(Adds Hezbollah chief, french spokesman, three killed)
By Khaled Yacoub Oweis
AMMAN, Aug 26 (Reuters) - Government forces killed three protesters after Friday prayers in eastern and southern towns in Syria as demonstrators against President Bashar al-Assad drew encouragement from the fall of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.
At the United Nations, a U.S. and European push to impose Security Council sanctions on Syria over its crackdown on the protests met resistance from Russia and China, diplomats said.
Assad has sent in tanks and troops to crush months of demonstrations by activists calling for an end to his family's 41-year rule.
A resident of Deir al-Zor said security forces opened fire to disperse scores of protesters on Friday, killing two of them. He named them as 26-year-old Marii Fathi and 22-year-old Oday Bahloul.
"There was shooting in Kanama Street near Jandol cafe and a white security van took their bodies," he said.
Another youth, Ibrahim Mohammad al-Dukhoul, was taken to hospital with serious gunshot wounds, he said.
In Nawa, a southern town that has seen regular protests, residents and activists said one protester was killed after government forces shot at demonstrators coming out of a mosque.
State television said two gunmen were killed in Deir al-Zor, capital of a tribal province bordering Iraq, after they fired at a checkpoint, wounding three security officers.
Other activists and residents reported protests in the cities of Hama and Homs along the highway leading to Turkey, in the capital Damascus and its suburbs, and in the southern city of Deraa where the uprising against Assad erupted in March.
"Gaddafi is gone, it is your turn Bashar!" shouted protesters in the town of Hirak northeast of Deraa, encouraged by the overthrow of the Libyan strongman by rebels this week, according to a witness who spoke by phone.
Syria's government has blamed armed "terrorist groups" for the street violence and says it wants to restore order. It has expelled most independent journalists, making it difficult to verify events on the ground.
In New York, the United States, Britain, France, Germany and Portugal circulated a draft resolution calling for sanctions against Assad, members of his family and close associates. They said they wanted to put the draft to a vote as soon as possible but diplomats said there are no plans for that yet.
The measures are not as severe as U.S. sanctions in place and a proposed expansion of European Union steps against Damascus that would forbid the import of Syrian oil.
Russia's U.N. Ambassador Vitaly Churkin has hinted that Moscow would use its veto power to knock down the draft if it was put to a vote at the present time. Western diplomats said that Russia and China were refusing to discuss the draft.
Brazil, India and South Africa have also been reluctant to sanction -- or even condemn -- Syria, whose five-month crackdown on demonstrators has killed at 2,200, according to U.N. figures.
The council had scheduled a meeting of ambassadors on the draft sanctions resolution on Thursday afternoon but the Chinese and Russian envoys boycotted it, diplomats said.
Russia has long had close ties to Syria and is one of its main arms suppliers. One proposed sanctions is an arms embargo.
The sanctions would also impose a travel ban on 22 of Assad's family and associates and an asset freeze on 23 Syrians.
Envoys said Assad was excluded from the travel ban in order to give him an escape route.
"We want him to leave the country," a diplomat said.
The United States and EU have urged Assad to step down.
In Beirut, Hezbollah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, whose group is backed by Damascus, said the unrest will have implications on all the region if it is not solved through dialogue.
"We all support the need for big and important reforms, so Syria can be stronger...this means that all efforts should be combined to calm the situation in Syria and push it towards dialogue and peaceful solution," he said.
Any power shakeup in Syria would have major regional repercussions. Assad, from Syria's minority Alawite sect, still has alliances with the country's influential Sunni business class and a loyalist core in the army and security service.
The uprising has damaged Syria's economy, hitting investment and tourist numbers. Businesses have been laying off workers.
European Union diplomats said on Wednesday the bloc's governments were likely to impose an embargo on imports of Syrian oil by the end of next week, although new sanctions may be less stringent than those imposed by Washington.
"France is more determined than ever to do everything it can that Bashar al-Assad ends the repression without delay and that blood stops flowing," French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said on Friday.
Since Ramadan began on Aug. 1, tanks have entered the cities of Hama, scene of a 1982 massacre by the military, Deir al-Zor and Latakia on the Mediterranean coast.
The first U.N. mission to be allowed into Syria since the crackdown began found that civilians felt under constant threat, a U.N. spokesman said on Friday.
"The mission concluded that although there's no countrywide humanitarian crisis, there is an urgent need to protect civilians from the excessive use of force," spokesman Farhan Haq said.
(Additional reporting by Suleiman al-Khalidi, Mariam Karouny, John Irish in Paris, Patrcik Worsnip at the United Nations; Editing by Angus MacSwan)
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