BEIRUT: Syria's army stepped up its assault on rebel-held areas in the central province of Homs, targeting besieged districts in Homs city and the nearby town of Qusayr, army and rebel sources told AFP on Monday.
"The army is in the midst of trying to cleanse the last rebel districts of the city of Homs," a Syrian army official said.
"The army has already cleansed the villages surrounding Qusayr, and is now trying to take back the town itself," he added, speaking to AFP on condition of anonymity.
Activists refer to Homs as the "capital of the revolution."
The province has suffered some of the worst violence in all of Syria since the outbreak of an anti-regime revolt in March last year, as the army has staged multiple attempts to reclaim rebel areas, to no avail.
Homs is Syria's largest province, and is located close to Lebanon and the capital Damascus.
It holds key strategic significance to both the rebels -- who have used ties to sympathisers with the revolt in northern Lebanon to smuggle supplies in and the wounded out -- and to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
The regime deployed fighter jets in Homs for the first time on Friday, targeting rebel-held Khaldiyeh district, said the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.
Khaldiyeh and the Old City have been in rebel hands -- and under a total army siege for more than four months, according to activists and monitoring groups.
Qusayr, about five kilometres (three miles) from Homs, has been under siege since late 2011.
"The army is trying to storm Qusayr from three entrances to the town," said Qusayr-based Hadi al-Abdallah, a member of the grassroots network of activists, the Syrian Revolution General Commission.
"The situation here is bad. The shelling is very, very violent," Abdallah told AFP via the Internet.
"There are fierce battles happening now in areas around Qusayr."
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