LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Observers from the United Nations have gleaned new details on what happened in the village of Tremseh where dozens were reported killed in an assault by government troops. The team said Syrian troops went door-to-door in the village, checking residents' IDs and then killing some of them while taking others away.

The attack appeared to single out army defectors and activists. "Pools of blood and brain matter were observed in a number of homes," a U.N. statement said.

Syria denies these claims that government forces had used heavy weapons such as tanks, artillery and helicopters during the attack last week in Tremseh.

Syrian Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdissi says the incident was a military operation targeting armed fighters who had taken control of the village.

"What happened wasn't an attack on civilians," Makdissi says. He reported that 37 gunmen and two civilians were killed, which is a far lower death toll than the one put forward by anti-regime activists, some of whom estimated the dead at more than 100.

"What has been said about the use of heavy weapons is baseless," Makdissi added.

Syrian President Bashar Assad has been implicated in the massacre. The head of the U.N. observer mission said last week that monitors stationed near Tremseh saw the army using heavy weaponry and attack helicopters.

Activists say that opposition to government forces has killed more than 17,000 people. Violence continued across over the weekend with more clashes reported around the capital, Damascus.

With the declaration by the Red Cross that the Syrian conflict is a civil war, international humanitarian law now applies throughout the country.

Also known as "the rules of war," humanitarian law grants all parties in a conflict the right to use appropriate force to achieve their aims. The Geneva-based group's assessment is an important if civilians are attacked or detained enemies are abused or killed.

"We are now talking about a non-international armed conflict in the country," ICRC spokesman Hicham Hassan said.

However -- war crimes prosecutions would have been possible even without the Red Cross statement. The recent pronouncement adds weight to any prosecution argument that Syria is in a state of war, a prerequisite for a war crimes case.

The armed uprising in Syria began more than a year ago, the ICRC has previously hesitated to call it a civil war - while many others have maintained that the ongoing conflict certainly fits that definition.

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