Syria's opposition has appealed for international intervention to protect the civilian population of Homs after more than 110 people were reportedly killed in the army's latest assault on city.
A protester faces riot police at Khalidia, near Homs Photo: Reuters
By Adrian
Blomfield, Middle East Correspondent
7:39PM GMT 07 Nov 2011
3 Comments
The Syrian National Council, the main opposition coalition, declared Homs a "humanitarian disaster zone", claiming that food was running short in the besieged city and that bodies were putrefying in the streets.
Syrian troops on Monday stormed the city's most restive suburbs, kicking down doors and carrying out mass arrests. Residents reported seeing a lorry filled with corpses and human rights groups claimed that an eight-year-old girl was among the dead, saying she was killed after soldiers at a checkpoint opened fire at random.
The council did not call for military action, but appealed for urgent medical relief and international protection of civilians to end the "indiscriminate slaughter" in the city. It also appealed to the United Nations and regional groups to send "Arab and international observers, instantly, to the city of Homs to oversee the situation on the ground and prevent the regime from continuing to commit brutal massacres."
William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, called for "ever-increasing" international pressure, rather than military intervention in Syria.
"I don't think the answer to (the repression) now or subsequently would be a military intervention from outside," Mr Hague told reporters in Strasbourg after a meeting of Council of Europe ministers.
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The situation in Syria is "dramatically more complex" than that in Libya before Nato intervened in March, he said, calling for additional sanctions on the regime.
Homs remains the last city in Syria outside the government's control and the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad has increasingly taken on a different form to much of the rest of the country.
Unarmed civilian protesters have been joined by a growing number of army defectors who have engaged in heavy artillery battles, much of it in the suburb of Bab Amro.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an activist group based in Britain, said that clashes between the two sides had led to dozens of dead and wounded in both camps.
The army has also been accused of firing indiscriminately at civilian parts of the city, inflicting many casualties, in defiance of an Arab League peace plan Mr Assad promised to uphold last week.
Under the terms of the agreement, the government was meant to withdraw its tanks and armoured vehicles from the streets, end violence against protesters, release an estimated 70,000 political prisoners and begin negotiations with the opposition.
The peace plan was seen as a last attempt to prevent the country sliding into all-out civil war and to avert fears of sectarian bloodshed amid growing reports that protesters are carrying out retributions against Mr Assad's ruling Shia Alawite minority.
The Syrian president has shown little inclination to end the violence, and yesterday he accused Washington of fomenting resistance against his regime and "actual involvement in bloody events in Syria".
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Showing 3 comments
guesswho
55 minutes ago
Basher Al Assad...... the man with the face that was made for punching.
First L
Today 08:41 PM
Basher Al Assad is going to end up like Ghaddafi if he carries on. With the blood of thousands of innocent people on his hands.
Blackadder2
54 minutes ago
Sadly, the Assad regime is already there, many have died. The problem is how to deal with the Tiger that it has by the tail.
If Assad relinquishes power and remains, he and many Alawites and his supporters will risk being massacred.
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