons but fear the consequences of military retaliation.
France has strongly backed the US plan for military action. The French parliament debated the issue on Wednesday, although no vote was held.
The United Nations says more than 100,000 people have been killed since the uprising against Mr Assad began in March 2011.
More than two million Syrians are now registered as refugees, the UN says, with an additional 4.25 million displaced within the country, making it the worst refugee crisis since the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.
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