Syrian President Bashar Assad's forces are using "scorched earth methods" in cities across the country to crush a one-year-old revolt against his regime, Human Rights Watch charged on Thursday.

"City after city, town after town, Syria's security forces are using their scorched earth methods while the (U.N.) Security Council's hands remain tied by Russia and China," said HRW's Sarah Leah Whitson.

An Iranian aircraft carrying 40 tons of "medical aid" arrived in Syria on Thursday, the first of four such shipments destined for Tehran's regional ally, the official IRNA news agency reported.

The cargo which arrived in Damascus early Thursday was to be handed over to the Syrian Red Crescent, the agency said, quoting the Iranian ambassador to Syria, Mohammed Reza Raouf Sheibani.

The Netherlands has closed its embassy in Damascus because of the worsening security situation in Syria and to send a political sign to its leadership, the foreign ministry announced Wednesday.

"The shutdown is an expression of the revulsion we feel in the face of the appalling violence of the Syrian government," Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal said in a statement.

Saudi Arabia has shut down its embassy in Syria and has withdrawn all its staff, the foreign ministry announced Wednesday in a statement carried by state news agency SPA.

"Due the developments in Syria, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has shut down its embassy in Damascus and withdrawn all its diplomats and staff there," said the statement.

The world community must document the atrocities being carried out by the government of Syria against its people to ensure justice is done, British Prime Minister David Cameron said Wednesday.

"We must document the evidence so that those guilty of crimes may be held responsible, whatever it takes," Cameron, who held talks at the White House with President Barack Obama, told reporters at a joint press conference.

A fragile truce that ended four days of violence between Israel and Gaza militants appeared to be largely holding on Wednesday, despite sporadic rocket fire and air raids.

Israeli police said a rocket was fired from Gaza at the southern city of Beersheva on Wednesday evening, but was brought down by the Iron Dome missile defense system with no reports of casualties.

The Kuwaiti parliament voted on Wednesday to set up probes into allegations of corruption, smuggling and torture, the state KUNA news agency reported.

Members of the new opposition-dominated parliament agreed to set up two commissions of inquiry into allegations of corruption relating to members of the previous parliament, KUNA said.

"Assad has killed so many people that he deserves a fate worse than Gadhafi’s," spits Ammar al-Wawi, a one-time Syrian officer now second-in-command of the rebel Free Syrian Army.

And despite the fact that the FSA, "armed only with Kalashnikovs and pistols," is at an overwhelming disadvantage against the tanks and artillery of Bashar al-Assad's army, Wawi says he is convinced the president will fall.

China's Syria envoy Zhang Ming was to hold meetings Wednesday and Thursday in Paris, the French foreign ministry said, but he was not due to meet top-level officials.

Western nations including France have been at loggerheads with China and Russia over the unrest in Syria, with the two powers blocking United Nations Security Council resolutions on the crisis.

Four men move deftly and carefully across a field, their silhouettes outlined by the light of a full moon, bearing a stretcher.

Five lives are at stake as they hasten to carry to safety in nearby Turkey a man shot during a demonstration in the Syrian city of Hama against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.