The Red Cross pressed efforts on Saturday to deliver desperately needed aid to the vanquished Syrian rebel stronghold of Baba Amr in Homs after a blocked first attempt sparked an international outcry.
UN leader Ban Ki-moon demanded unconditional humanitarian access to Syrian cities, saying there were "grisly" reports of summary executions and torture in Homs, Syria's third largest city.
Ban spoke after a seven-truck convoy organised by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent Society was barred from entering Baba Amr on Friday.
Human Rights Watch painted a harrowing picture of Homs, saying some 700 people were killed and thousands wounded by regime forces in a 27-day blitz, with shells sometimes falling at the rate of 100 an hour.
In addition to the casualties, HRW said satellite images showed 640 buildings were visibly damaged, but that the real picture could be worse. It also counted 950 craters visible in open areas.
The bodies of two Western journalists killed in a rocket attack on a makeshift press centre in Baba Amr last month were finally handed over on Saturday to the French and Polish embassies in Damascus, AFP reported.
Also in the capital, ICRC spokesman Saleh Dabbakeh spoke of persistent efforts to move aid into Baba Amr. "We are still in talks," he told AFP.
Red Crescent operations chief Khaled Erksoussi told AFP: "The authorities told us that we're being denied access for security reasons."
Ban demanded that Syria unconditionally let in relief supplies after its troops overran the neighbourhood on Thursday, capping nearly a month of shelling.
"The Syrian authorities must open without any preconditions to humanitarian communities," he said. "It is totally unacceptable, intolerable. How as a human being can you bear ... this situation."
Syrian UN envoy Bashar Jaafari accused the UN chief of "slandering" President Bashar al-Assad's government with his accounts of the deadly crackdown on the nearly year-old uprising.
The United States called all countries to condemn the "horrific" brutality in Syria as President Barack Obama declared that Assad's days were numbered.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy said: "What is going on is scandalous. There are more than 8,000 dead, hundreds of children, and the city of Homs faces the risk of being wiped off the map."
ICRC chief Jakob Kellenberger said: "It is unacceptable that people who have been in need of emergency assistance for weeks have still not received any help."
HRW quoted accounts from journalists and residents who fled the rebel city and urging the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution to allow aid delivery.
It noted that Baba Amr has been an opposition stronghold since anti-regime protests erupted last March but stressed this presence "in no way justifies the scale and nature of the attack" on it.
More than 20,000 civilians are believed to have been trapped in Baba Amr during the month-long bombardment by regime forces.
Veteran US reporter Marie Colvin of the Sunday Times and French photographer Remi Ochlik were killed in shelling of the makeshift press centre in Baba Amr on February 22.
On Saturday, the bodies of Colvin and Ochlik were taken to the French hospital in the Kassah neighbourhood, where they were to be kept in the morgue until they are flown to France.
French reporter Edith Bouvier of Le Figaro newspaper and British photographer Paul Conroy were wounded in the same attack.
Bouvier, 31, was smuggled out of Syria to Lebanon and flown to France on Friday along with photographer William Daniels, 34, who was unhurt, after several of being trapped in Homs.
Le Figaro quoted the pair recalling how the press centre was hit after several explosions very near which gave them "the impression that we were directly targeted."
They said a missile struck in front of the press centre.
"The explosion was massive, Marie Colvin and Remi Ochlik were practically at the point of impact. They were killed on the spot," Le Figaro reported.
Conroy, who is recovering in hospital in Britain, also painted a bleak picture of the neighbourhood.
"It's not a war, it's a massacre, an indiscriminate massacre of men, women and children," he told Sky News television.
There was more bloodshed Saturday across Syria, where 17 people, most of them civilians, were killed, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said, while authorities reported two dead in a suicide car bombing.
The suicide attack occurred in Daraa, where the uprising erupted last March. The official SANA news agency said two people were killed and 20 wounded, including security force personnel.
The attack was the latest in a string of suicide bombings to hit Syria since December which the authorities have blamed on Al-Qaeda.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki said in an interview published on Friday that the jihadist network was moving its focus of operations to his country's western neighbour.
"Al-Qaeda has started migrating from Iraq to Syria," Maliki said in the interview with Saudi daily Okaz.
On Saturday Maliki said Iraq will take further measures to secure its border with Syria in an effort to prevent weapons smuggling and trafficking.
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