Syria's president Bashar al-Assad has called elections for May, as activists accused his regime of laying landmines at border crossings to stop refugees fleeing into neighbouring countries.

Mr Assad issued a decree setting May 7 as the date for parliamentary elections that were delayed last year.

The vote is part of a raft of reforms announced by Mr Assad in a bid to calm a year-long uprising against his regime that began with democracy protests.

But it has already been rejected by activists, and the United States says plans to go to the polls while violence in the country continues are "ridiculous".

The elections would be the third time a legislative vote has taken place in Syria since Mr Assad came to power in 2000.

The last parliamentary poll in 2007 saw the National Progressive Front - a coalition led by Mr Assad's Ba'ath Party - seize the majority of the 250 seats in the assembly.

The announcement came amid reports the Syrian government is laying landmines along the borders with Turkey and Lebanon.

Borders mined

Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume. Watch Duration: 4 minutes 41 seconds 4 m 41 s Nadim Houry on the situation in Syria

Human Rights Watch has accused the Syrian regime of planting landmines near its borders with Lebanon and Turkey, along routes used by refugees fleeing the country.

A UN report suggests nearly 250,000 Syrians have fled their homes since the uprising began.

"We released today pictures and even footage of some of these anti-personnel land mines that have been put under a lot of these access roads being used by the refugees," the deputy director of the group's Middle East division, Nadim Houry, told the ABC's 7.30.

"We've also interviewed some of the wounded from these mines in Lebanon and in Turkey.

"Really, these land mines are not just a threat today to the civilians fleeing, but they're also a threat to Syrians in the future as we've seen in so many conflict countries.

"We're really calling on the Syrian army to stop laying those mines and to remove those it has already laid."

Mr Houry said the latest landmine casualty was on March 5, when a young Syrian man crossing back into Syria from Turkey stepped on a mine and lost his right leg.

Peace envoy Kofi Annan, who left Syria on Sunday, has held talks with opposition groups as part of a new campaign to find a political solution to the crisis.

He has received a response from Mr Assad on "concrete proposals" which he had submitted to him in two rounds of talks in Damascus at the weekend.

"They did respond. Their responses are being considered," spokesman Ahmad Fawzi told AFP, declining to give details of Syria's response.

An anti-personnel mine that was reportedly removed from near the Turkish-Syrian border ( Human Rights Watch )

Massacre 'hysteria'

Meanwhile the Assad regime has launched a counter-offensive against what it says are lies by foreign media groups hell-bent on serving the propaganda interests of gangs terrorising Syria.

Anti-regime activists on Monday posted online videos showing the bodies of dozens of women and children they said were massacred by regime forces in Karm el-Zaytoun district of the flashpoint city of Homs, in central Syria.

Foreign news broadcasters beamed grisly images of the bodies of 26 children and 21 women, some with their throats slit and others bearing stab wounds, around the world, as the opposition pushed for foreign military intervention in Syria.

Syrian state television quickly responded with counter-claims that Sunday's killings were carried out by "armed terrorist gangs" out to grab the propaganda spotlight and discredit Mr Assad's regime internationally.

"We are used to them committing more crimes before meetings of the UN Security Council," it said, while denouncing "hysteria" in the foreign media over events in Syria.

State television ran its own version of the massacre, showing bodies it said were filmed in Karm el-Zaytoun.

"The terrorists committed these crimes to satisfy their thirst for blood," it charged in comments broadcast throughout the day.

The Arab League says it wants a neutral inquiry into crimes against the Syrian people, and says the elimination of entire families could be described as crimes against humanity.

Sorry, this video has expired Growing clamour for urgent action in Syria ( Peter Cave )

ABC/AFP