British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Thursday he is working with partners in other European Union countries to impose additional sanctions on Syria, without the approval of the UN Security Council.

Speaking from Istanbul, Hague warned that Syria was moving closer to an "all-out civil war," ITV News reported.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explained to an audience in Copenhagen that Russia is blocking an international intervention in Syria.

"One of our great dilemmas is that the action that we took part in in Libya… had the United Nations´ support, so thereby you had the international support, and we do not yet have that," she explained.

"We have very strong opposition from Russia and China, but it´s primarily Russia," she added. "The Syrians are not going to listen to us. They will listen maybe to the Russians, so we have to keep pushing them."

"[The Russians] are telling me they don´t want to see a civil war. I have been telling them their policy is going to help to contribute to a civil war," she said.

Also on Thursday, a Syrian general said preliminary results of an ongoing investigation into the Houla massacre showed that it was carried out by "terrorist armed groups." General Qasem Jamal Suleiman said the "terrorists" had carried out the killing in order to persuade the outside world that Syria was sliding into civil war and to cause an external intervention. (IsraelNationalNews © 2012 05/31/12)