Dozens dead as Syria regime pounds Homs: activists

DAMASCUS: Syrian forces pressed a relentless assault on the protest city of Homs Wednesday, with dozens of civilians reported killed, hours after President Bashar al-Assad said he was committed to ending the bloodshed.

The barrage of gunfire, mortars and shells came at daybreak and flattened many buildings in the flashpoint neighbourhood of Baba Amr, a stronghold of army defectors the regime is targeting for a fifth straight day.

Rami Abdel Rahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, said the overall toll amounted to around 50 dead, including three entire families slain overnight by regime forces and government-backed thugs known as Shabiha.

“We expect the death toll to rise … given the fact that many victims remain under the rubble,” Abdel Rahman told AFP.

The most intense shelling was in Baba Amr, where at least 23 buildings were completely destroyed, including a home hit by a rocket that killed a little girl.

All power and communications were cut off.

The three families were killed in the same neighbourhood and included at least three children aged five, seven and 15.

Activists in the besieged central city claimed the widespread shelling was a clear bid to pave the way for a ground assault.

“Since dawn the shelling has been extremely intense and they are using rockets and mortars,” Omar Shaker, who was reached by satellite telephone from Beirut, told AFP.

“They have destroyed all infrastructure and bombed water tanks and electricity poles. The humanitarian situation is extremely dire and food is lacking.

“We are trying to set up a field hospital but we have no medical supplies.”

Later in the morning, the shelling intensified as tanks moved toward the city from the capital Damascus, said Hadi Abdullah, another activist.

“We fear a new massacre,” he told AFP by satphone.

The Britain-based Observatory has reported several hundred civilians killed since the onslaught on the protest hub was launched overnight Friday.

It said new clashes killed at least one person in northwestern Idlib province, and added that 18 soldiers defected in the southern region of Daraa, cradle of the popular uprising against Assad’s 11 years of iron-fisted rule.

Rights groups estimate more than 6,000 people have died in nearly a year of upheaval in the Middle Eastern country, as Assad’s hardline regime seeks to snuff out the revolt that began in March with peaceful protests amid the Arab Spring.

Western and Arab efforts to end the violence have met resistance from Russia, whose foreign minister said after meeting Assad in Damascus on Tuesday that the Syrian leader was “fully committed” to ending the bloodshed.