With reports of human rights abuses on both sides and the armed conflict intensifying major efforts are now required from the international community in order to avoid a vast humanitarian disaster...

A global humanitarian response to Syria is now the priority it seems...

The resignation yesterday of the UN League of Arab States Joint Special Envoy for Syria, Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations, is an indicator of what a critical stage the situation is at...

The loss of the experienced negotiator Annan is a terrible blow to the peace process, a hugely respected figure - his resignation will be seen by many observers as a significant moment...

Significantly his resignation was unusually barbed, offering an indictment of the current peace process, i.e. the inability from agitators on all sides to achieve peace...and the failure of the Security Council to support his peace plan...

"At a time when we need, when the Syrian people desperately need action - there continues to be finger-pointing and name calling in the Security Council," Annan said on the announcement of his resignation...

"Without serious, purposeful and united international pressure; including from the powers of the region...” a solution is "impossible" he added...

While the UN tries to put a brave face on the peace negotiations, suggesting the talks will continue with a successor soon in place, in reality the situation is spiralling out of control with ever-increasing violence across Syria, with ever more serious human rights and humanitarian consequences...

Even Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon concedes, commenting on Annan's resignation, that: "the persistent divisions within the Security Council have themselves become an obstacle to diplomacy, making the work of any mediator vastly more difficult..."

Meanwhile alleged evidence has also emerged in the last week of assassinations of Assad supporters by rebel forces, in the latest indication that human rights abuses are occurring on both sides of the conflict...

Video evidence showing what appear to be executions of Assad royalists have been condemned by the non-profit org Human Rights Watch...

Meanwhile the situation has become so dangerous with escalating fighting in Aleppo, parts of Damascus and Homs, the Red Cross has had to move aid workers from Syria temporarily to Beirut for their safety - a rare move by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) whose workers risk the most dangerous war zones to bring aid to civilians...

UN aid workers are similarly fleeing the more dangerous parts of the country...

However, it's a retreat by humanitarian teams and not a capitulation to the aggressors - and such is the devastating picture that the Red Cross is continuing its appeals for help to support humanitarian efforts where it can...

Recent aid efforts include 2,300 food parcels delivered to the Syrian Arab Red Crescent in Homs for distribution to those displaced by fighting...

In the last week the ICRC and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent have continued to assist displaced people and others affected by the fighting in Damascus and elsewhere...

However, the scale of the humanitarian emergency opening up has been identified as ever more serious and long-term, in a fresh report from the World Food Programme (WFP)...

Up to three million people are in need of food, crop and livestock aid over the coming year, according to a recent assessment revealed by the UN agency...

With about 1.5 million people needing urgent and immediate food aid in the next six months...

The findings are based on a Joint Rapid Food Security Needs Assessment mission carried out in June 2012...

The Syrian agricultural sector, a central economy is in ruins in effect and has lost a total of USD 1.8 billion in 2012 as a result of what is now being openly described by the Red Cross as a civil war...

"While the economic implications of these losses are quite grave, the humanitarian implications are far more pressing..." explains WFP's spokesperson Muhannad Hadi...

The food crisis is affecting first and foremost the poorest in Syria with particular help needed for female-headed households and migrant workers, small farmers, Bedouins and herders, says the WFP.

However, even more urgently much of the focus of aid agencies how is helping refugees find safe refuge...

Over 100,000 Syrians have fled their homes since the conflict began, with a new refugee camp currently opening in Jordan following the escalating violence in Syria's biggest city, Aleppo...

Humanitarian agencies are appealing to the public to support their appeals to provide safe shelter, food, water and medical attention to the growing numbers of people suffering harm as a result of the conflict...