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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 set to meet in the Russian city of St Petersburg amid sharp differences over military action against Syria.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that action without UN approval would be "an aggression".
But US President Barack Obama said the credibility of the international community was on the line.
While Syria is not officially on the G20 agenda, leaders are expected to discuss it on the sidelines.
Analysis
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.
The annual summit of the G20 group of developed and developing nations is supposed to concentrate on the global economy.
Danger for aid workersMr Obama is among the leaders who have now arrived at the G20, along with British Prime Minister David Cameron and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
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.
Continue reading the main storyThe 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 August on the outskirts of the capital.
"Start Quote
End QuoteIt is a... simple truth that Britain's decision to say no to military action means that [Cameron] finds himself relegated to the sidelines"
The government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has denied involvement and said the rebels were responsible.
The US has put the death toll from that incident at 1,429 - though other countries and groups have given lower figures - and says all the evidence implicates government forces.
Mr Putin dismissed as "ludicrous" claims the Syrian government used chemical weapons, but said Russia would be ready to act if there was clear proof of what weapons were used and by whom.
For his part, Mr Obama is trying to build support in the US for punitive military action against the Syrian government.
Ahead of his arrival in Russia, he said the US and the world should stick to the "red line" against chemical weapons for the sake of their own credibility.
Battle for middle groundA new study of images apparently from the chemical attack on 21 August concludes that the rockets carrying the gas held up to 50 times more nerve agent than previously estimated, the New York Times reported.
Russian media comments
- 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… It really does look as if Obama's policies... have turned the US president into someone whose hand those people who claim to be the epitome of conscience will not shake."
- Heavyweight liberal daily Kommersant (heavyweight liberal daily): "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 anymore."
- 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.
BBC diplomatic correspondent Bridget Kendall, who is 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 President 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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