The Red Cross delivered emergency aid to areas around the battered Baba Amro district of the Syrian city of Homs on Sunday, but was blocked for a third day from entering the former rebel bastion amid reports of bloody reprisals by state forces. Activists reported shelling and other violence across Syria, sending one of the biggest surges of refugees across the border into Lebanon in a single day since a revolt against President Bashar al-Assad began a year ago.
Concerns mounted for civilians stranded in Baba Amro in freezing weather with little food, fuel or medicine after weeks in a state of siege and under near-constant shelling by Syrian forces intent on crushing the uprising.
"We have the green light, we hope to enter, we hope today is the day," said the International Committee of the Red Cross' Damascus-based spokesman Saleh Dabbakeh, declining to comment on what he said were sensitive talks with Syrian officials. "We are very concerned about the people in Baba Amro."
The ICRC said it had been prevented from entering Baba Amro by Syrian forces despite receiving government permission, a move activists said was to hide "massacres" by the Syrian army.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday he had received "grisly reports" that troops were executing and torturing people in Homs after insurgents abandoned their positions.
Aid workers began delivering supplies to areas near Baba Amro where people had fled, the ICRC said. "It is a positive step. But we want to enter Baba Amro today," ICRC spokesman Hicham Hassan told Reuters in Geneva. The United Nations' refugee agency said up to 2,000 Syrians had fled the fighting for neighbouring Lebanon.
"We had similar numbers in April 2011, but the flow of new arrivals had stabilised since then," United Nations refugee agency spokeswoman Dana Sleiman said. Refugees told Reuters of army shelling and gunfire on border towns. One woman said she and her family had fled the village of Jusiyah, near Qusair, some 12 km (7 miles) from the border.
"In the morning the shelling started, so we had to leave towards Lebanon. There were some wounded, but I don't know what happened to them," said Um Ali, 64.
She was sat under a tree with her husband, five sons and a pregnant daughter-in-law. They had not brought any belongings.
"We don't know what to do," she said. The outside world has proved powerless to halt the killing in Syria, where repression of initially peaceful pro-democracy protests sparked an insurrection by army deserters and others.
The government says it is fighting foreign-backed "terrorists" it blames for killing hundreds of soldiers and police across the country.
Syrian state television showed the gory corpses of anti-Assad fighters killed in clashes in the suburbs of the city of Hama, as well as an array of captured weapons, including arms it said were US and Israeli-made.
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