Syria’s Homs hit with ‘heaviest shelling’ in weeks

“It’s the most violent in 14 days. It’s unbelievable — extreme violence the like of which we have never seen before, with an average of four rockets every minute,” said Hadi Abdullah of the General Commission of the Syrian Revolution.

“In addition to the districts of Baba Amr and Inshaat, Khaldiyeh and Bayyada were pounded on Friday, but the shelling of these neighbourhoods was not as intense as in recent days,” the activist told AFP in Beirut on the phone.

Abdullah and medics warned of a worsening humanitarian crisis in Homs, a key junction city in central Syria with 1.6 million inhabitants before the conflict erupted.

“There are thousands of people isolated in Homs from the whole world,” he said.

“There are neighbourhoods that we know nothing about. I myself do not know if my parents are okay. I have had no news from them for 14 days.”

A tank fired into a residential part of Homs before bursts of machinegun fire clattered across the neighbourhood, according to a video activists uploaded to YouTube.

“The regime troops are still shelling at the moment but are reluctant to enter Baba Amr. They are on the periphery and are moving slowly. The army will lose if it begins urban warfare,” activist Omar Shakir said later on Skype.

International rights groups have estimated that the assault on Homs has killed almost 400 people, and a medic reached on Skype said that 1,800 people have been wounded.

“There are injuries that cannot be treated because of a lack of medical equipment,” Dr Ali al-Hazzuri told AFP. “There are casualties who are close to dying.”

Nine bodies of unidentified people were found on Friday morning in Homs, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which also reported the heaviest shelling in the city for two weeks.

Elsewhere in the country, two people died on Friday in eastern Deir Ezzor province, one a young man gunned down by security forces manning a checkpoint and the other a soldier, the Britain-based monitors said in a statement.

The violence comes after the UN General Assembly on Thursday demanded an immediate halt to Syria’s brutal crackdown on dissent, which human rights groups say has claimed more than 6,000 lives over the past 11 months.

Forces of President Bashar al-Assad launched their Homs assault early on February 4.

Later that day, Russia and China vetoed a second UN Security Council resolution on Syria, which has vowed to maintain its campaign to crush dissent regardless of Arab and Western peace initiatives.