The Syrian military vowed Friday to "cut every evil hand that targets Syrian blood," saying recent attacks on elite security forces marked a dangerous escalation in the country's eight-month-old crisis.

The defiant statement signaled the country's violence is worsening as President Bashar Assad tries to quash the most serious threat to his family's 40-year dynasty, under ever increasing international pressure.

Syrian security forces on Friday pressed a months-long crackdown on dissent, killing six more people with gunfire as protesters flooded streets in support of a rebel army, activists said.

The latest violence came as an Arab League 1100 GMT deadline for Syria to accept an observers' mission or face sanctions passed with no response from Damascus.

The U.N. Committee Against Torture said on Friday it had received reports of massive human rights violations in Syria, including the detention and mutilation of children.

"The committee has reviewed numerous, consistent and substantiated reports and information about widespread rights violations in the country," the head of the panel Claudio Grossman said in a statement.

Syrian activists called for demonstrators to flood the streets nationwide after the main weekly Muslim prayers in support of dissident army officers.

"The free army protects us," said a message on the Facebook page of the Syrian Revolution 2011, one of the key motors behind more than eight months of protests seeking to unseat the government of President Bashar Assad.

Russia said Friday ahead of the expiry of a new Arab League ultimatum on Syria that it opposed pressure and sanctions against its traditional Arab ally and wanted to see a renewal of political dialogue.

"At this stage, what we need is not resolutions, sanctions or pressure, but inter-Syrian dialogue," foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told a televised press briefing.

A new Arab League ultimatum which gives Syria until later Friday to agree to accept observers or face sanctions represents a last chance for the regime in Damascus, Turkey's foreign minister said.

"It is a last chance, a new chance for Syria," Ahmet Davutoglu told reporters in Istanbul in the final hours before the 11:00 GMT deadline.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe has expressed readiness to hold talks with Premier Najib Miqati after confirming to him that Lebanon would fund the Special Tribunal for Lebanon.

In remarks to al-Arabiya Arab TV network on Thursday, Juppe said: “We have previously met in September and he (Miqati) confirmed to me back then that the necessary measures to fund (the STL) will be made.”

French foreign ministry spokesman Bernard Valero on Thursday denied a media report claiming that French intelligence operatives had arrived to the borders of Lebanon and Turkey to train members of the rebel Free Syrian Army, dismissing the report as “baseless.”

“You know that the (French) magazine Le Canard enchainé, (which published the report Wednesday), is a satirical weekly. This report is inaccurate and baseless,” Valero said in an interview with Lebanon’s OTV.

Free Syrian Army chief Riad al-Asaad on Thursday called for foreign air strikes on "strategic targets" in Syria to speed up the fall of the regime, in a telephone interview with Agence France Presse.

"We are not in favor of the entry of foreign troops as was the case in Iraq but we want the international community to give us logistical support," said FSA chief Colonel Asaad, who is based across the border in Turkey.

Facing its worst economic crisis, Syria is banking on boosting self-sufficiency to overcome sanctions, Economy Minister Mohammed Nidal al-Shaar told Agence France Presse in an exclusive interview Thursday.

"This is not an easy crisis. It's the worst in our recent history because it is immediately affecting the Syrian citizen -- it's affecting the street, it's affecting factories, it's affecting the business community," Shaar said.