Ban: Regime lacks 'fundamental humanity' U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in the southern Gaza Strip, February 2, 2012. UNITED NATIONS, June 8 (UPI) -- Syria's Assad regime has "lost its fundamental humanity," U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said as Washington came close to writing off a U.N. peace plan. The massacre of 78 people -- half of them women and children -- in the tiny farming hamlet of Qubeir in the west-central Syrian province of Hama is "shocking and sickening," Ban told the General Assembly Thursday. He said U.N. monitors trying to investigate the massacre Wednesday were shot at by Syrian troops and prevented from reaching the scene. The bodies of innocent civilians, lying where they were, shot. Some were allegedly burned [alive] or slashed with knives," he said, adding that "each day seems to bring new additions to the grim catalogue of atrocities." The massacre was described by activists and nearby residents as resembling the May 25 massacre of 108 people -- mostly women and children -- in the Houla agriculture area of western Syria northwest of Homs. The United Nations attributed that massacre, which sparked an international outcry, largely to a pro-Assad mercenary militia known as Shabiha, made up of semi-criminal gangs who are members of a Shiite Islam offshoot known as the Alawite sect. Abu Hisham al-Hamawi, who lives on the outskirts of Qubeir, told the British newspaper The Guardian he saw Shabiha militiamen from nearby Alawite villages pass by his home on the way to Qubeir minutes before the Wednesday attack. "I knew some of them from school," he said. I know their names, I know their villages. I know exactly who they are. They are Shabiha, no doubt. They passed by here with the regime army. President Bashar Assad, whose family has ruled Syria for more than 40 years, is an Alawite. Most of Syria is Sunni Muslim, sometimes referred to as the orthodox version of the religion. The Qubeir and Houla victims were all thought to be Sunnis. Sunnis have formed the backbone of the Syrian uprising, which was inspired by the Arab Spring but has since spiraled toward a sectarian civil war. Ban said it has been evident for many months that Assad and his government had "lost all legitimacy," but now it is clear that "any regime or leader that tolerates such killing of innocents has lost its fundamental humanity." U.N.-Arab League special envoy Kofi Annan addressed both the General Assembly and the Security Council in an effort to salvage his six-point peace plan. "We cannot allow mass killing to become part of everyday reality in Syria," Annan told the General Assembly, while blaming both sides for the carnage. "If things do not change, the future is likely to be one of brutal repression, massacres, sectarian violence and even all-out civil war," he said. All Syrians will lose. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the massacres "unconscionable" and called on Assad to surrender power and go into exile. "We think it is important for us to give Kofi Annan and his plan the last amount of support that we can muster because, in order to bring others into a frame of mind to take action in the Security Council, there has to be a final recognition that it's not working," she said. Russia and China, key Assad allies on the council, both back the Annan plan. Syrian U.N. Ambassador Bashar Jaafari denied regime involvement in the Qubeir massacre, telling the Security Council "terrorists" outmaneuvering Syrian armed forces had carried it out. Regime troops tried to save civilians and four were wounded in the attempt, he alleged. He accused TV news organizations of broadcasting images of bodies from a different location and mislabeling the footage as coming from Qubeir. Syrian state television will release "true images" in due time, he said.