Speaking in the Chinese capital on Wednesday, Brahimi said he hoped “China can play an active role in solving the events in Syria” without elaborating further.

Brahimi’s visit to Beijing comes after a visit to Moscow on Monday, where he stressed that the Syrian crisis is worsening. “The situation is bad and is getting worse and the entire international community has got to come together and help the people of Syria find solutions to the crisis,” he told reporters following a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

China, an ally of Syria, has along with Russia exercised its veto in the UN Security Council to block resolutions aimed at putting more pressure on Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad.

Brahimi, who succeeded former UN chief Kofi Annan after he quit over what he called a lack of international support, is due to present new proposals for resolving the conflict to the UN Security Council next month.

There had been expectations that the warring parties in Syria would agree to observe a ceasefire, starting last Friday, in observance of the Muslim religious holiday of Eid al-Adha, in the hope that it would help create an environment that would allow a political process to develop but the ceasefire collapsed.

Twenty months since the conflict in Syria erupted last year, clashes rebels and the regular army are raging in many parts of Syria.

The opposition says more than 32,000 people have been killed. A further 2.5 million Syrians urgently need humanitarian aid, and over 340,000 have crossed the border to Syria’s neighbouring countries, according to UN estimates.

Activists reported fighting and an air raid in the Damascus suburb of Douma on Tuesday, according to Al Jazeera while the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said 18 people were killed by the air raid and tank fire.

Independently, Syria’s state news agency SANA said an “armed terrorist group” assassinated a high-ranking air force general, Abdullah Mahmoud al-Khalidi , who was shot while getting out of his car in the Rukn al-Din neighbourhood in Damascus, the report said.

Rebels claimed responsibility for the killing.