Syria Defiantly Denies Killings, UN Council Meets Syria on Sunday strongly denied allegations that its forces killed scores of people - including women and children - in one of the deadliest days of the country's uprising, and the U.N. Security Council held an emergency session on the massacre. The killing of more than 100 people in the west-central area of Houla on Friday brought widespread international criticism of the regime of President Bashar Assad, although differences emerged from world powers over whether his forces were exclusively to blame. Britain and France had proposed issuing a press statement condemning the attack and pointing a finger at the Syrian government, but Russia told Security Council members it could not agree and wanted a briefing first by Norwegian Maj. Gen. Robert Mood, the head of the U.N. observer team in the country. Russia has been Syria's most powerful ally during the uprising, and along with China has used its veto power to shield Damascus from U.N. sanctions. The massacre in Houla on Friday cast fresh doubts on the ability of an international peace plan put forward by envoy Kofi Annan to end Syria's 14-month-old crisis. The brutality of the killings became clear in amateur videos posted online that showed scores of bodies, many of them young children, in neat rows and covered with blood and deep wounds. A later video showed the bodies, wrapped in white sheets, being placed in a sprawling mass grave. This citizen journalism image provided by Shaam News Network taken Saturday, May 26, 2012, purports to show shrouded dead bodies following a Syrian government assault on Houla, Syria. The Syrian government denied Sunday its troops were behind an attack on a string of villages that left more than 90 people dead, blaming the killings on "hundreds of heavily-armed gunmen" who also attacked soldiers in the area. Friday's assault on Houla, an area northwest of the central city of Homs, was one of the bloodiest single events in Syria's 15-month-old uprising. The U.N. says 32 children under 10 were among the dead. Mood told the Security Council that U.N. observers at the scene now estimate 108 people were killed in Houla, U.N. peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous told reporters outside the council chamber. The U.N. later counted 49 children and 34 women among the dead. The U.N. had earlier said its observers found tank and artillery shells at the site, suggesting the regime's well-equipped forces were to blame. A council diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that after Mood's briefing, council members began working on the text of a press statement that would be along the lines of a statement issued Saturday by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Annan, his predecessor and the joint U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria. Activists from the area said the army pounded the villages with artillery and clashed with local rebels after protests Friday. Some activists said pro-regime thugs later stormed the area, doing the bulk of the killing by gunning down men in the streets and stabbing women and children in their homes. The Syrian government rejected that narrative Sunday, painting a vastly different picture. Speaking to reporters in Damascus, Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi said Syrian security forces were in their local bases Friday when they were attacked by "hundreds of heavily armed gunmen" firing mortars, heavy machine guns and anti-tank missiles, staring a nine-hour battle that killed three soldiers and wounded 16. The soldiers fought back, but didn't leave their bases, he said. "No Syrian tank or artillery entered this place where the massacres were committed," he said. The security forces did not leave their places because they were in a state of self-defense.