Fighting reported in Damascus area DAMASCUS, Syria, July 16 (UPI) -- Fighting was reported in the Syrian capital of Damascus Monday, a day after the government denied it used heavy weapons to attack a farming community last week. The fighting in Damascus began Sunday in a neighborhood southwest of the city's center in what activist said marked the first time government forces shelled rebel holdouts in the capital, The New York Times reported. The gunfire continued Monday, residents said. The International Committee of the Red Cross announced in Geneva Sunday the conflict now could be classified as a civil war. Ahead of a visit by U.N.-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan to Moscow, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told a news conference in Moscow Western demands that Russia should urge embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad to leave are unrealistic, RIA Novosti reported. In April, Annan brokered an all-but-ignored peace plan that included a cease-fire, all-inclusive political dialogue and calls for both sides to stop the violence. "We have been hearing statements that a key to the Syrian settlement is in Moscow," Lavrov said during a news conference. They [Western leaders] tell us that we should persuade Assad to step down of his own free will. That is simply not realistic. Assad won't step aside because a "very significant part" of Syria's population is behind him "not because we [Russia] are behind him." Lavrov also said Russia would accept a "technical extension" of the U.N. observer mission in Syria, RIA Novosti said. A technical extension is a resolution that doesn't contain any "substantive evaluations," he said. As part of the Annan peace plan, about 300 U.N. observers were sent to Syria to monitor implementation of the peace plan's cease-fire. However, the observers suspended their work because it had become too dangerous. Their mission expires at the end of July. Two draft resolutions on the Syrian crisis are pending before the U.N. Security Council. One, sponsored by Russia, would extend the observer mission to establish communications between Syrian and opposition leaders. The other resolution, proposed by Britain, would consider imposing sanctions to end violence. Meanwhile, U.N. observers Sunday said the killings in the village of Tremseh apparently resulted from a regime raid against rebels, not a deliberate massacre of civilians. "The [Thursday] attack appears targeted at army defectors and activists," the observers said in a statement after interviewing witnesses and inspecting damaged buildings. The preliminary findings sharply differed from claims by some opposition groups the Syrian military targeted civilians in the community about 22 miles from Hama. The U.N. team did not confirm the number of people killed. Monitors who visited Tremseh Sunday saw more than 50 homes either burned or destroyed, with "pools of blood and brain matter" visible in a number of homes, the team statement said. Activists initially said the death toll topped 200, but revised the estimate downward to 103, mainly young male adults. Makdissi said the Assad regime had every right to send troops to Tremseh to confront fighters he said had stockpiled weapons and ammunition to use to attack army checkpoints.