BEIRUT: Up to 100 people – most of them civilians – were killed Wednesday, human rights groups said, taking a soaring death toll to over 240 in four days, as opposition groups prepared protests to mark Thursday’s 30th anniversary of the Hama massacre.

The latest violence came as Western and Arab leaders tried to drum out a compromise at the U.N. Security Council to stave off a second Russian veto on the latest resolution to try to end the violence in the country.

Opposition groups are calling a for mass marches around the country in solidarity with the victims of the 1982 massacre, when late President Hafez Assad, the father of the current president, Bashar Assad, squashed an Islamist revolt in the central city, killing between 10,000 to 25,000 civilians, according to international rights groups.

“We call for demonstrations in all of Syria on Feb. 2 and 3 on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Hama massacre,” said the opposition Syrian National Council and other groups in a joint statement.

France’s Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said Wednesday the death toll for the current uprising, now entering its 11th month, has reached over 6,000 people. The United Nations last week announced that they were no longer able to update their January figure of 5,000, after over 400 were confirmed dead during a week-long stay by Arab League monitors in the country.

While reports of violence mounted, Western and Russian leaders continued to wrangle over the Western-Arab resolution calling for Assad to delegate powers to his deputy and for a transition government to pave the way for democratic elections.

Russia has said it would use its veto in the U.N. Security Council to block any resolution on Syria it considers unacceptable, warning it would not let such a plan pass by abstaining in a vote, after the council met to review the resolution late Tuesday.

Russia opposes the draft, saying it fears U.N. action would lead to a Libyan-style intervention and amounts to “regime change.” They say the West took advantage of vague wording in the Libya resolution to turn a mandate to protect civilians into a push for regime change that led to dictator Moammar Gadhafi’s overthrow.

In addition, Russia has voiced concern that the draft’s threat of “further measures” if Syria fails to implement the resolution could lead to sanctions, which it opposes.

Russia, along with China, vetoed an earlier resolution on Syria in October.

In comments Wednesday, Moscow’s envoy to the U.N. , Vitaly Churkin warned that Russia would not hesitate to use its veto again.

“If the text will be unacceptable for us we will vote against it, of course,” Churkin told reporters in Moscow via a videolink from New York.

Churkin indicated that Russia would fight hard for serious changes to the current draft and, while it hopes for a consensus, is in no rush, saying there would be no vote until Tuesday at the earliest, and then only if Security Council members are shown a report from an Arab League monitoring mission in Syria this week.

France, which along with the U.S. is leading the push to adopt the resolution, expressed hopes Security Council members could produce an agreement on the resolution by next week and sought to allay Russian concerns.

“We’re trying to bring positions closer together and we hope that during the course of next week it will be possible to have a Security Council text that could ... avoid the veto,” Juppe said during a talk at a Paris university. “We are trying to create movement. The exchanges [at U.N. headquarters in New York] yesterday gave us some grounds for positive thinking. The Russian representative did not say ‘niet’ [no],” he said.

Juppe this week wrote to his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov to try to offer some guarantees over the new resolution.

But Gennady Gatilov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, appeared to snuff out any hopes of a quick vote. “Attempts are being made to find a text that is acceptable to all sides and would help find a political solution for the situation in Syria. Therefore there is going to be no vote in the next days,” he told Interfax news agency.

Syria has given Russia its strongest foothold in the Middle East, buying its weapons and hosting a naval supply and maintenance facility that is Russia’s only military base outside the former Soviet Union.

Churkin said Russia was “categorically against” any arms embargo on Syria.

“It seems logical: If there is a conflict, let’s not deliver arms. But we saw what happened in Libya,” he said.

“It was forbidden to deliver arms to the government but anyone under the sun delivered [to] armed opposition groups, that is what it meant in practice.”

“How then can we break contracts, our years-old relationship which we have with Syria ... especially when what we are delivering is not what can be used to shoot demonstrators,” he said.

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Wednesday that U.N. Security Council member countries had to decide whether they would side with the Syrian people or a “brutal” dictatorship.

“Every member of the council has to make a decision: Whose side are you on?” Clinton told reporters. “Are you on the side of the Syrian people? ... Or are you on the side of a brutal dictatorial regime? Each country will have to be mulling that over and making a decision.”

On the ground Wednesday, human rights activists said 52 civilians and 38 members of the regular Syrian army had been killed Wednesday.

Rami Abdul-Rahman of The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based monitoring group, told The Daily Star at least eight civilians had been killed in shelling by regime forces in the central city of Homs, while another 29 people were killed in fighting in the Damascus region, among them a 3-year-old child and a 25-year-old woman. Activists reported shelling and machine-gun fire in towns along the Wadi Barada, a valley northwest of Damascus near the Lebanese border.

Five civilians also died in the southern province of Deraa and one was killed by sniper fire in Idlib, located in the northwest of the country.

The Observatory said the casualties also include nine rebel troops killed near the capital Damascus and 15 soldiers killed in fighting with rebel forces in the Bustan al-Diwan sector of Homs. Eighteen regular army were killed in car bombing attacks targeting soldiers in the Idlib surrounds, according to Abdul-Rahman.

Iran’s state news agency also reported a second group of 11 Iranian pilgrims were kidnapped in Syria, raising to 29 the number of Iranians abducted since December.