Violence in Syria continues to rage as security forces killed more than 50 protesters in the city of Hom today. With the death toll for the past six days totaling over 400, Arab League ministers are exploring a new proposal to send a joint U.N-Arab League mission to Syria.

“There is a proposal from the secretary-general of the Arab League to form a joint mission for Syria in coordination with the United Nations, and it will be presented before the planned Arab foreign ministers’ meeting on Sunday in Cairo,” the Arab League’s deputy head, Ahmed Ben Helli, told reporters today.

The upcoming ministerial meeting in Cairo may also issue a statement on China and Russia’s veto of a U.N. Security Council Resolution last Saturday, reports Reuters. The resolution was based on an Arab peace plan that had the support of the rest of the Security Council but China and Russia’s veto brought criticism from both Western and Arab nations.

The ongoing artillery bombardment of Homs, a recently leaked report detailing the failures of an Arab League observer mission, and the Russian and Chinese veto have left the Arab League and the United Nations looking for new strategies to halt the bloodshed.

Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby announced this week that a new mission would need international backing, better equipment and more observers than the Arab League mission. Yesterday, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon confirmed that Elaraby had proposed a joint mission.

Consultations will be held with the Arab League and Security Council members “before fleshing out the details,” said the U.N. chief. But Western powers offered a lukewarm response to the proposal. Agence France-Presse reports that France said there would have to be “guarantees” for the mission and Germany called it a “very serious” idea but emphasized that conditions would have to be met before such an effort could be launched.

While diplomats discuss what steps to take next, Human Rights Watch (HRW) urged the Syrian government to stop shelling residential areas of Homs. “Those responsible for such horrific attacks will have to answer for them,” HRW’s Anna Neistat in a statement earlier today.

Rights groups estimate that more than 6,000 people have died since protests began eleven months ago.

The head of the Arab League and the prime minister of Qatar called on the U.N. Security Council today to take action against the dramatic increase in violence around Damascus and endorse an Arab League peace plan to facilitate Syrian President Bashar Al Assad’s handover of power. But while the League sought Security council support for their peace plan, new documents gives insights into the disorganized and chaotic Arab League monitoring mission which was suspended two days ago.

Arab League monitors in Syria experienced shortages of equipment and severe restrictions in movement imposed by the Syrian government according to a confidential account [PDF] of the mission acquired by ForeignPolicy.com’s Colum Lynch today.

The document shows that “many of the 166 Arab observers parachuted into Syria on Dec. 24 to document the widening violence were utterly incapable of enduring the rigors of life in a country roiled by social upheaval and conflict…” writes Lynch.

Despite the grim picture painted in the document, Gen. Mohamed Ahmed Moustafa Al-Dabbi, the chief of the Arab League monitoring mission and the author of the document, warned that “Any termination of the work of the mission after this short term will undermine the positive results — even if incomplete — that have been achieved so far.”

The leaked report mainly focuses on the logistical problems faced by the mission, the Arab League’s first major attempt at a monitoring mission, but a recommendation within the report that Arab governments not give up their mediating role to U.N. Security Council sparked a strong reaction from European diplomats. They argue the Arab League mission had no business making such a self-interested assertion while Russian officials say the Security Council should review the League’s full account of the mission, reports Lynch.

Lynch reports that European diplomats have also taken issue with the report’s omission of key details in the death of a French television journalist. Al-Dabbi writes that “reports of the mission already indicate that the French journalist died, and a Belgian reporter injured, as a result of mortar attacks fired by the opposition,” but a European official told ForeignPolicy.com’s Turtle Bay blog that the report didn’t include testimony from other reporters who reported that the French journalist was “exposed to enemy fire deliberately” by pro-government supporters.