The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said troops stormed and shelled several towns or villages from early Wednesday, following fierce assaults and clashes the previous day which left at least 80 people dead.
"From the Turkish border in the northeast to Daraa in the south, military operations are ongoing," Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Britain-based group, told AFP.
"Tanks are still shelling or storming towns and villages before going back to their bases," he added. "That does not mean they are withdrawing."
The assaults were taking place despite President Bashar al-Assad's pledge to implement by April 10 a six-point peace plan brokered by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan.
The Observatory has charged that the army is torching and looting rebel houses across the country in a campaign that could amount to crimes against humanity.
It said that a total of 58 civilians were killed on Tuesday, including 20 who died in military assaults and in fighting between troops and rebels in Taftanaz region of restive northwestern Idlib province.
Another 15 civilians were killed when the army pounded rebel holdouts in the central city of Homs, while the remainder died in other flashpoints across the country, the Observatory said.
It added that 18 soldiers were killed in Homs, Idlib and the southern Daraa province, while four army deserters died in Idlib.
Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov predicted the under-equipped rebel force would never be able to defeat Syria's powerful military.
"It is clear as day that even if the Syrian opposition is armed to the teeth, it will not be able to defeat the government's army," the Interfax news agency quoted Lavrov as saying while on a visit to the ex-Soviet nation of Azerbaijan.
"Instead, there will be carnage that lasts many, many years -- mutual destruction."
Lavrov said that two groups of Syrian opposition representatives will be visiting Moscow in the coming days and that Russia will be using the meetings to convince them that it wants to help resolve the year-long crisis.
Annan on Monday told the UN Security Council that Assad had agreed to "immediately" start pulling troops out of protest cities and complete a troop and heavy weapon withdrawal by April 10.
The United States however Tuesday accused the Syrian leader of failing to honour his pledged troop withdrawal.
"The assertion to Kofi Annan was that Assad would start implementing his commitments immediately to withdraw from cities. I want to advise that we have seen no evidence today that he is implementing any of those commitments," US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told reporters.
With international concern at the situation growing, a draft UN Security Council statement was drawn up asking Syria to respect the April 10 deadline, according to a copy of the text seen by AFP.
The draft also urges the Syrian opposition to cease hostilities within 48 hours after Assad's regime makes good on its pledges.
It also calls on all parties to respect a two-hour daily humanitarian pause, as called for in Annan's plan.
Negotiations on the text -- distributed by Britain, France and the United States -- began on Tuesday. France's UN envoy Gerard Araud said he hoped it would be adopted late Wednesday or on Thursday.
Russia, Assad's veto-wielding ally in the Council, has rejected the idea of a deadline, with Lavrov saying "ultimatums and artificial deadlines rarely help matters."
Seeking to assuage some of the humanitarian concerns, foreign Minister Walid Muallem pledged Syria would do its utmost to ensure the success of a Red Cross mission as he on Tuesday met the organisation's head, Jakob Kellenberger, who was in Damascus to seek a daily ceasefire.
Kellenberger, on his third mission to Damascus since it launched a protest crackdown which the UN says has killed more than 9,000 people, said ahead of his latest trip that he would seek to secure a daily two-hour humanitarian ceasefire.
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